The Story Behind The Stories: 12 Dark Tales and their Publishers: Selling Stories, #2

Preface

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.

Stephen King

You’ve decided you want to write and sell your short stories?

It’s on your bucket list; something planned for a mythical future when you have more time, or that old chestnut slurred about after too many cocktails.

I’m going to become a writer.

Folks talk about climbing Mount Everest, but how many actually do it?

The same goes for selling your writing. How many aspiring authors successfully make sales? There is no magic spell (no matter what some fantasy stories promise). It takes time tapping on the keyboard, a thick skin to rejection, and the willingness to learn.

My journey began in 2018. I had a few false starts and eventually found success with more than 30 stories published in anthologies, magazines and on-line. This book will help you avoid some of the pitfalls, inspire you to keep trying and give you some actionable advice.

Unlike other guides on the market, this book goes directly to the source featuring one-on-one interviews with the publishers and editors who are buying stories in today’s market. Get the inside scoop from the people behind the magazine and anthology covers.

It’s not an easy road.

I currently have more than 500 rejections. Let’s do some math here, with 30 stories published, that’s a pick-up rate of 6%.

The number one thing successful writers have in common? They don’t quit when someone tells them No.

Carrie by Stephen King was rejected by over 30 publishers.

Agatha Christie started her career to a stream of rejections.

Judy Blume says on her website, For two years I received nothing but rejections.

Yet, not all rejections are created equally. Some editors take the time to give useful advice and these tidbits are invaluable. This book also contains the best (and worst) rejections from my submissions.

My personal favorite was from an editor who told me, the piece made no sense.

Then there was this more helpful piece of advice, "we felt that the concept behind A Deadful Friday the 13th was engaging! That being said, the execution could have been better. Some sentences were a bit awkward and your descriptors could have been chosen with more care. More attention might also be given to the believability of the dialogue (for instance, a gang member probably wouldn't say, I’m gonna get my gang members after that biotch).

The editors at Novel Noctule Literary Magazine were right. My dialogue was terrible. I’ve made strides since then in creating more believable characters and conversation.

While working with editors and dealing with rejection, I developed a curiosity about the people behind the publications. Who are these wonderful people giving new authors a voice? Are they making any money? Why did they choose my story out of the hundreds submitted to them?

After a lucky request from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine to write a blog post for them, I crafted a piece attempting to answer these questions.

A Conversation with Indie Anthology and Magazine Publishers

I interviewed a few of the editors who’d picked up my stories and their enthusiastic response was overwhelming. So many interesting answers! There was no way one blog post could fit it all.

I asked Stuart Conover at horrortree.com if he would be interested in posting interviews with publishers and he agreed. Daniel Scott White of Mythaxis.com also posts some of my interviews and articles on his website.

My background is in journalism and I’ve been writing non-fiction articles for years. My passion is writing strange stories. This book is the result of taking the skills I’ve been using for decades and combining them with my dream to write speculative fiction. I hope my journey can help yours.

1

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

Three Calendars

First published: November 2019

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

November/December 2019 issue

Genre: Mystery

Publisher/Editor: Janet Hutchings

Pay: $250 US

Previous rejections of Three Calendars: 2

Rejections of others stories by EQMM: 1

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

A copy of this mystery magazine was always sitting on my mother’s bedside table growing up, and I started reading it in my early teens. EQMM has been around since 1941 and has been cited as the finest periodical of its kind by The Readers Encyclopedia of American Literature. They pay professional rates and have had short stories from famous authors in many editions. Writers like William Faulkner, Agatha Christie, Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Ruth Rendell and Peter Robinson have been featured. Charlaine Harris is one of my favourite authors, (I have every book in the True Blood series), and my story was in the same issue as her action-packed tale, A Little Happy Hunting.

Their website proclaims they are the winner of more than 100 major awards, including 22 Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America, EQMM is the most celebrated mystery and crime-fiction publication in the world.

So far, EQMM has been my biggest and most exciting sale.

How Three Calendars found a home in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

The lack of success at the beginning of my writing career helped me crack this market. EQMM has a feature in every issue called Department of First Stories. This is a feature in all their editions which showcases an undiscovered talent. I submitted Three Calendars to EQMM in November 2018.

On February 21, 2019 I received this email from Janet Hutchings: Thanks for letting us see ‘Three Calendars.’ EQMM is trying to determine whether you are eligible for our Department of First Stories. You mentioned a couple of previous fiction publications: Did you receive payment for them? Have you ever been paid for your fiction?

My only success in the fiction market before this point was Planet Nine in The Gateway Review for no pay, so I explained that I had never received payment for any fiction story to date. By the time Three Calendars actually made it to print, my story Death Metal Fan was also up on hauntedlmtl.com but the pay was only $2.

The introduction to Three Calendars in the actual issue read, Angelique Fawns is a producer and writer for Global TV in Toronto, and a freelance agricultural reporter. She started writing fiction last summer and has already received honourable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest and Literary Taxidermy. Two of her stories have appeared online; this is her first paid publication.

Having a story in EQMM not only gave me a good pro market to list in my mini bio, but it was the genesis of this guide/anthology.

I received another email from Janet Hutchings on Friday September 27, "With your story coming out in the issue that goes on sale late in October, I wondered if you’d like to do a post for EQMM’s blog site. The site is at www.somethingisgoingtohappen.net. A piece goes up there once a week, on Wednesday. About once a month, I do it. The other spots are taken by authors, translators, scholars of the mystery, and others in the business. The topic could be anything you like as long as it relates to mystery fiction in some way."

I agreed to contribute, but then a cold dread swept over me. What could I possibly write that would be strong enough for EQMM? I started experiencing imposter syndrome. I read through the beautifully written blog posts by other authors and wasn’t sure how I could contribute. I lost hours of sleep trying to figure out how to write an article good enough for the famous and long-lived EQMM! Unable to decide, I sent Hutchings a list of possible topics and she chose a look at the day jobs and motivations behind small press anthology publishers.

While sending my stories out to market-after-market, I wondered about the people behind the open calls. Who were these individuals giving writers a chance to see their stories online and in print? Or in the case of podcasts, hear them? Were they making any money? While waiting for EQMM to publish my first paid fiction piece, a few more markets accepted my stories and I was beginning to make contacts.

I interviewed almost every editor/publisher who’d accepted my work to that point, and got some interesting answers. I was only able to use a small amount of it in my blog post for EQMM.

A Conversation With Indie Anthology and Magazine Publishers

I find most of my open calls at horrortree.com and love reading the interviews and extra content on the site. I contacted them and asked if they would be interested in the full interviews. Horrortree is Stuart Conover’s brain child and he was enthusiastic about accepting my pieces. He warned he was not able to pay for articles right away, but there might be money in the future if Patreon picks up. (Now, I get about $5 US for each article.) In the process, I have discovered an amazing group of contributors. We have a private Facebook group and I love seeing how the calls for submissions are found and vetted.

The EQMM blog post started a new avenue of writing for me that uses my journalism background and my interest in the speculative fiction market.

Inspiration for Three Calendars

There is someone close to me who is going through some cognitive decline, but is still highly functional in her daily life. It’s fascinating to see how she battles short term memory lapses. It involves three calendars…

Lessons Learned

1) Don’t self-reject. I never imagined one of my first pick-ups would be from a pro-market publication. Stories sitting in dusty drawers, or long forgotten folders on your computer, will never find a home. Submit, submit, submit…

2) Be open to where your path goes. Freelance journalism writing is nothing new to me. I’d been doing it for over 20 years. My dream is to become a fiction writer. Who knew my short story passion could intersect with my past experience in such a serendipitous way?

Rejections

Allegory Magazine

"Dear Angelique,

Thank you for sharing your story with us. This was a really beautiful story. I love the way you tell this mystery within the context of your character's dementia. I don't know if it has quite enough of a speculative element, but I'm going to forward it on for further review by our editor. Congrats on making it to the next stage!"

Then I received this one…

"Angelique -

I hate writing this letter.

I deeply regret to inform you that Three Calendars did not make the final cut for Volume 35/62 of ALLEGORY. Please understand that we received nearly 600 submissions for this issue and narrowed that down to only 54 finalists. ALL of those finalists are strong, quality stories - any of which we would be pleased and honored to publish. The final list of twelve is made by comparing the stories, more with an eye toward issue balance than the merits of one story over another. Your tale is a GREAT piece, and I'm very very sorry that we can't use it. For whatever it may be worth, we would like to include your name and the title of your story in the Honorable Mentions section of our mainpage.

Feel free to use this as a recommendation of your work to other markets. Again, my apologies. And good luck with your writing efforts."

2

Three Calendars

My life is full of mysteries. Mysteries and calendars. A calendar by my bed, one on the fridge and one on my iPhone.  

Opening my eyes, I start every day the same way. Birds chirp outside my window, light filters through my window, and I whisper to myself. 

My name is Betty. I’m a retired racehorse groom. And my sister is missing. I know these things. What I don’t know is what day it is. Rolling out of bed I look at the calendar on my bedside table. Before I go to bed at night the first thing I do is X-out the current day. This way when I wake up and look at the calendar I can see right away that today is Sunday, September 30.  

Looking beside me in the bed, I notice that there is an indent on the pillow next to me, but the body that should be lying there is missing. My husband.  Where is the guy on a Sunday morning? It’s not like he’s a church goer. It seems I see less and less of him these days. 

I pull the sheets up on the bed so it resembles something neat and walk into my kitchen. It’s not neat in there. My husband has left a mess. Toast crumbs everywhere, a dirty plate in front of the TV with last night’s sports highlights playing on mute and a sludgy half-filled coffee.  

I feel a familiar rise of frustration. Twenty-some-odd years married and the guy can’t figure out how to put a cup into the dishwasher? Argh. I carry the offending things to the sink and grab my own mug and start a coffee for myself in the Keurig. My reflection stares back at me from the window, distracting me from the lovely view out there. At 59, I still look pretty good. My auburn hair curls around my face with only a bit of gray sprinkled at the temples. My cheek bones are still striking, not covered yet by the slow spread of weight that gets most of us in old age. It seems the pounds are finding me from the bottom up. My thighs and hips are heavier, but my chest is still boy flat with defined collar bones peeking out from my nightgown. 

What was I doing? There is a coffee cup decorated with a horse in my hand that says I’ve spent most my life in the saddle, the rest I’ve just wasted. That’s right, I was making a cup of Keurig’s Krispy Kreme coffee. I love the convenience but hate the guilt. I remember a meme I saw on Facebook of all these little used pods encircling the planet in space. Destroying the earth one caffeine hit at a time.  Why can’t I forget that horrible picture when I can’t seem to remember what I planned today?  

Good thing I have another handy calendar for that. Taking my coffee and sipping at it, I wander over to the fridge to look at the photocopied calendar given to me every month by my son with my grandchild’s schedule on it. It’s Sunday, September 30, and the day is wide open. I don’t have to pick up my grandson after school today. That is my biggest responsibility these days. Providing a shuttle service and daycare for five-year-old Jack.  Both his parents work and need an hour or two before they can pick him up at the end of the day. 

This gives me plenty of time to look for Elvie. When I try and talk to my husband Paul? -Phil? -yes, Phil, about how I’m worried about her he gets belligerent.  

Betty! Elvie is dead. Please please let this go, he always says, putting his hands on