Random Rejection: Pirate Writings, “Graveyard Apples after Midnight”

This week instead of Teaser Tuesday, I decided to reach into the big pile of ancient rejection letters and see what I would find. What I came up with this old slip, from a magazine called Pirate Writings, from none other than Tom Piccirilli, author of such atmospheric horror novels as A Choir of Ill Children and the on-my-Kindle, not-yet-read The Last Kind Words, currently on sale for $0.99 for the Kindle edition. (Marked down from $15. Really, Random House? $15 for an eBook?)

Evolution

Yes, I’m still here! I’ve been reworking my fantasy novel Shards, AKA “The Big Book”, since mid-December. At this point I should have Part One available within a few months, to be followed (in another ten or twelve months, based on how long it has taken me to rework Part One and on the fact that Part Two is longer).

Why is it taking me so long to finish editing Shards Part One, you ask? Well, I finished Shards quite a while ago (“quite a while” being at least a decade) and when I finally went back to edit it … well, when you go back and read something that you wrote that long ago, what immediately strikes you is that it’s terrible. That’s what happens to me, anyway.

Not So Random Rejection: Northern Frights

I’ve been hoping to pull this rejection out for a while, as it’s one of my favorites, but I haven’t. So I took matters into my own hands and went looking for it:

Random Rejection: Maelstrom, “Pinch Bobby ‘Til He Bleeds”

It’s been a while since I reached into my stack of rejection letters, so today I dove in and pulled this one out, from Maelstrom, for a short story called “Pinch Bobby ‘Til He Bleeds”.

Random Rejection: Clocktower

Today I reached into my massive pile of rejections and pulled out a relatively boring one from Clocktower Fiction’s webzine. This one was for “Love and the Tides of Darkness”, a short story that I originally wrote specifically for an anthology called On The Eighth Day. I really liked this story and tried to sell it to a bunch of different markets, but once the year 2000 rolled around, it was pretty much obsolete.

Random Rejection: The Seymour Agency

I haven’t done a Random Rejection in a while, so I reached into my giant accordion file and pulled out a letter. This one is from the Seymour Agency in upstate New York (not far, in fact, from where I went to college). Their opinion is that the manuscript I sent, A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder, needs work; fortunately, they’re here to help.

Random Rejection: Schooner Bay Literary Agency

So this week I reached into my vast collection of rejection letters and pulled out this one, from Schooner Bay Literary Agency:

Random Rejection: The Eclipse Comics Saga Part IV

So it seemed as if things were progressing nicely with Eclipse Comics … I was writing “Night Watchman” stories, my artist was drawing panels, and my editor was getting married and moving away.  Good times for all concerned!  Sadly, good times never seem to last …

Random Rejection: The Eclipse Comics Saga Part III

When we last left off with the Eclipse Saga Part II, I was getting good feedback from the editor at Eclipse Comics about “Night Watchman”. So, while I continued to work on that, I started sending him proposals for all the other series ideas I had. I don’t have the scripts for all of them, but they included several that eventually became novels, as well as others that remain on the shelf in my mind gathering dust.

Random Rejection: The Eclipse Comics Saga Part II

So after getting those encouraging letters from the editor at Eclipse, I had to actually produce the scripts. Fortunately that wasn’t a problem; I was pretty prolific back in the day. However, formatting was an issue. From reading reference books (in 1993, you couldn’t just hop on the Internet to find examples of comic book script layouts), I was aware that when submitting comic book scripts as a writer, you have to format them similarly to a movie script, with the action divided into panels. You have to supply POVs, camera angles, etc., and each line of dialogue is numbered; this is all so the artist will know how to arrange everything on the page.

As you can see from the Eclipse editor’s copious notes, in this early Night Watchman draft, I wasn’t very good at any of that yet.