Being E-Mailed By Hub Mag

Maybe I was a bit hard on these guys earlier. If they were anything like as lazy as I am, they would have taken way more than eight hours to e-mail me back.

I'm not too happy that they lost the reading panel's response to my work. I think that means I could have been resending/cashing in a lot earlier (or that they're lying to me to cover their backs), but never mind, I guess. I am happy that they're promising me a response by the end of the week. Maybe I'll be optimistic about this one and actually look forward to it.

Now I just need to e-mail flashshot and see what's taking them so long

E-Mailing Hub Mag

The annoying (as well as seeming to be a little unprofessional) thing is that I have multiple e-mail addresses forthese people. There's the submission address, the address I received my acknowledgement from, the reply to address attached to that e-mail and the editor's address as listed on the contact us page of their website. In order, those are

fiction@therighthand.co.uk
lee@therighthand.co.uk
lee@thedreaming.co.uk
leeh@therighthand.co.uk

I guess that since their reading list is currently full, they won't be checking the submission inbox any time soon. But how are we meant to know which of the others to send an e-mail to in order to not only get read, but also garner a response? (I used lee@thedreaming.co.uk to tell them I would be out of the country for two weeks back in July/August and got no response, which either means they didn't get it, didn't care or didn't think I was worth replying to. I'm thinking that leeh@therighthand.co.uk might be the best bet, since it's currently listed as the contact address on the site. But still, this is highly confusing.

I tried accessing their forum earlier today, but they're not online yet, so no luck there. And duotrope lists 68 pending responses and 1 author withdrawl, and I know from Bibsy's comment on my last post that there are others at the Den waiting on these guys. Seems they're no more speedy than they are comprehensible.

What I think I'll do is send the same e-mail to every address I have for this guy (Lee Harris, the fiction editor/submissions bloke) and see if that gets me anything. After all, I love accumulating rejection slips.

Back From The Wasteland

It's been nearly two months since I updated this blog, and somebody might be wondering what's happened since then. Since I, at least, am, why don't we find out...

Well, JWP rejected my rewrite, two pieces of flash got rejected by From The Asylum (although I wasn't surprised by that, I was only using them as a stopgap while I waited for flashshot to re-open, which they now have and are currently sitting on the same two pieces). Still nothing from Hub Mag, which is getting old (ten weeks and "a few weeks" don't seem synonymous to me. It's ten weeks exactly tomorrow, so if still nothing I'll email them then)

In terms of new stuff written... I'm a horrible person. I've 80% written one entirely new story in illegible handscrawl, and I've semi-edited a piece of S&S entitled Vespin and the Nevosa, although everything from the title to the plot, passing through all stations on the Language-Grammar branch line, need an overhaul before even I can sit through it. Anthology story is coming along (the rough draft is starting to look a little more polished and I'm off to buff it up once I'm done here). I also found one story I part-wrote a few months ago which needs an ending and a spell check ASAP, which at this rate means by the thirty-third of never.

Back from the wasteland with a lot to do, most of which (packing, making the laptop work, more packing, university reading) is pulling rank on the writing. But to set some goals:

1: anthology story, rewrite round one
2: give Playing with Fire an ending and a spellcheck
3: make Vespin readable

(If I set more than three they won't get done. Hopefully I can do all that by Thursday evening)