Michael A. Ventrella

I’m currently wading through about eighty stories for the upcoming RELEASE THE VIRGINS anthology, where the only requirement is that the story must contain that phrase.

Of those eighty, fourteen are from authors who were invited to participate, knowing their fame would help raise the money in a kickstarter campaign for the book’s publication.

The final cover may be completely different than this

The rest are from an open submission. People from all over the world sent me their stories. I’ve never had so many to choose from when editing an anthology, even when, like my BAKER STREET IRREGULARS anthology, I also had some pretty big names participating. Either everyone loved the idea and had to contribute or the promise of payment per word made a difference.

The deadline was yesterday, but a few of the invited authors asked for a little more time to submit their stories.

The problem is that I have a word count limit for the book, and I won’t know how many other stories I can accept until I see how much space I have left after the invited authors stories are counted.

So I’m slowly going through the slush pile and sorting the stories into “Yes” (meaning I really like this story and hope there will be enough room for it), “Maybe” (meaning it’s good but I probably won’t have enough room but if there is…) and “No.”

The “No” stories are getting form rejection letters that look like this:

Dear Fellow Author:

As a writer with my own collection of rejection letters, I am well aware of how disappointing it is to get one.

I hate sending them as much as I hate receiving them.

However, I’ve accumulated over sixty submissions for what may end up being only a few openings in the “Release the Virgins” anthology. I’ve had to be very picky. I’m afraid yours didn’t make the cut.

Sometimes the reason is because I already have a story with a similar theme. Sometimes it’s because I may have liked your story but saw that it needed some substantive editing, and I would rather pick another good story that did not need it. Sometimes it’s just not that well-written.

And sometimes it’s just a matter of taste, after all. Another editor reading your story may have decided it was wonderful and would have accepted it.

In any event, I wish you luck, and hope you’ll still be interested enough in Release the Virgins to get your own copy.

I would be more than happy to accept you as a Facebook friend if you send me a request. I do discuss writing quite a bit there, and as long as you’re not a Trump supporter, you may enjoy my political posts as well.

Thank you again for sending me your story.

It’s sad that I can’t accept all the stories I’d like to. I’m finding a few that are absolutely worth reading, but space considerations will prevent me from accepting.

However, if this is successful, maybe we’ll do a sequel, and then I can contact the authors of those “yes” stories that I couldn’t fit in…

Filed under: writing | Tagged: editing, rejection letters, Release the Virgins!, Why a story may be rejected | 1 Comment »