My copies of Weird Tales #347, featuring my story “Excision,” arrived a few days ago. The severed head in the jar looks even cooler in person! It was odd for me to read the teaser sentences; about my story but not written by me. The artwork for my story is awesome, especially the tiny picture in the margin of a cute little bunny with wicked cat’s claws. I haven’t yet read any of the stories, one by fellow Odyssey alum Clayton Kroh, or Mike DeLuca‘s non-fiction column, but so far it’s pretty damn cool.

In a recent critique circle, an experienced writer friend of mine made a very astute observation. She found the scatalogical humor in a particular piece very funny when it was abstract, but not so funny when it got more specific and vivid. One of the beauties (and horrors?) of the grotesque is that everyone’s threshold for that funny-becomes-gross line is different. But I still think she hit upon a neat universal truth about that kind of humor, and I’ll remember it in case I ever need to apply it.

Weird Tales #347, featuring my genre debut “Excision,” is now available for order in the Weird Tales online store. It also includes a nonfiction article by my friend and colleague Michael J. DeLuca. Get yours soon, before I order a whole case of them and clean out their stock!

A few days late, but I tabulated all my fiction submission numbers for calendar 2007. I had:

44 submissions (all short fiction)
40 rejections
1 rewrite under consideration
2 contracts offered
1 acceptance
0 publications released

It was certainly an interesting year. I got a lot of “almost” rejections, including one that literally began with “Almost!” I had three rewrite requests from editors, two of which offered astute comments on weakness in those stories, and the resulting rewrites were definite improvements. I had two stories passed up to the head editors at top magazines. I made my first genre sale, to Ann VanderMeer at Weird Tales, and I have several other developing situations that hopefully will result in at least one sale at some point in the new year.

Comparing 2007 to 2006, there was a definite improvement in the quality of the rejections I received. But I’m still not consistently able to lure editors into my dense stories of round characters and lush settings. I’m working on some specific writing strategies to improve that. I’m also hoping that any notice from my Weird Tales publication, due out any day now, may persuade editors to give my fiction a deeper look when it crosses their desk.

It was a better year than the last, but it’s still not yet where I want to be. So it’s back to the salt mines until I am consistently at that level.