Some time ago, I wrote a piece of whimsical absurdism. I was soon to discover it’s hard to sell absurdism. And by hard, I mean some of the rejections I got implied the slush reader wanted to take my keyboard, burn it, stomp on the pieces, then burn it again, so I wouldn’t write another just like it.
Then as I was browsing market listings, I came across an anthology for fish stories. My first thought being: “I have a story about fish!”*
I read the submission call and it sounded like they just might appreciate absurdism. So off went my fishy absurdism story, and I braced for a keyboard-burning rejection. It wasn’t that fast though, because it hadn’t reached the cut-off date and the publisher put out a few blog posts in the meantime. I didn’t make any of the most common cover letter mistakes, and my fish were real fish, but I quailed somewhat when goldfish were listed as one of the most common submissions. I should have guessed they would be, but I was in originality denial. I continued the denial by convincing myself that my goldfish were different.
But they didn’t want to burn my keyboard. “Thwarting the Fiends” will appear in Dagan Books ‘Fish’ anthology, coming out early in 2012. Yay for absurd fish!
It turns out I know or speak to a number of the authors on the list, and if I try to list them, I’ll probably forget someone (or end up listing half the list). So instead, here’s a link to Dagan’s post:
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* This isn’t really a surprise. Probably more surprising is I only had one story about fish.
# The cover art is by Galen Dara.