Just for balance. My story ‘Pee Pees’ was rejected by Phantaxis magazine, an excellent production of Canadian SF that I have reviewed on SFcrowsnest. Naturally, the best way for a magazine to succeed is by printing the best stories and rejecting all the others, especially mine. I don’t hold it against them. It really is a very good magazine. See my reviews here.

Phantaxis August 2017

Phantaxis May 2017

Fortunately, the acceptance from Alban Lake of my novella came in the next day so my dull drums didn’t last long. It is not always thus with rejection but you gotta be tough to be a writer. Bad reviews hurt too. ‘Oh, the pain. The pain’ to quote Dr. Zachary Smith.

I sold some books to Ziffit the other day. They don’t give you a fortune but it’s easy, fast and reliable. They turned down the following as not really having any value:

Elasticity the Best of the Elastic Press edited by Andrew Hook

Far Orbit edited by Bascomb James – stories in the Grand Tradition

View from Another Shore edited by Franz Rottensteiner – European science-fiction

Click on the links for my reviews of these on SFcrowsnest. They were all good anthologies with some excellent stories but out there in the cruel marketplace are worth nothing.

Weep, short story writers. Weep and write a twenty-volume epic fantasy serial to clog up the book catalogues.