I have been receiving my November batch of story rejections. My Speed Trap story came back with these comments: We enjoyed your story — it was pretty funny and we liked the idea of a smug vigilante car. I reread the story and it is fairly tight. Except for the violence, there is no reason why it keeps on getting rejected. The more rejections that I get the more I like the story.

I went over my submission spreadsheet. I discovered that I’ve accidentally submitted this story to three venues twice. Only one of them noticed. I think that many of the larger zines go through slush readers quickly. In total the story has been rejected 29 times if you include the doubles. I am running out of places to submit it. J hasn’t seen it, but it is not a good match for Fifth Di… I really think of J as a classic SF kind of guy and that’s what I like to send him. This story is more like what is being called Slipstream SF.

I decided to print it out and waste the postage on sending it to GVG at Fantasy & Science Fiction. This is my ideal market and where I really want to be published, but I have only sent them three stories and one of those was in 1970. F&SF reports in a week to ten days, so I have to figure where I’ll send this for its 31st rejection.

I have 4 stories averaging around 35 days that I am waiting to hear about. I have eight stories that I am sitting on. I don’t know what to do about them. I would rather spend my time on new projects rather than worry about marginal stories that don’t fit anywhere.