Monday, June 8, 2009

Life- I got published!

So, I received my first acceptance letter today. My story, "The Last Collector", will appear in the July 2009 issue of Crossed Genres magazine.

http://crossedgenres.com/

I'm pretty excited, though I've calmed down quite a bit since I received the letter. I had been keeping up with the editors blog, and it sounded like he had already been in contact with all of the authors, or at least the ones who had never been published before. I convinced myself that I was just waiting for my rejection to come.

So, about 7:30 today I flipped over to my e-mail to find a response from the editor. I opened it thinking it would be my rejection.

My first thought?

"This is really long... It's like, a whole page."

Then I started reading, and thought,

"I don't get it. It sounds like they really liked my story....."

Then I got to the part where they said they would be putting it in the July issue... It took me a full five ten seconds to realize I was reading an acceptance letter. I guess they hadn't even realized I had never been published before, which is really cool.

I then proceeded to call my parents, and Sara's mom. One or both of them may still not know I will soon be a published author though. I was pretty incoherent. Funny huh? First thing that happens when someone says, "hey, you're pretty good at slinging those words together.", is that you forget how to make words function in any meaningful fashion.

So here is an excerpt from my acceptance letter. I have removed most of the publication hoo-haw for the sake of brevity.

Hello,

This is Bart Leib, co-editor of Crossed Genres magazine. Kay Holt (my co-editor) and I both greatly enjoyed your submission "The Last Collector". It's an potently somber story, and the revelation of the forgotten Dystopian disaster at the end was very effective. Your main character was very "human", so the discovery that he HAD been human was completely convincing. We also liked your art submission "Clockwork Man At the Beach" very much, and feel it complements the story well.

We’d like to include both "The Last Collector" and "Clockwork Man At the Beach" in Issue #8 of our magazine, which will be released online, in print (Print-On-Demand), and in various electronic formats (PDF, Kindle) on July 1. As specified on the website, we offer a flat $10 token payment as compensation (times 2 - $10 for the story and $10 for the art). We'll also send you a copy of the .pdf and/or .prc editions at no charge. You can also purchase up to 2 copies of the magazine in print for 25% off: if you’d like to do so let us know and we’ll make arrangements once the issue has been released.

I've attached 3 documents to this email. The first is the License Agreement for the story, and the second is the License Agreement for the artwork. Please read them over carefully (they're the same except for the name of what's being licensed), and if you have any questions or concerns please let me know.


So that's it. That's how it begins I guess. I can't tell you how lucky I feel to have only had to suffer five rejections to get to my first acceptance. I would not be here now if not for Sara. I owe her a lot for making my work better then it had any right to be at this early stage.

Jeromy

No comments:

Post a Comment