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Rob Santa
Sage



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  		   Posted 5/29/2008 8:33 AM (GMT -4)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
"Dear Robert,
 
Thanks for submitting "What Lies Beyond" to Spacesuits and Sixguns.  You're the victim of unfortunate timing with this story - yours is the seventh in the last two weeks to feature a humorous encounter with the Grim Reaper.  Must be something in the water."
 
 
Seventh? Come on! What are the odds? Gotta be three to one. Worst of it is, with six other stories that open like mine (it's the only appearance of Death in a 4,000-word manuscript: the first two pages) I have to sit on this for probably a year to let them filter out of circulation. Either that or start sending it out faster. :-)


Rob Santa
Hopelessly Addicted Writer of Speculative Fiction
and CEO of Ricasso Press

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tchernabyelo
Acolyte

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  		   Posted 5/29/2008 9:12 AM (GMT -4)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Hmm. Normally happens when a particular antho has just closed and there's a bunch of themed stories doing the rounds, but I wasn't aware of a "humourous meeting with death" antho lately.

Just persevere. Those other stories may well do the rounds, but may well head off to different markets in different sequences. One thing is always sure (well, almost always) - no editor is going to buy a story that's just sitting on a hard drive :)

Brian Dolton
 
Land Of Wind And Ghosts stories:
"The Box Of Beautiful Things" - IGMS#3
"The Man Who Was Never Afraid" - Abyss and Apex #20
"At Blue Crane Falls" - Abyss and Apex #25
"Where No Wind Blows" - Staffs & Starships #2
"What The Sea Refuses" - Black Gate (forthcoming)
"What The Heart Bears" - Black Gate (forthcoming)
"Above The Clouds" - Paper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel (forthcoming)
"The Gray World" - Every Day Fiction (forthcoming)
"Three Out Of Four" - Sorcerous Signals Feb-Apr 08 
"The Dragon Path" - Fictitious Force #5
"The Last Arrow Of Liang Xi" - Darwin's Evolutions (forthcoming)
 
Stories in other settings:
"The Unicorn Hunter" - OG's Speculative Fiction #8
"Call Centre" - Necrotic Tissue #1
"When Winter Came" - ASIM #32
"Cold Fire" - Flashing Swords #9
"St. Saviour And The Devil's Dandy" - Flashing Swords (forthcoming)
"In This City" - Fantasy Magazine (forthcoming)

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crystalwizard
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  		   Posted 5/29/2008 10:40 AM (GMT -4)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Why don't you send it to Asimov's while you're waiting for that year to pass?

Rob Santa said...
"Dear Robert,


Thanks for submitting "What Lies Beyond" to Spacesuits and Sixguns. You're the victim of unfortunate timing with this story - yours is the seventh in the last two weeks to feature a humorous encounter with the Grim Reaper. Must be something in the water."





Seventh? Come on! What are the odds? Gotta be three to one. Worst of it is, with six other stories that open like mine (it's the only appearance of Death in a 4,000-word manuscript: the first two pages) I have to sit on this for probably a year to let them filter out of circulation. Either that or start sending it out faster. :-)
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Rob Santa
Sage



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  		   Posted 5/29/2008 4:12 PM (GMT -4)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Not appropriate for Asimovs, but thanks for thinking of me.


Rob Santa
Hopelessly Addicted Writer of Speculative Fiction
and CEO of Ricasso Press

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Jordan Lapp
ppaL nadroJ



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  		   Posted 5/29/2008 6:05 PM (GMT -4)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Asimov's return time is pretty good these days.

Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
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crystalwizard
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  		   Posted 5/29/2008 6:43 PM (GMT -4)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Rob Santa said...
Not appropriate for Asimovs, but thanks for thinking of me.


F&SF?
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H.P. Lovesauce
Necronomicondiment



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  		   Posted 5/30/2008 10:49 AM (GMT -4)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Y'all better send out any Mayan/Aztec influenced fantasy before there's a big glut.
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Jordan Lapp
ppaL nadroJ



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  		   Posted 5/30/2008 1:14 PM (GMT -4)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Unbelievably, I have one of those that I'm sending out.

Jordan Lapp
Managing Editor
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R. L. Copple
Acolyte



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  		   Posted 5/30/2008 4:44 PM (GMT -4)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Sort of like a few months ago, Jordon, when I sent you the "fly perspective" story you ended up accepting, but the comment came back that "though we get a lot of these fly perspective stories..." and I thought, "Really! I would have never guessed."

Funny what runs in bunches like that. Must be something in the cosmos that makes people get the same idea around the same time.

R. L. Copple

blog.rlcopple.com
www.raygunradio.com
www.haruah.com

Infinite Realities available at Barnes & Noble

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crystalwizard
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  		   Posted 5/30/2008 11:34 PM (GMT -4)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
R. L. Copple said...

Funny what runs in bunches like that. Must be something in the cosmos that makes people get the same idea around the same time.



You know... that's possible.

My mom was a seamstress and she was also a clothing designer. And she said it never failed if she got an idea for a new outfit and she DIDNT go ahead and put it into production, within 3 months someone else would.

Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!



Managing Editor of Flashing Swords

Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print

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Nicholas
Adept



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  		   Posted 6/2/2008 9:13 AM (GMT -4)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.

The Zeitgeist is a very real thing. It's a strong argument for Jung's concept of the "collective unconscious."

Two other authors and I have been working on a series of shared-world stories since about 2000, which we call Unsung Heroes. A few days ago I picked up _The Night Watch_, a novel by a Russian author that apparently was written around the same time frame. The concept, premise, and even certain details are the same or similar, leading me to exclaim to one of my collaborators: "This guy's been writing Unsung Heroes stories over in Moscow!"

So, if and when we ever do publish these stories, someone will invariably assume we were inspired by Night Watch, when in fact, I just began reading the book (my collaborators have never heard of it), nor have we seen the movie it inspired.

 
 

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Mike Lynch
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  		   Posted 6/2/2008 2:40 PM (GMT -4)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Just remember that most publications get thousands of submissions sent to them each year. It is inevitable many of these stories will be remarkably similar to each other. That's just the law of averages at play. Here's a humorous anecdote to make my point. There was a local radio station that used to have a call-in contest every morning. The callers could ask the DJ's any question they wanted, to try and stump them. If you did, you received some kind of prize. One morning, I decided to call. Drawing on my vast knowledge of pop culture, my question was, "What was Wilma Flinstone's maiden name." I thought that was a pretty obscure. I could not have been more wrong. Another caller asked the exact same question on that show the same morning. The DJ thought this other person and I were trying to play some kind of joke on him. Now that's coincidence. And if your wondering, the answer to the questions is: Pebble.

Mike

www.mikelynchbooks.com
 
 

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