a good rejection

[julesjones]

Now this is the sort of rejection I like to get...

This morning's email included a personalized rejection from Maxim Jakubowski, saying that my story had just missed the final cut for Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 5, and encouraging me to submit to next year's edition. The form letter section included an explanation and apology for the delay in responding to submissions.

Obviously I'd rather have had an acceptance, but this definitely rated high on the "how good a rejection was it?" scale. beth_bernobich, I can see why you like this editor.

Comments

[sacchig.livejournal.com]

I got one of those too. Maxim is a sweetie. Makes up for the fact that he pays in pound sterling checks that US banks charge to process.

Have you noticed that he's looking for erotic novels now? If only I had the stamina for the long form!

[julesjones]

Sterling isn't a problem to me, of course - I still have my UK bank accounts so it only costs me the postage to send the cheque back across the Atlantic.

I hadn't seen the call for novels - I've been so busy juggling Real Life and the erotic romance ebooks in the last nine months I hadn't been watching the markets other than the very occasional glance at ERA. (Goes to look at ERA. Oh. Lots of new markets in the last week.) Thanks for the heads-up, that looks very interesting. One more possible market for the book I was telling you about at Worldcon. That one's in Tor's slushpile at the moment, but I have good reason to expect it will be rejected (i.e. at Writer's Weekend I asked Anna straight out about what the chances were for something with an explicit gay love story as the plot, and she said not good because of the marketing problems).