Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Missed Again

Well, I finally got notified of my WOTF entry's fate. Quarter-finalist again. It's odd. I've been waiting so long that I really was hoping for more significant news, so I'm really disappointed right now, even though I knew when I submitted the story that it was not a contest winner. It's not a bad story. It's fast-moving and quirky and fun, but as I mentioned when I submitted it, it's lightweight. All flash, no real substance.

Which makes me wonder which market to send it to. It's one of those stories that just rides the edge of the genre. The fantasy element is almost all in the stylization. I've heard the term "magical realism" bandied about, but I've never read one of the books in question, but I wonder if this is what they mean. It's almost mainstream in the sense that it never totally crosses the line into fantasy in terms of magic or elves or such, but the characters and events are so cartoonish that they feel like fantasy. All I know for sure is that it's not right for the big SF mags, it's not right for the big literary mags, and Universe, for which it is very nearly perfect, isnt buying right now. I must chew on this for a while. Maybe I'll just start throwing the orphans up on Amazon Shorts.

In the meantime, does anybody know of a good market for a funny, slipstreamy story about hot rods?

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