Alex Shvartsman's Speculative Fiction

Today I hit a little bit of a milestone – I've sent out my 100th short fiction submission in 2011.

I keep a spreadsheet to help me track which stories have been submitted to which magazines, and how they are doing. When you have a dozen or more short stories in circulation it would be easy (and embarassing) to submit one to a market that has previously rejected it. The spreadsheet helps me keep a careful tab on what's happening with all those submissions, and it also provides an opportunity for some data crunching, to satisfy my inner statistics geek.

So, here's a snapshot of my 2011 submissions, out of 100 total:

* Currently out on submission: 11
* Sales: 9
* Lost/never responded: 1
* Rejections: 79

It sounds like a whole lot of rejection, but I'm actually quite happy with these stats. An average SF/F magazine rejects hundreds of stories for every one they buy. My track record this year has been better than one in ten. I have already accomplished my goal of ten fiction sales in 2011 (although I sold only 9 stories submitted in 2011, I also made three sales from my late 2010 submissions).

My plan is to continue working on short fiction sales and build up a better resume of Pro market sales, at least for the next few months. I would like to begin work on a novel in early 2012, but I feel intimidated by trying to put something together with such a high word count. That is something I hope to overcome with lots of preparation and by creating a very detailed outline.

Various stuff has been going on (nothing majorly bad) that caused me to fall a bit behind on updating the blog. So let's catch up then:

My big news for the month of August was that I had a second professional rate sale. Buzzy Mag, a new publication that is launching in early 2012, picked up "A Shard Glows in Brooklyn" for their inaugural issue.

I love that story for so many reasons. At 4600 words, it's one of the longest stories I've written so far (I do best with brevity) and unlike many of my other stories it is a light, fun urban fantasy adventure set in my hometown of Brooklyn, New York. Even it's title is a pun, which I didn't really know if I could get away with. The story's characters and setting sort of took on a life of their own and, while it is a complete story in itself, in many ways it reads like the first chapter of a novel. There are lots of threads to create future storylines and I will definitely be revisiting the world of Conrad Brent soon. In fact, I have the second story outlined and two more in an idea stage. However, I don't know exactly when I will get around to putting them down on paper. Soon, I hope. Their titles will be puns based on famous books and movies set in Brooklyn as well.

Another sale in August was for a story called "A Tear in the Web" to a new Kindle magazine launching out of the U.K. "A Tear in the Web" is a story about a sarcastic, snarky man (like me) who runs an Internet Cafe (like I do in real life). While this story is by no means autobiographical, I certainly had a good time with ye olde "write what you know" adage on this one.

KZine is launching exclusively on the Kindle and issue 1 (with my story in it) should be out on September 30th, for about $3. I'll be sure to link to its Amazon page once it's up.

My final August sale was of "Hunger," an action-packed story of the last yeti being hunted down by the humans. I submitted it to Misanthrope Press' "The Rustle of Dark Leaves" anthology. Since much of the action takes place in the forest, I felt it suited their theme. The editor enjoyed the story, but didn't think it synced closely enough with their theme, so she offered to publish it in the magazine she edits, "Title Goes Here" instead. Of course, I was happy to oblige. It is slated for the Spring 2012 issue.

In other news, the Drabble issue with my 100-word story "Chill" in it has hit the proverbial newsstands.  You can buy it here.