Recently I had a story accepted for publication by the Mount Zion Review. This was my first acceptance, and I’ve been asked a few times how it came to be published, so here it is, in very short order:
I wrote the story, which is about 4700 words, in 2002. It is a dark fiction piece, but couldn’t really be classified as horror or even as speculative fiction. There is some graphic violence in it, and the main character (the one the title refers to as having no soul) is almost pure evil. The story sat on my hard drive for a while because I had no idea who to try to sell it to. I pushed around some other stories that I’d written in the mean time, hoping to find a suitable market for AMSS. In ‘03 I did submit it twice, and then once more in ‘05, but those were just stabs in the dark really. The mags I submitted to were either horror or mainstream lit and, although I thought it would look good in any of them, the editors passed. The fourth time I submitted it was early in ‘07 and I thought I had a winner. MZR publishes dark fiction, preferably with Appalachian themes. Nothing specifying that the story had to incorporate some fantastic or supernatural element, just dark. Well, this story has dark to spare, so I sent it in thinking that it had a chance.
In April I got that fantastic first acceptance letter, and since then I’ve had another story accepted to be published in an anthology called “Southern Fried Weirdness.” The story for SFW is one that is not particularly horror, although it does bear a fantastic element, which made it seem a bit easier to sell to me if only because there are more markets looking for that type material. I submitted that story, A Scent of Rain a total of four times as well before landing the big sale.
It should be noted that I have another story that I’ve submitted a total of 13 times so far. A story which I (evidently erroneously) felt would be easier to sell than some of my other works. In all, over the past five years, I have submitted 17 stories 58 times and received two acceptances, 49 rejections and have 9 awaiting a response.
Do I have a plan? Of course: I live in Alabama and there aren’t any publishers or literary agents around here that I can attempt to woo or even stalk, so I don’t see getting published any way but from the ground up, AKA the hard way. So I’m submitting. I have a handful of shorts that I believe are good (validation received on two of them) and I’m going to push them until they sell. I’m hoping it’ll be a bit easier now that I can add to my cover letter that I have two stories which have recently been published, but I’m not holding my breath. Some of my recent rejections (including a few from some professional markets) have had positive remarks about the story I submitted but gone on to say it didn’t fit what they were looking for at the time. Three in the past two months have gone on to say they would welcome my submitting work to them in the future. Things are looking up. So, the plan is: get these shorts published, preferably at least a few of them to professional markets, thereby allowing for my admission into the SFWA, at which point I will begin attempting to pimp my novel, already written and awaiting glory. (I’ve actually written three novels so far and have a few others in various stages of completion. I’m more of a novel writer than a short story writer, but I feel to succeed I must get shorts published first. Agents and book publishers will instantaneously toss your baby into the slush pile if you don’t have at least a few credits to your name. This is one of the gospels in which I believe.
Anyway, that’s my story so far. Updates hopefully will be coming with more rapidity now that the snowball with my name on it is rolling, picking up debris, packing on mass and aimed directly at the publishing industry as a whole.
I am Matt Mitchell.
written by Matt Mitchell
\\ tags: Matt Mitchell, publishing
