June 2016 goals roundup

First off, if interested, you can read the story I mentioned in my May roundup in the summer issue of The Sockdolager! My story is entitled "Sugar and Spice" which, by the way, is a title I'm happy with for once. The rest of the issue is good too, so I do invite you to peruse. It was a pleasure working with the Sockdolager folks, and it's a pleasure to be in that issue. If reading online isn't your thing, you can purchase a physical copy of the issue here for $7.

In May, I got no story acceptances, but did receive several helpful rejections. I discovered that the New Yorker's form rejection is very nice and mild (or I got the nice and mild one). I have 11 stories on submission right now; it should be 12, just have to send that other one off somewhere. It's funny, for me, the "odd stories out" are the ones with no speculative elements. They still have their oddness, though, which I think makes them difficult to place.

In May, I didn't write a new short story from scratch. See, Tor.com briefly opened a submission window for novellas, so I edited and revised an older novella I'd written. And, because the minimum required word count was 20,000 and I was at 17,000, I added about 3,000 words to the story. That's about short story length, and I feel it strengthened and updated the overall work, so I'm going to count it, for the purposes of my "write a story every month" goal. I did a bunch of writing that I'm happy with . Good enough! Really, this novella is something I've consistently been happy with and, as always, I very much hope the answer is yes.

Though that's kind of my approach to submissions in general. I always hope the answer is yes. I submit to markets I'd be happy to see my stories in. I aim high for my submissions, and I keep trying.

Keep trying!