High Street has been accepted for publication by Outpost19, “Provocative Digital Publishing” (http://outpost19.com/), so I have removed it this morning from this website. Excerpts from it may be re-posted here soon as part of the marketing of the book, which should be available for purchase as an e-book through Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com (and others yet to be determined) in a couple of months or so.
Some of the stories and poems may be inappropriate for persons under 16
- A Dog by the Ears
- Abrumpo
- After the Dreaming
- All the Sobbing Cops
- apple strudel
- As I Command
- At Kahun, for the Health of the Mother and the Child
- Breaking Leather on the Dog
- burning man
- Candlelight and Flowers
- Casserole Man
- Christmas Pictures
- Dead Bob
- Dehiscence
- Descartes’ Dreams – Intro
- Desserts for the Reading of the KJV
- Dolomite
- Dropping back to Punt
- Eighth Dream – The Lion Sleeps Tonight
- eleanor in uncertain way, pulling
- Entomology
- Exit Interview
- Extinguisher (with Unpacking the Object)
- Fifteen Small Apocalypses
- Fifteenth Dream – The, uh, target
- Final Edit
- First Bundle of Documents (from The Olive Drab Footlocker)
- First Dream – Puttin’ on the Ritz
- FOMO on BLM
- Fourteenth Dream – By the Waters of Babylon
- Fourth Dream – Motherless Child
- Franny & Toby
- Gnats
- Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Pickles and Fries
- Guys Come in Three Sizes
- High Street: Lawyers, Guns & Money in a Stoner’s New Mexico
- Howl
- Introduction
- Karen and the Dropout
- Kimberly!
- King of the Wire Rings
- latrodectus, loxosceles, lycosa tarentula
- Lawn
- Legal Advice
- Liberation
- Linear Perspective
- Lost Things and Missing Persons
- mama when she’s really pretty
- Metronome
- My Friend!
- Ninth Dream – Descartes’ Dreams
- Poems 2001-2010
- Rag Doll
- Road Rave
- Sandhills
- Saved
- Shelving
- Shod
- Sixteenth Dream – Scoring Six Hits
- Tahoe
- Taking Calls
- Tale of the Tribe
- Tenth Dream – The Vicissitudes of the Seasons
- The Comedian
- The Congenital Fiance
- the german for it, the french
- The Gordon Lish Notes
- The Hole of Sharon
- The Italian Story
- The Lock
- The Take-Out
- the talking french cat
- The Tellings
- The Tiny Toy Train
- The Usual Story
- The Well-Molded Military Brick
- The Year Our Children Left
- Third Dream – A Thousand Times No
- Three Very Short Fictions
- Tossing Baby to the Tiger
- Twelfth Dream – Fantod
- Vitrine
- Wednesday
- What Coy Said
- Who, what, etc.
- Yellowjacket
- Yttat
Have you done any celebrating, Tetman? A little champagne, a cigar perhaps?
My wife and I had dinner at a favorite diner this past Sunday. We hadn’t been there in a while. And the night after I received the email from Outpost19, telling me the book had been accepted, we drank a toast with cognac. It was Friday the 13th when the email arrived. I saw it in my Inbox but didn’t open it until late that night, since I figured it was going to be another rejection.
Friday the 13th is your new lucky day. It’s mine, too; Drew and I were married on Friday, October 13th, and ten years later we’re going strong.
I am STILL getting rejections, though I haven’t sent anything out in at least six months. You’d think they could assume I’ve gotten the message without them actually sending it.
When I was a boy I claimed Friday the 13th as my lucky day. Perverse lad. On Friday, October 13, 1967, I was trumpeting to my schoolyard friends how it was my lucky day when I backed into my girlfriend, Janice, who was running by while playing with her friends, and I knocked her down. Oops. She wasn’t my girlfriend much after that, but we were just kids. Really. I was nine and she was eight. This was right after the Summer of Love and everybody was getting an early start.
I posted the above and almost forgot to continue my reply. My boss just called and wants me to do some work for him. I’ll get to that anon. What I was going to say was about what you said as to how rejections trickle in months after submissions. It’s been this way in this creative writing business as long as I’ve been in it (which is to say, since 1975). Six months has long been considered an acceptable time to wait for a response to an unsolicited submission. More recently, litmags and agents and publishers have taken to not responding at all, sometimes explicitly stating on their websites that if you haven’t heard back from them in X number of weeks or months or years, that means the answer is No. To me, it means other things in addition to that.
Hmm. That’s good to know. I do think receiving a rejection months later is like reopening an old wound, but then that’s true of almost all things in writing.
On this very subject, I received today a rejection of a story I submitted to a litmag seventeen months ago. The editors said they really enjoyed it, and encouraged me to submit again. I had long since given up on them and sent the story out again.