A strange brew is this, and not all of it is pretty. Partially a record of a crackup and partially a tale of rising from that crackup back into a useful life; and part of that is how I decided writing was necessary to my life and recovery; and another part is just keeping a record of where I have been and what I have learned. You can see the topics I cover the sidebar. The hope is to help others; the purpose is figuring out where I am going. Thank you for dropping by. Feel free to comment.
Showing posts with label Literary Magazine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literary Magazine. Show all posts
Nothing is going on here. I have spent the last few days on my project, when I was supposed to be doing other things. I have left the apartment onlly to make it to the convenience store. Plenty of groceries in the apartment. The heat has been leading me back into the bad habit of napping. I did get through last week's mail.
I have talked to CC and KH. I need to call E and Paul S. DM did not return my call.
The Pentagon announced Wednesday that the Navy is planning to install Indiana’s first advanced nuclear micro modular reactor at Naval Weapons Station Crane by September 2028.
The reactor’s deployment helps carry out President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order calling for the swift integration of nuclear power within the military, with a goal of having at least one working reactor on a military base by Sept. 30, 2028.
I was kicked out of The Cup yesterday, banned from the place, by the owner who had his phone open and ready to the sheriff's website. His righteousness irritated me into a sentence I will not repeat here. Well, my sins and history are mine and I cannot be angry about that. What bothered me was that I am now out of the writing group. I sketched out my absence to one of the others. I expect never to hear from them again.
What puzzles me is how he came to jump on me. I do not recall seeing the fellow before. For a moment, I thought he might be someone I had forgotten. If I had seen him, this was our only time we spoke. Which leaves it possible that someone put him on me. Why anyone would do that makes no sense.
I napped and then fell back into my obsession with my research project. That had me running from 8 pm last night until 3 am.
When I woke around 7:30, I went back at it until after noon. I napped again. I decided it was time to update my record here. When I finish, back to the project.
For the life of me I cannot recall Tuesday.
Nothing new submitted, but there were rejections.
9/10: “After Making Landfall”
We regret that we are not able to place your work in EPOCH, but we do appreciate your submission. The volume of submissions prevents us from commenting on every one, but please know that we did review your work and gave it careful consideration.
Sincerely,
The Editors
9/8
Thank you for your submission to Chestnut Review. Although we must decline your submission this time, we appreciated the chance to consider it. Please do not interpret this as a judgment of your art as a whole. Individual tastes matter a great deal in decisions like these, and though we have to decline this round, we encourage you to keep writing and creating. The world needs it, and you.
We are grateful for the opportunity to read "Coming Home." Although we are unable to accept it at this time, we thank you for considering The Maine Review as a home for your work. We are often forced to pass on pieces we admire, and we hope you keep creating.
You can sign up for our newsletter and follow us on social media to keep up to date on our submission windows, programs, and upcoming publications. In the meantime, we appreciate you trusting us with your work, and for all you contribute to contemporary literature.
Excessive heat and an ear infection could be my excuses. They were real, debilitating, inhibiting a range of actions. I had an incident last Sunday that still bothers me where I almost fainted. It left me light-headed and shaken through Monday.
But the truth is, I got caught up in an obsession. I worked on my research project until I wanted to write nothing more. I blistered my eyes with articles and editing my own work. Why is it that creating footnotes and translating information is both more tiring and less than writing fiction? Fiction feels like painting with sweeping brush strokes and then filling them with details. Writing this article is more like taking tiles to make a mosaic - finding a piece and then aligning it to fit other pieces.
What I had at the end of the week were notes for a supervised release post and nothing more.
I do not seem to recall when the heat advisory started this week. Certainly on Wednesday, but maybe Tuesday.
When Tuesday came, I made enough progress that I decided to treat myself to (finally) seeing The Odyssey. Paying my light bill only strengthened my resolve to see the movie. Using someone else's air conditioning seemed like a very good idea.
Nolan wrote and directed a great movie. Not a perfect movie, though. The criticisms about Calypso are spot on - never have I seen Charlize Theron reduced to a cipher; worse, a sexless, charmless cipher. Yes, there is no sex as in the poem; also, there is not much of the erotic. Yes, Pattinson excels as the villain. What has gone unmentioned, or unseen by me, has been anything complimenting the scenes of Odysseus and Penelope. To them is one the scene of passion. Anne Hathaway is a Penelope that matches the wits of her Odysseus. For all of Elon Musk and the online wankers complaining of Lupita Nyong'o's casting, I have been unable to imagine another actress in the parts she plays. Yes, she has few lines as Helen, but what she does have is devasting. More importantly, as Helen, is her face. No, she has power in her roles that I cannot imagine another pulling off with words, let alone her silence. My biggest surprise was Matt Damon. In my memory are Kirk Douglas and Armand Assante, both more in my mind the adventuring, wily Odsysseus of my imagination. Damon portrays a king with responsibilities to his men; who uses his wits in service to his responsibilities rather than for mere glory. Lastly, the scenes with Circe and Osysseus understate their power and importance.
I suspect it will win Best Cinematography just for the madness of filming directly on Imax cameras. The only competition should be the next installment of Dune.
It should win Best Adapted Screenplay, depending again on the forthcoming Dune.
Nolan should get Best Director for holding its scope together. I prefer Olive Wilde for The Invite; she did more with less, but that will probably be why she will not be in the running. Denis Villeneuve will then be the one to watch for.
And it will be the Best Picture winner.
Wednesday, I made the writer's group. That went well. I think I also made a trip to Walmart.
Thursday back to research and putting together that manuscript and enduring the heat and humidity. I think I finished watching Graveyard on Netflix. It is a Turkish police show that has finished its second season. It is a sort of Turkish Law and Order: SVU. Although I think that lessens Graveyard. It has none of the righteous melodrama of SVU. The social critique of Graveyard actually hits harder by being less overt. A scene between two fathers with one talking about bringing up his son in a world with online hate towards women stays in my mind. Oddly, it also brought to mind The Closer/Major Crimes for all it lacks in the humor of those shows. It is also a workplace drama where private lives often intrude. Last, but not least, its production values and direction are better than what we get on our cop shows.
Friday was the group and shopping at Payless. Nothing much else was accomplished that day besides small work done on the project. I started the second season of Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen. This I finished on Saturday. I am not sure what Ritchie is doing with this; it feels different from what he has done before. He has not been one for paying attention to monsters.
Saturday, I indulged in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I have seen some headlines criticizing this season. I have not taken the time to listen to them. It seems to me the show has not the usual sanctimony of Star Trek. It also seems to be establishing the future in small ways. Not so much in terms of plot but in character. Back to the project, putting off a trip to Payless of milk and disilled water. The things I had not enough hands for on Friday.
Sunday was church. A wonderful time, a settling of the spirit. I had thought I had polished off one section only to realize as I was closing the door to leave that I had not. No, that came after church.
Today, it was up early, computer troubles, dealing with the ear infection, and finishing this post. I have a table to put together and a kitchen to clean. So this is the end of this report. What follows are the things collected during the past week that were supposed to have been published before today.
Thank you for sending us "A Heart’s Judgment Judged."
This
particular piece did not work for us, but we were impressed by your
writing. We hope that you will send us something else. Our submission
schedule can be found on our website at http://americanshortfiction.org/submityourwork/.
We are freeing this story from the rat cage today. We hope it finds a
better fit (and pay!) elsewhere. Rejections suck, we get it. But, hey,
you are doing the thing! You should celebrate that you are sending your
work out into the world.
We're sorry to say that Lesson Learned On A Green Meadow is not quite right for us at this time.
If this was a quick reply, please don't be discouraged. Though rats are
considered nibblers, we devour our reading and are always hungry for
more! And what do we know? We're rats!
We hope you'll consider trying us again. You're welcome to submit again during any of our open calls.
Thank
you for submitting your work to MudRoom for review. We are grateful for
the opportunity to engage with your writing and thinking.
Unfortunately, we do not have a place for this piece in our upcoming
issue. We hope it finds a loving home.
I got a bit walking in, but missed the bus twice so gave up on a trip to Payless.
Worked on the research project.
Went to the convenience store in the afternoon and met a dog named Tex.
Got tired after eating a pizza from Domino's and slept from 6 to a little after 8 PM.
Wrote this post.
After Making Landfall rejected:
Thank you again for submitting your work to The Ex-Puritan.
As
editors, we’re forced to select an extremely small number of works from
the hundreds of great submissions we receive each quarter. Submissions
for this issue were once again excellent, and numerous. Although we have
to pass on your submission this time around, we’re truly grateful that
you thought to send it our way.
All the best in your future writing. Warm wishes and good luck!
Samuel, thank you for sending us your work. We appreciate the chance to read it, but it's not right for us at this time.
Keep writing. Keep reading. Keep being awesome. And best of luck placing this elsewhere.
We
kindly ask that you wait one month before submitting again, regardless
of which genre/category you submitted. Submissions that do not follow
this guideline will be replied to unread.
I meant to go to this morning's liturgy, only I woke feeling nauseous and then slept late. That is pretty much the story of this week.
Monday ended with a lot of pain, the surgery seems mostly past, but some side effects remain. I can walk a little faster, except for the limp on my right. Tuesday continued with the pain being apparent. Wednesday, I got out to the writer's group and Walmart; afterward all I wanted to do was sleep. Yesterday, I was up early and my back locked up.
All I have done is work on my research project. I did not have any energy for anything creative.
The PO visited yesterday. The new one and the old one. This is the second time they came as a pair. The old one id his usual glare and glower, stayed silent, and left the same old impression of someone needing antacids. Of course, they came when I had been trying to sleep and was neither awake or asleep. I do not understand being questioned about the monitoring software; it runs in the background and I ignore it. The new guy confused me when he asked about the upcoming polygraph; that is in January. Either he forgot that or just did not know. I feel that I let them down: there has never been any contact with minors, and this year since I rarely leave the apartment, I am not sure how it is expected for me to have some. He asked about an email to Paul S without knowing that I am free to contact felons, so long as we are not engaged in criminal activities. As usual, it was like a visit from aliens. It seems the government expects some sort of maniacal behavior breaking through rather than I am living the life I want to live. They have assumed much about me, have neither questioned their assumptions, and their assumptions are not relevant to how I live my life. The government thinks their court order must chafe me when it is irrelevant. I guess no one understands that the supervised order does not me restricts my life. Oh well, everybody needs to make a buck. It keeps people with no discernible job skills employed.
But getting my nap interrupted did annoy me.
More importantly, I received an email that I got an Honorable Mention in the William Faulkner Literary Competition for my short story, The First Day of Feeling Free! I cannot attend the award ceremony; I worry about my bowels between here and the convenience store, let alone a trip to Mississippi. It has been a good year for publishing my stuff.
And against that, rejections were received.
Thank you
for sending us "After Making Landfall" for consideration. We appreciate
the opportunity to read your work and regret that it does not fit the
needs of TriQuarterly. We wish you success in placing it for
publication.
I got out and about yesterday. I fixed the problems with Xfinity, had brunch at Jersey Mike's and shopped at Aldi's.
I had to schlep my groceries from University to Riverside, a walk about 4 short blocks, and that did me in for most of the day.
It was a gloomy day and humid. It was one of those Indiana's days when it's like living in a warm, damp sponge.
I slept most of the afternoon and into the evening. Then I could not sleep. I watched a bit more of Penny Dreadful. I had seen most of it years ago and am finishing it up. I like its variations on the idea of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It also made an interesting comment on Frankenstein, that he could create but had no interest in nurture. There is something to think about in that; especially in light of Mary Shelley being Frankenstein's creator.
I went down to the convenience store when I finally felt the energy to move about. A blue, clear sky above, a coolness in the wind, and a pleasant deficit of humidity.
The time since has been spent on reading online articles and answering emails. I do not feel like I have the energy to work on a short story that I have in the works. Perhaps the article.
Thank you for sending "After Making Landfall" to CRAFT for consideration. We appreciate the opportunity to review your work. At this time, however, we must say no to this piece. Best of luck placing this one elsewhere soon.
There was some debate during the group session last week about what was meant by a hundred year flood, and I learned with were all wrong. U.S. Geological Survey's The 100-Year Flood explains:
"100-year floods can happen 2 years in a row"
Statistical
techniques, through a process called frequency analysis, are used to
estimate the probability of the occurrence of a given precipitation
event. The recurrence interval is based on the probability that the
given event will be equaled or exceeded in any given year. For example,
assume there is a 1 in 50 chance that 6.60 inches of rain will fall in a
certain area in a 24-hour period during any given year. Thus, a
rainfall total of 6.60 inches in a consecutive 24-hour period is said to
have a 50-year recurrence interval. Likewise, using a frequency
analysis (Interagency Advisory Committee on Water Data, 1982) there is a
1 in 100 chance that a streamflow of 15,000 cubic feet per second (ft3/s) will occur during any year at a certain streamflow-measurement site. Thus, a peak flow of 15,000 ft3/s
at the site is said to have a 100-year recurrence interval. Rainfall
recurrence intervals are based on both the magnitude and the duration of
a rainfall event, whereas streamflow recurrence intervals are based solely on the magnitude of the annual peak flow.
Ten
or more years of data are required to perform a frequency analysis for
the determination of recurrence intervals. Of course, the more years of
historical data the better—a hydrologist will have more confidence on an
analysis of a river with 30 years of record than one based on 10 years
of record.
Integrity has been so diminished of late but I was shocked byCapitalism, as Told by Its Enemies - Phillip W. Magness, Caleb Petitt (The Dispatch). No one is perfect, no human being sees all; therefore, intellectual integrity requires us to admit as much. Mr. Magness and Mr. Pettit provide what such integrity should look like:
A more balanced entry on capitalism for the SEP could have offered a constructive assessment of this subject, its history, and the contemporary state of scholarship around it. Such an entry could still have room for critics in the Marxist and many other socialist traditions, but they would not have the disproportionate dominance found in Cordelli’s piece. Instead, a better entry might include serious engagement with the Scottish Enlightenment precursors to the emergence of market capitalism in the late 18th century, with references to David Hume’s work on trade and currency, as well as something more than superficial references to Adam Smith.
It might also discuss how the ideas we call “capitalism” came to supplant an older mercantilist economic order that used government policies to steer an economy for nationalistic objectives. It might also discuss the period of both political and philosophical contestation between the “capitalist” and “Marxian communist” worlds following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and culminating in the collapse of the latter in 1991. It could discuss in greater depth the theoretical contributions of institutionalist economists like Ronald Coase, Oliver Williamson, and Douglass North in the mid-20th century around the theory of a market economy. It might mention Deirdre McCloskey’s work on the Great Enrichment as a positive argument for what we colloquially refer to as capitalism. And it might explore the tensions between these and other theorists of market capitalism. As it stands, this rich and complex academic literature receives nary a mention beyond a few passing citations.
Since capitalism is fundamentally an economic concept, one could reasonably expect to see mainstream economic voices discussed, and competently so, by someone versed in economic theory. There would be a clear description of how profits work both as signals of demand and incentives for entrepreneurship, how competition between firms disciplines market actors, how market prices make economic calculation possible by signaling the relative scarcity of goods in a common denominator, and how government policies contribute to the creation of monopolies. Marxist and socialist critiques of capitalism from the far left would also be balanced with mainstream economic critiques of socialism. Early in the 20th century, there was famously a debate among economists over whether socialist central planners were capable of engaging in economic calculation. The economists who argued against the possibility of socialist calculation ultimately won the debate—though one would not know this from reading Cordelli’s entry.
Welfarist arguments for capitalism would not be confined to a single paragraph, and would describe in detail how free-market capitalism has been responsible for lifting the world out of poverty. The way that capitalism incentivizes entrepreneurship, and the role entrepreneurs play in arbitrage and the creation of new goods and services, would play a more important role than the entry’s single paragraph on Joseph Schumpeter, the first economist to make entrepreneurship central to the understanding of economic development and change.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s unwillingness to select an author for the entry on capitalism who could provide a charitable or even neutral assessment of the concept is ultimately unscholarly. In the 20th century, socialism resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people, and capitalism and free markets were the critical factors for lifting billions out of poverty, and yet it is socialism that received the positive encyclopedia entry and capitalism that garnered the hate. Such imbalances could only emerge from an academic environment in which an ideological echo chamber supplants rigorous peer review, and the fashionable socialist perspectives of the professoriate lead it to mistake bad caricatures of a market economy for descriptive fact.
Thank you for your fiction submission to Unbound Ink. Although it isn’t
the right fit for our journal at this time, we truly appreciated the
opportunity to read it. We wish you all the best in finding a home for
your work, and welcome future submissions to our literary magazine.
All the best,
Rosanne and Allison
Co-editors, Unbound Ink
I made it to Matins, retrieved my phone, and headed out to do some grocery shopping. Only the deluge started. I got smokes and got home soaked, even with an umbrella. It was supposed to be a light rain.
I made it to Payless later in the afternoon.
8/12:
J was to come over for lunch. I broke the date. I had been raining hard off and on since yesterday. I woke twice n the night to the sound of pouring rain.
I did need to go out to the Sheriff's for my year check in, that I was not being a threat to the peace and safety of Delwawre County, Indiana. That was the most harrowing bus ride I have ever had. Some streets were flooded, the DIY warehouse's parking lot had about two feet of water covering it, and several routes had detours.
I got the photos off the camera and have posts that will be appearing over the coming days of photography.
I ate dinner at Savage's Ale House. Maybe I ate too much, but it is still bothering me. Not that the sandwich was not wonderful.
I went to sleep early, but that lasted only four hours.
8/13:
Up early to a gloomy day. No rain, but no sun. Have had enough. Going to make a groundhog and wait to do more. I do not feel like writing.
[Moving stuff back from my abandoned WordPress blog.]
Baubles From Bones rejected "Lessons Learned from a Green Meadow" on 5/4:
Thank you so much for submitting your story, "Lessons Learned from a Green Meadow," to Baubles From Bones, and for your patience in waiting to hear from us. After much consideration, we've unfortunately decided not to move forward with it.
We appreciate having the chance to read your work and wish you the best of luck placing it elsewhere.
The Iowa Review rejected "Learning The Passion and Control Twist" on 5/8.
Thank you for allowing us to consider your submission, and for your patience as you waited for our response. Though this work hasn't found a home with The Iowa Review, we consider it a privilege that you thought of us and regret that the volume of submissions precludes a more personal reply.
Broad Ripple Review rejected “After Making Landfall” on 5/11 with a review:
Thank you for submitting “After Making Landfall” to Broad Ripple Review. We appreciated the opportunity to spend time with the piece.
While we are not moving forward with the story for publication, there is a great deal here that feels thoughtful, emotionally ambitious, and intellectually engaged with questions of vocation, identity, longing, and artistic self-conception. The story is clearly interested in what happens after arrival, after ambition has partially been fulfilled, after the dream one has organized a life around finally becomes materially real yet emotionally unstable. That central tension gives the piece much of its emotional and philosophical energy, and I admired the seriousness with which the story approaches questions about art, passion, and selfhood.
One of the strongest aspects of the piece is its voice. The second-person narration creates an immediate intimacy with Gina’s consciousness while also allowing the story to dramatize a kind of self-interrogation. There is something compelling about the way the narrative voice both comforts and indicts her at the same time. The oscillation between confidence and self-doubt feels psychologically convincing, especially in the early sections where Gina reflects on family expectations, artistic ambition, and the ways external validation becomes entangled with identity. The opening pages in particular establish a strong emotional and thematic framework very quickly.
I also appreciated how effectively the story situates Gina within overlapping cultural and familial pressures. The details about her Italian American upbringing, the family’s reverence for engineering over literature, and the complicated relationship between ethnic pride and artistic aspiration all feel specific and lived-in. The references to Calvino, Dante, Eco, and di Lampedusa work because they reveal not only Gina’s literary consciousness but also the particular rhetorical strategies she learned to use in order to justify herself to her family. The story consistently understands how artistic identity is shaped not just internally but socially and culturally.
The sections involving Luke and Kathy are also emotionally textured in interesting ways. The dynamic among Gina, Luke, and Kathy creates a subtle triangulation between ambition, compromise, longing, and artistic abandonment. Kathy’s history as a musician gives the later conversations surprising emotional weight, particularly because Gina gradually realizes she has misunderstood Kathy entirely. The exchange about music “stopping making sense” feels especially important to the story’s deeper concerns about vocation and surrender.
I think the story is often strongest when it trusts those interpersonal moments and allows emotional revelation to emerge organically through conversation and tension rather than through explanation or philosophical framing. There are several scenes, especially in the bar sequence, where the emotional undercurrents become vivid and compelling precisely because the characters are not fully articulating what they mean. Kathy and Luke’s unresolved emotional circuitry is palpable there, and Gina’s growing awareness of it creates real dramatic tension.
As I read, though, I found myself wanting slightly more modulation between the story’s reflective/philosophical register and its dramatized scenes. Gina’s consciousness is intellectually active almost continuously, and while that interiority is central to the piece, there were moments where the density of abstraction and literary reflection began to outpace the emotional immediacy of the scene itself. The story often moves quickly from lived moment into interpretation, mythic framing, or philosophical commentary, which can occasionally flatten dramatic momentum. I found myself most engaged when the story lingered in concrete interaction before stepping outward into larger conceptual territory.
Related to this, I wondered whether the Odysseus and Macbeth invocations might benefit from slightly more restraint or integration. The literary allusions clearly matter to Gina’s consciousness and thematic framework, but there were moments where they began to feel somewhat declarative rather than fully embodied within the dramatic movement of the story. I found myself curious what might happen if some of those mythic and literary parallels were allowed to remain a bit more submerged beneath the surface of the narrative rather than explicitly foregrounded. The story already contains the emotional architecture to support those resonances without always needing to name them directly.
I also think there may be opportunities to sharpen Gina’s emotional arc more distinctly across the story’s final movement. Her realization at the bar and subsequent return to writing are emotionally legible, but I occasionally wanted a slightly firmer sense of transformation between her earlier feelings of fraudulence and the concluding embrace of artistic creation. The final pages clearly aim toward affirmation and creative rebirth, and there is something moving in that gesture, but I found myself wanting just a bit more emotional specificity in how Gina arrives there internally. In some places, the thematic conclusions seemed to arrive slightly ahead of the emotional process itself.
At the same time, the story’s sincerity is one of its greatest strengths. “After Making Landfall” is unafraid to engage directly with artistic yearning, self-doubt, compromise, and the emotional costs of vocation. That kind of earnest engagement can be difficult to pull off without collapsing into sentimentality or cynicism, and I admired the story’s willingness to remain emotionally open throughout. There is a genuine affection here for artists, strivers, and people who continue wrestling with creative identity long after the romance of ambition has faded.
What stayed with me most was the story’s understanding that artistic fulfillment is not a clean arrival point but an ongoing negotiation between ego, insecurity, longing, work, and love. Gina’s realization that creation itself matters more than external validation feels emotionally honest, particularly because the story never entirely resolves her uncertainty. That lingering instability gives the ending much of its resonance.
Thank you again for sharing the work with us. We would absolutely be happy to see future work from you.
"Agnes" was rejected byFlying Island Journal on 5/12:
On behalf of the Flying Island Journal editorial team, I thank you for the chance to review "Agnes." Although there is much about your story that is commendable (e.g. interesting plot, some lovely phrasing) resubmission has been recommended after additional workshopping. According to FIJ Fiction Editor Joan Hawkins, your story "need[s] to be tightened, and in places, motivation needs to be clarified" while it would "benefit from a supportive writers group critique all around."
Since FIJ's submissions platformis transitioning from Submittable to Duotrope's Duosuma, I suggest that you consider resubmitting your story elsewhere if you prefer a quicker review turnaround time.
Best of Luck!
Hiromi Yoshida
This is the only rejection that disturbs; albeit not for the rejection. It is how long for the rejection to land in my email. I have been tinkering with "Agnes" for around a decade. After submitting it to Flying Island Journal, I did another submission or two. I will need to check the versions to see if I attained the changes thought needed.
Thank you for sending us "After Making Landfall." We appreciate the chance to read it. Unfortunately, this piece isn't the right fit for us. If you wish to submit again, please wait until one month has passed.
Thanks again for submitting, Samuel, and we wish you the best in finding a home for this elsewhere.
[Moving stuff back from my abandoned WordPress blog.]
“Pieces About A Small Indiana Factory Town, 1836-1984” was sent to Epiphany Magazine and Short Story Substack. I did some more revising on “Pieces” following a criticism that I read as my diluting the Bridges family story. It is part of a longer story - what I think of as a novella derived from a collection of interconnected short stories - about the decline and struggles of a small Indiana factory town. It was not meant to be my version of Buddenbooks, although I cannot say Thomas Mann was not in my mind.
That novella is titled “Scenes From An Indiana Factory Town.” That I sent to Sunspot Literary Journal. The revisions made to “Pieces” went into this submission.
“After Making Landfall” went to Pinch (Tahoma Literary Review).
Thank you for your submission to Meetinghouse Magazine. Although we must decline your submission this time, we appreciated the chance to consider it and hope to read your work in the future. We will open for submissions to our next issue in October.
Thanks again.
Sincerely,
Meetinghouse Magazine
SCH 5/2
Yesterday, I did the most walking I have done since the surgery. There was a baptism at 8:30. I made it almost to St. Barnabas on my own power. Then it was down and back to White River.
I napped for maybe two hours when I got back.
I spent the rest of the daydoing some revising “The Dead and Dying” novella. I made some changes - small ones - after the writing group on Wednesday. Those I did yesterday then added sections for a newer character that feature John B. Harvey and Albert Hyatt. I added one for Hyatt that involves Mike Devlin pulling him into politics. I found a publisher that will take novellas but has a 100 page bottom requirement. I hit 101 tonight.
No appetite. Not sure what that means.
One rejection received:
Dear Samuel,
Thank you for thinking of NewMyths. Unfortunately “The Unintended Consequences of Art” is not quite what we are looking for at this time. We wish you good luck placing it elsewhere.
[Items for the next few days will be from my abandoned WordPress Blog]
Monday brought my first rejection of my novel One Dead Blonde. This was the rejection letter from American Buffalo Books:
One of the best parts so far of 2026 has been reading and discussing the novels submitted to the Buffalo Books Fiction Prize. I'm sorry to report that your manuscript was not selected as a finalist for the award, but we are grateful that you shared your work with us, and we read your book with interest and enthusiasm. One of our readers said:
“The small-town political drama was handled well, but other aspects need some work. Focusing more on the small-town politics, a-la Fargo or True Detective, would make this piece much stronger. Too many characters are introduced too early, to the point the audience is lost, especially because of the lack of characterization throughout the work.”
Thank you,
Southern Indiana Review continues to reject my stuff. This it is “Pieces About A Small Indiana Factory Town, 1976 - 1984”.
Thank you for your submission for an upcoming issue of the Southern Indiana Review. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept your work for publication at this time.
Sincerely,
SIR
I submitted “No Ordinary Word” to ellipsis on 8/25/2025; it was the first entry on my spreadsheet of submissions.
Thank you for sending your work to ellipsis, and sorry about the delayed response.
Though it was not a right fit for the journal this time, we appreciate the chance to read it. We hope you will consider submitting again.
[Moving stuff back from my abandoned WordPress blog.]
Not all rejections are the same, some are even encouraging like this:
Thank you for sending us your work. While we will not be publishing this one, we wanted to let you know that your work was elevated by an editor for further consideration and discussion. We appreciate your patience while we closely considered it.
I use Submittable to follow some outlets, and since these were open, I proceeded with a submission: Driftwood Press, and The Clarissa Dalloway Prize for Short Prose (L'Esprit Literary Review).
Having access to Chill Subs' free database (which I find rather clumsy), I settled on the following: CRAFT Literary, and TriQuarterly.
From where I found Subnivean, it was a long time ago, but I sent them the story, too.
Another day without much to talk about. I went to the convenience store twice. Nowhere else, though. I took one short nap. Why am I still so easily tired? Why is the still the same amount of discomfort? Small worries creep in.
Rejections:
8/7
Thank you for submitting to Exposition Review
Vol. XI: “PARA/SOCIAL.” This year we received a record-breaking number
of submissions, and we appreciate your patience while we gave each
piece the time and attention it deserved. We truly value your
submission and consider it an honor to read your work. Unfortunately, “Agnes” is not a fit for this issue. Since you indicated that you would
like feedback on your submission, we will send comments from our
editorial board along shortly.
We wish you the best of luck in your future writing endeavors and hope you will submit again!
While
never rising to the comic heights of Vonnegut, and without his more
overtly obvious moral lessons, these stories nonetheless have elements
that will be recognizable to his fans, and the straight faced delivery
of preposterous circumstances Moody presents will certainly be
appreciated by those who enjoy Charlie Kaufman or even Terry Gilliam.
Like Kaufman, Moody can verge on the allegorical and the surreal, and
like Gilliam, the visuals are often of our reality but with the volume
turned up on some of their more unsettling attributes.
Across
all five pieces included in the collection, Moody’s writing is
serviceable. He never quite swings for the fences when it comes to the
prose, but that’s probably a good thing in that he is already stretching
the imagination with the content he presents and doesn’t distract from
the heart of his stories with cumbersome or showy sentences. Readers who
need mimetic recreations of real life in order to find themselves drawn
into a story might struggle here, but those who can set aside their
nagging questions about how such things could be (or readers who prefer
to!) will enjoy playing in the melancholy, symbol laden worlds ofLost in the Forest of Mechanical Birds.
Being perverse, some of my characters do not transform positively.
But as I’ve come to recognize over the years, the Lie is not just a Lie. I’ve come to emphasize it specifically as a comparatively limited belief that exists in a continuum with a comparatively expansive Truth. Because here’s the thing: at the beginning of a story, the Lie starts out as the character’s Truth. To some degree, it was a Truth that worked for them up until the story begins.
***
And so, I would posit that the Lie a character overcomes really isn’t so much a wrong
belief they must correct (or at least not always and not at its deeper
levels). Rather, it is a fissure in consciousness—a place where the
conscious self is inhabiting an ego identity that has created separation
between its surface-level understanding and the deeper Truth of our
being.
I have been more interested in people making choices based on incomplete or incorrect information and then having to live with those choices. Well, that has been the subject of some of my short stories.
This may be why my stories keep getting rejected, and I should shift from wrong assumptions to lies.
First, we have the Lie as simply a mistaken belief or even an outright deception that must be seen through.
Second, we have the Lie as a point within a continuum from a comparatively limited perspective to a comparatively expanded perspective.
Both “Lie” and “Truth” are qualified here; they are not black and
white, good or bad. They are just reference points for where characters
may find themselves along the continuum at any point.
And third, we have this deeper understanding of the Lie as an ego identity or a comparatively limited consciousness. It is ultimately a separation
between the conscious self and the unconscious self. When we zoom back
from the minutiae of any specific character arc to look at the movement
of human growth, what we are really tracking is the larger expansion
that becomes possible as we release the limitations of our ego
identities, allowing us to embrace our capacity for deep alignment with
the truths of life.
Or stick to my guns and live with characters who do not transform into better selves but live and die by their choices. After all, Ahab does not transform into anything apart from fish food.
Other lies addressed in the article: The Lie the Character Believes as Separation and The Lie the Character Believes as Social Reality. Some additional notes for me, if not for you.
Although I dearly love the idea of character arc as being about transformation, I think this expanded model reveals it might be more accurate to instead think of character arc as being about coming into alignment. It’s less about a change to the character’s fundamental self and more about the removal
of the false self. It’s not the addition of a new perspective, but the
stripping away of what isn’t true so the character may see more clearly.
***
Ego identities are not simply personal. They are reinforced through
collective social consensus. Society itself can be seen as an ego
identity. In their seminal book, sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas
Luckmann posited that reality, as we think of it, is a social construction.
Customs and traditions are dictated by varying societies. That America
or Columbia or Italy are countries at all is a social convention.
Indeed, the conventions of language are a social construction, with
(mostly) agreed-upon rules.
Although we each, in our own small way, influence society, society
bears a tremendous influence upon our own ego identities—not just in how
we operate socially but also in how we understand ourselves internally.
Arguably, the vast majority of our ego identities are inherited. We all
entertain outer Lies (aka, limiting beliefs) about what we believe
reality to be and inner Lies about what we believe our identities within
that reality to be.
I wonder what my father would have made of A Dying Art by John Semley. He was an embalmer, he held himself to a high standard, and I expect he would be appalled.
I spent somewhere around 2 hours writing a query letter and synopsis for One Dead Blonde. I do not have much hope for it.
I am still having this problem lethargy - nothing new submitted, nothing finished, little even worked upon - but the rejections keep coming.
"Agnes", again - four times, but the first is a very strange letter.
Thank you for sending your piece(s) to Long River Review. Our editors have carefully looked over your artwork, but feel it does not suit the journal's needs at this time. We wish you the best in submitting elsewhere and hope that you will consider submitting again in the future.
We hope this email finds you well. Thank you for submitting "Agnes." Although it doesn't currently meet our needs, we appreciate the chance to read your work.
As writers ourselves, we know that this isn't a pleasant email to receive. Harpur Palate's acceptance rate is less than 5%, and genre editors read each submission. We wish you the best of luck in placing it elsewhere.
Thank you again for the submission of your short story "Going For The Kid" to Haven Spec Magazine. Unfortunately, we have decided to pass on this one, but we wish you the best of luck on your writing and publishing endeavors. We would be happy to consider anything else you might write.
We appreciate the opportunity to read your work, but unfortunately "Going for The Kid" wasn't quite right for Bourbon Penn. We wish you all the best as you look to place it elsewhere, and thank you for trying us with this piece.
The Contest website has so many items to offer you in regards to writing. We are dedicated to helping our contestants improve their writing skills.
Thank you very much for entering the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest for the 1st quarter 2026 (stories entered between 1 October and 31 December 2025).
Your story did not place in the contest. You should continue to enter, once every quarter if you can, or as often as you can until you win.
You are welcome to edit this story and enter it again.
Available to you are:
1) a free online workshop that you can do on your own schedule, which features New York Times bestselling authors who all want to help you make it in this field,
2) a blog with articles regarding writing, the Contest, and our quarterly winners,
3) a forum designed to help you with dozens of topics,
4) an award-winning podcast with interviews on professionals and New York Times bestselling authors.
You can also now pre-order L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 42 on Amazon, which will release in April and contains the stories and art from our most recent winners. If you live in Los Angeles or close enough to travel here, send me an email (respond to this) and I’ll send you an invitation to the annual gala event too, so you can get a glimpse of what happens when you win!
I look forward to your next submission this quarter which ends on the 31st of March.
Thank you for submitting your work to Just Keep Up. We are going to pass on your submission but we wish you the best of luck placing it elsewhere.
sch 3/24
Thanks again,
Editors
The following came in for "Agnes" on 3/23:
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider your submission. Although it was not selected for publication, we want you to know that we enjoyed reading your work. We appreciate the time you took to send it to us, and wish you luck in placing it elsewhere.
The following is for “Thomas Kemp Went Missing” and came in 3/23:
Thank you for submitting your story for consideration. Unfortunately, we have not selected your work for publication. We appreciate your interest in the magazine and hope you consider us in the future.
Thank you again for submitting your work to The Ex-Puritan.
As editors, we’re forced to select an extremely small number of works from the hundreds of great submissions we receive each quarter. Submissions for this issue were once again excellent, and numerous. Although we have to pass on your submission this time around, we’re truly grateful that you thought to send it our way.
All the best in your future writing. Warm wishes and good luck!
Thank you so much for submitting “Going for The Kid” for consideration in our 2026 Uncharted Magazine Cinematic Short Story Award, judged by Ananda Lima.
I am sorry to say that your submission was not selected for the Long list. Unfortunately, we always have to decline some good pieces, but we are grateful for the chance to read such high-quality work. We are also not accepting it for a regular submission at this time.
Thank you again for submitting it to us. We wish you the best of luck with your writing and hope you will consider submitting to us in the future.
Thank you again,
Tommy Dean and the Uncharted Team
And at the end of the day came this:
Thank you for sending us "A Heart’s Judgment Judged." We know you've worked hard on it and appreciate that you've sent it to The Rumpus for consideration. While this isn't a fit for us, we wish you the best of luck in finding a home for it elsewhere.
