My Favorite Things Part 3

2012 was not a big year as far as writing stories, but I did have a few published.  The truth is, fiction is difficult to place . . . and it's all the more impossible to sell.  My bane (or perhaps my boost) is that I write in so many different genres.  Among the many stories I submitted in 2012 were stories that might be categorized as "mystery", "literary", "western", "pop", "humor" and "science fiction".  Other than the western, I did manage to place at least one story in all of these categories.

My favorite published piece in 2012 was my science fiction story, "The Sea and All That is In it" . . . which was picked up by a British science fiction magazine.  I had worked on this story for some time, polishing it, revising it.  One editor who rejected this story had commented, "Love the title".  And another editor had, at one juncture, invited me to turn this short story into a novella and said she would publish it in full, but I had neither the heart nor energy for the undertaking at that time.

I also published a literary story,"Giraffe", which was picked up by a college press in southern California, and I also appreciated the Loch Raven Review--a small press dedicated to mystery in the vein of Edgar Allen Poe--publishing my crime-mystery story, "The Bill Collector". 

Among my favorite stories yet unpublished (of which I have dozens), is one entitled, "Steiner, the Violinist" . . . and after nearly twenty years of submitting it I can't believe it has been rejected at least a hundred times.  But as I was reminded recently through an Esquire magazine interview with James Lee Burke:  "Never leave a manuscript at home more than thirty-six hours" (his quote).  The key is sending work out again, and again, and again.  A hundred rejections.  So what.  I know "Steiner" is a great story . . . and a Jewish one, to boot.  Probably my best unpublished piece.

Here's to more in 2013.  I've got to get crackin'.