Rejection

It’s been a while since I’ve done a review (more on that soon), but something happened today that I want — no, need to talk about.

I started writing when I was in elementary school. I had some non-serious medical issues that made it so that going outside was a no-go for me, so I spent my time reading and delving into media. I fell in love with stories and knew that I wanted to make my own, and had the ambitious goal of being published by the time I was 18.

(Please hold your laughter.)

I didn’t just write during this time, but actively studied the craft. Between 2018-2019, I entered the Writers of the Future award for the umpteenth time…but this time, I won an honorable mention. I was over the moon. It’s worth noting that I was writing fantasy, but the story that won an honorable mention was more sci-fi leaning. At the same time, I was taking a college course under a local, prolific author and received great feedback for a cyberpunk short story I’d written. I soon fell in love with the subgenre and started writing that, and branched out into technohorror.

Soon after COVID-19 hit, I hopped back on Twitter to participate in their #PitMad contest, where authors can pitch to agents for representation. I received two “likes”, meaning two different parties were interested in my pitches. This has historically been a weak point for me, as it is with most authors, so I’d been studying the art of pitching nonstop. I went with the agent who wanted to represent me in totality, and not just for a single work (I’m not sure the other wouldn’t have, but they were a much larger agent and not as quick to communicate).

I sent the agent my work and outlined what other works I’d finished and what I had in progress. My phone call with him was great.

Well, within a year of signing my contract, he folded his business. He was simply overwhelmed with the amount of work he had as a new agent. This was disheartening, but understandable. Back to querying I went. I received some very close rejections, specifically on my cosmic horror short, which I’d since written a sequel to. In the interim, I began sharing a longer cyberpunk story on public sites. Any time that wasn’t spent writing was spent querying.

And then, at long last, a breakthrough: an indie publisher picked up my cosmic short for their upcoming issue. They already had a few publishing credits under their belt, as well. They loved the story so much that they asked if I had a follow-up planned — which I did, and immediately sent to them. At the time, they’d been prepping to accept queries for a full-length novel specifically in cosmic horror.

After some discussion, and after signing my contract, I wrote another draft that combined the two novellas into one full-length, cohesive novel and sent it back. To adhere to the rules of all the other places I’d pitched the story to, as well as for obvious contractual reasons, this meant I had to withdraw this story from consideration with all other venues — one of which it seemed to have made the rounds in. The new draft was approved, and we began discussing publishing plans, outlining what I would submit to their next issue, etc. It’s worth noting at this point that the publisher was not a vanity press and was very communicative.

…Until they weren’t. Their responses slowed due to a short-term sickness, picked back up again, and then stopped entirely. The due date for my advance came and went. My emails began bouncing. I tried to reach out to them via their site and social media, to no avail. I learned from a personal friend and horror author, via another contact, that this person had a history of being overly ambitious. After finding more info online, I also learned that they always went by different aliases for various literary projects before abandoning those aliases.

I had, in short, signed a second contract and been ghosted.

I took that as a divine sign to look harder into self-publishing. At this point, the issue wasn’t with my work being accepted, but with it being accepted by someone capable of publishing it. But for reasons I won’t go into, I decided to publish my psychological horror/litRPG first (coming soon), and so kept my cosmic horror on the backburner and continued pitching it — back to agents this time.

One day, I receive an email from an agent at a larger house, asking if I’d received their request for a partial. The site I used for querying, for some reason, never emailed me that I’d received a response other than a rejection. I quadruple-checked. Nothing there. Just acknowledgement of my query, and now a copy of their message to me. I login and see they’d requested a partial months ago! The moment I returned home, I sent my partial to them.

And today, almost three months later, I received their rejection. It’s not personal — they just didn’t connect with the story as much as previous parties. That’s normal. I’d just wrapped up final (?) edits for my other project, so my eyes weren’t so much on this piece or traditional publishing when I saw the email. But it was a poignant reminder not just of the sheer volume of rejections we get, but the frustrating process of being accepted. It was an almost cosmic irony (you can laugh now) two pieces that had been readily and eagerly accepted elsewhere were now being actively rejected everywhere else.

So, what’s my point?

Any author, aspiring or not, already knows this: get ready for rejection. Lots and lots of rejection. And don’t take it personally. But what I wasn’t prepared for was to get my hopes up for a project that has such an interesting history behind it, having been accepted before, and then being met with rejection so late in the process. So this is partly me venting my frustration at the long, sometimes soul-crushing process that is querying, partly me shouting into those in the void to please keep querying…

…And partly me subtlely teasing my upcoming release, Selina’s World. Because sometimes, you just have to work out your own salvation.

(Also, I know I haven’t posted a review in a while. I’m almost done with Silent Hill: f. So expect that soon, as well as an exciting audio short I finished recently!)