Well, I finished the audiobook, and the author approved it.  Now I am waiting for ACX to give their approval, and then it will be for sale on iTunes, Amazon.com and Audible.com.  I should know something either this coming Monday or the one after it.  I don’t know why they would reject it, I followed all their rules, but until I get a “congratulations” email, I’m going to be sitting her twiddling my thumbs in anticipation.

I just completed buying all new equipment and I am ready to start a new project.  I even know the one I’ve got my eye on.  Just got to work out some kinks and then I’ll be back in the studio again.  Fun times.

Once the first audiobook goes live, I’ll come back and do a big reveal so all of you can go and buy it.  And by ALL, I mean the one or two of you who accidentally stumbled upon this page and/or blog.  🙂

A day after my rejection letter from Words and Images, I got another, but this one was one of the most promising ones I have received thus far.  If one editor nibbles, one is bound to bite somewhere, right?  That is my hope at least.  I still have 9 others considering “Jenny Kissed Me” now.  If they all say no, and that is an extreme possibility, I’ll have to go back to the drawing board.  Let’s all cross our fingers that I don’t have to.  Here is the rejection I received from Room magazine.  I only wish they had liked it just a little more.

Rejection Letter #4 – Room Magazine

Dear Gabrielle Olexa,

Thank you for submitting your Fiction to Room magazine. While we are unable to accept Jenny Kissed Me for publication, we would very much like to see more of your work.

Members of Room’s collective read over 1200 submissions of poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction each year, of which less than 2% are accepted for publication. As you can imagine, we have to make some very tough choices. Each issue of Room is edited by a different collective member, and each issue editor is responsible for choosing manuscripts that most closely match her issue in theme and feeling.

Your submission was one of very few that gets passed on by our readers to an issue editor. We really liked it, but were ultimately unable to use it in one of our upcoming issues. Please be sure to send us more of your writing. You can find out what themes might be under consideration by visiting our website, http://roommagazine.com.

We look forward to reading more of your work.

I got a highly unusual rejection letter the other day.  It wasn’t personal or anything.  It was a very standard, sorry, but thank you for trying type letter.  So standard, it didn’t even say Dear Gabrielle Olexa or mention the story I’d written.  So standard, it was only one sentence long.  That was expected, though, so I wasn’t too bummed about the whole ordeal – rejection letters are an odd source of nourishment for writers.  What made it unusual was that everyone else who had been considered and rejected were also included, instead of being blind copied like they should have been.  I got a second email not long after apologizing for the novice mistake.  For a very skinny minute, I thought about sending an email to each writer and telling them that I felt their pain and wishing them luck in their future endeavors, but once I realized how ridiculous that would be, I just moved the email into my growing rejection folder and moved on with my life.

The rejection letter was from the magazine Word and Images and it went like this:

Rejection Letter #3 – Word and Images

We thank you for submitting your piece to Words and Images but we regret to inform you it has not been selected for printing in the 2013 issue.
Sincerely,
The staff of Words and Images