2015 in Review
It’s the end of the year, and time to look at 2015! (Updated 1/1/16 because of a last minute rejection on the 31st.)
My numbers for 2015:
Stories out at the end of 2014: 4
New Stories Written: 11
Old Stories Making the Rounds: 13
Total Submissions: 176
Total Rejections: 151 (+1)
Total Acceptances: 8
Stories out at the end of 2015: 16
I said at the end of last year that I had an aggressive writing schedule planned for 2015, and I wasn’t kidding. I finished 11 new stories that went out on submission this year, and that doesn’t include the three new stories that I wrote for my Cobalt City collection. That also doesn’t include the heavy revisions that I did to a novella and a novel, and the small amount of work I did on my NaNoWriMo this year. While this wasn’t quite the pace I initially anticipated at the end of 2014, I learned a lot about what I could accomplish, and scaled back where needed.
In addition to all of the new writing, I went back through my previously published stories and located the ones for which rights had reverted to me. I started resubmitting these to reprint markets, which helped me to keep a lot of stories in circulation at any given time. I submitted to more than three times the number of publications that I submitted to in 2014!
Of course, that also means I got a lot of rejections–about three times as many, in fact. There was one market I submitted to that closed unexpectedly, which is the +1 there. And there were two stories that I wound up pulling from circulation–one because I’d run out of good reprint markets for it, and another because I feel like it should be expanded. Both of those were reprints, though.
In terms of acceptances, I quadrupled my number of acceptances compared with last year! In addition to the 8 acceptances of stories submitted in 2015, I also had an acceptance of a story submitted in 2014.
- “One for Every Year” appeared in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination in March 2015
- “Vodyanoi” appeared in Beyond Science Fiction in May 2015
- “Miasma” appeared in NonBinary Review (King in Yellow issue) in June 2015
- “Veli tis Artemidos” (reprint) appeared in Beyond Science Fiction in September 2015
- “Terpsichore” appeared at EGM Shorts in November 2015
- “Catch” is forthcoming from Stupefying Stories
- “Salt in Our Veins” is forthcoming in the Fae Visions of the Mediterranean anthology
- “Origin Story” is forthcoming from Black Girl Magic Lit Mag
- “Vodyanoi” (reprint) is forthcoming from Outposts of Beyond
Looking toward 2016, I’ve got another aggressive writing schedule planned. Writing 5 days a week seems to work well for me, as evidenced by how much I got done this year. Though my schedule slid occasionally, I’m still really pleased by the output. Assuming all goes well, I should get 16 new stories written in 2016 (which somehow seems like a fitting goal!). I’m also planning on tidying up the novel that I revised this year, and hopefully start sending that off to agents. Aside from that, though, I’m not planning on doing any novel-length stuff this year. I have more fun with short stories!
Best wishes for 2016!
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