Tuesday, October 28, 2008

As I gaze into my crystal ball . . .

I am going to make my predictions about which markets I will hear from next. By next I mean the next two weeks. That is all the further my psychic ability goes. My last ones were pretty spot on. I had a couple that took longer than I thought but overall I did pretty good. Unfortunately all the responses were negative so I don't know if I want to put a lot of credence in this. So without further ado:
My next three responses from editors:
1. Winter Solstice- this one has been out to Time and Space for long enough. This was a story that got an honorable mention in the Return to Luna antho but didn't make the final cut. I should hear back soon.

2. Open graves- Boston Review. Really. I am right on their average so any day now I should hear back from them. (Can they throw a new guy a bone, please)

I actually have a few others that I should hear back from any time now but I am not going to go out on a limb and say it is in the next two weeks. Three maybe. But two? I don't know.

Now for the fun part of today. I get to replace a drafty window in my kitchen that is at least 80 years old if not older. Should be a good time and I should make a horrid mess doing it. My wife will probably not want to speak to me after she sees the carnage inflicted.

I will get right on that after my next 1000 words in my re-write. (Still on schedule to get 15000 words done before NaNo.)

In case I don't make another entry before November 1. Good luck to all involved in the month of November and the 50,000 word dash that ensues. If you want to include me as a writing buddy I am jeyberg74.

9 comments:

Cate Gardner said...

I sent my Return to Luna honorable mention story to 'The New Yorker' - this girl is just asking for a rejection.

I am yet to predict an expected response right.

Jamie Eyberg said...

Cate- Wow. I would have never thought of sending a story there. A couple of my old college profs had stories published there but, wow, good luck to you.

Fox Lee said...

If you want some REAL fun you can come replace the window at my house. There are spiders and everything, you'll have a blast!

Jamie Eyberg said...

I always have fun replacing windows. As long as I can throw my boots at the spiders we are in good shape.

Unknown said...

Hi, Jamie. I'm the PR guy (not an editor) over here at Boston Review as well as a mostly-unpublished fiction writer. I was wondering, is the average response time you're using Duotrope's? They list us at 54 days (which ain't bad, right?).

Since we're a general-interest magazine, and we only publish one or occasionally two stories an issue (against something like twelve essays and reviews and ten or more poems) very few fiction submissions get read in the two weeks approaching our print date; there's too much other work to do. We'll take another couple days to ramp up afterwords, because of other post-publication chores. Right now, we just finished up our November / December issue, and we'll be back to reading submissions soon. So if you haven't heard from us at this point, we probably haven't gotten around to reading you yet.

Generally, you'll get an email the day we accept or reject your electronic piece, and the SASE will go out the day after we read your paper mailing. But the two weeks before and week after our print dates are "the eye of the storm" for fiction, which we're not quite out of yet.

We don't track individual submissions that come through the office, because of the huge numbers that come in (sometimes dozens a day), but I hope this gives you a better idea of when you'll hear back.

Best,

Will Fertman
Boston Review

Jamie Eyberg said...

Wow, I am using Duotrope for my estimate but I am wondering how Will found my blog?

Carrie Harris said...

That's kind of cool that he found your blog, actually. :)

Unknown said...

Well, the post was about developing your psychic powers...

BT said...

That is very cool that Will found your blog.

Cate - Good luck on The New Yorker - for those who don't know, go check the contact page on their site for submission guidelines.

I've been wondering, when a market states how many days before response, are they talking about business days only or are they including weekends? 30 to 60 days seems the norm for most busy markets. But if this is just working days, it changes the wait from 4-8 weeks to 6-12 weeks. Big difference.