F&SF Passes on the Baseball Story, but…

Folks, tonight I have the proverbial good news and bad news.

The bad news is what you just read in the title — the guest editor for the July-August edition of Fantasy and Science Fiction, C.C. Finlay, passed on my baseball story. His note was kind, and he said he’d like to see something else down the line if he gets another guest-editor slot somewhere . . . but this story didn’t work for him.

While that’s disappointing (I’m not going to lie and say that it isn’t), I do appreciate his thoughtful response. It appeared he’d actually read my story, which is more than some of the responses I’ve received from other editors in the past (I had one story get rejected in about a half a minute, which was impossible as the story was 8,000 words long. No one reads that fast.)

As for the good news, I’ve completed my final lookover of the first half of my novel, ELFY. (So far, the book has not been re-titled; it’s still ELFY, part 1.) It took me the better part of two weeks to do, so I’m grateful that I’ve been able to get it done.

As to what I did with it once I finished? I sent it off to a good friend who’s never read ELFY before, in the hopes that she’ll enjoy it.

And, of course, once she lets me know what she thinks, I’ll send it off to my publisher.

So that’s the update tonight — you win some, you lose some, you dust yourself off and keep trying.

Stay warm, folks.