Hello! Yes, it’s time to track my number of submissions and brood over my relative success/failure. A bit of a quiet month for writing new stories– in thirty days I managed to write six, that is one every five days, which is well below my desired rate of one every three days. Anyway, it’s been nice and busy on the acceptances front after a slow July. I am not currently sending anything out, but stockpiling stories–I want to have ten fresh new pieces and spend a weekend blitz the couple of hundred journals that have re-opened now that we are in the Autumn/Winter submission period.

So, as of 20th of August, my submission stats are as follows:

141 active submissions. (work under consideration). Still waiting to hear from 52 journals I submitted to back in April but they’ve been steadily trickling in.

136 NO! And dammit, I was supposed to track how many said to try again… I shall comb through their responses at a later date when resubmitting. Also, a first– a journal (politely) suggested I try submitting to one that exclusively deals with horror/sf  instead of literary. I expected suggestions like that when I first started sending out submissions but I never got them– maybe some of my (many) No responses felt the same way and didn’t bother telling me. But anyway most of the sites that deal with genre work look amateurish and the writing really isn’t the best. I shall continue sending work to the best places I can and not worry where I “fit in.”

31YES! (33 in total, of which 13 have appeared online and in print. Check out my Publications for details.) Hurrah! That’s my busiest month yet! A couple of submissions from April actually came good after all that time! I’m well on the way to fifty stories accepted for publication by Christmas. You can almost smell the hubris. (It is hubris to try and smell the hubris)

I have 46 resubmits to take care of next time I do a bunch of submissions.

There are currently 32 stories doing the rounds. I have retired I Arrive, I Fail to Escape, Here is Town in Closing Night and The Loving. They are failures and should be ashamed of themselves. There are others looking ready for the chop (I’m looking at you, Patron Saint of Cloven Meat.)

Finally there are 43 sites I am keeping an eye on. As soon as they open for business they will find a hot mess on their lap.

So as you can see, a nice and busy month. I’m thundering towards my goals for Christmas 2011. Nothing can possibly go wring wrong.

G