First time for everything

Check out my story Premonition on Flashesinthedark.com today.

So I was perusing some of the mags that I have sent stories to lately and I came across something I have never come across in a literary mag, ever. You know the ones who have the really cool submission systems that have become pretty common lately. Most literary mags actually use the same one. I understand it is a subscription thing (I think it costs them $300 a year to use it) but it standardizes things and makes it easy on the writers. They only have to log into the system to see that they did indeed get the story. No need to bug the editors because it is in the system, although I have a feeling that this doesn't stop some people.

Now usually these things will have a message on there, something like *pending* or something else *declined*. I have never seen anything other than these two things until last night when I went to Opium Mag's and it read *recommended for publication* Now I understand this is a hold and will probably go through a couple more editors (if it makes it past the next one) before I hear from them, good or bad. I was still flabbergasted. I didn't think the process would allow it to say anything other than *pending* or *declined* although I have heard that, when the wind blows from the northern plains and you are holding your tongue just right it will read *accepted*.

In other news, Chapter 9 knocked out, cold. Starting Chapter 10 today. Officially in Novella length territory.