Sweet, sweet validation.

I don't tend to write easily accessible stories for the mainstream genre market. I tend to see genre as an extension of the literary world, just more dynamic and fable-based. So, occasionally I write something that becomes very difficult to find a home for, a fact my previous post also discussed. This time it is the tale of a sad, lonely woman who's always been a bit too close to her brother who suddenly finds the perfect man entering her life. Of course there's a catch. There's always a catch.

The story has been passed around from magazine to anthology to weekly grocery store newsletter, always with the same result...until now. Below is the acceptance email I just received upon waking and my response to it. Nice way to wake up on a Monday morning:

Hi Christopher, and thanks for the submission, we really appreciate it. Sorry for the long response time, we've been pretty inundated with submissions lately.

I really enjoyed reading through 'The Love of a Good Entity', it was a very well told and compelling story on a character level. Very touching in a bittersweet fashion. If it's still available I'm potentially interested in publishing it on the site; I say potentially because I wanted to ask you if you would consider cutting out the last section of the story. I feel like leaving with the open ended conclusion better suits the sense of loss and emptiness of the story, and the added bit after that seems to detract from the somber and heartfelt atmosphere by making it a more 'conventional' horror tale, in part for its bluntness.

Let me know what you think and maybe we can get something going; if so, I'll put it through an editing pass (though I didn't notice much of anything that needed work on the first read-through, ending aside) and once that's done I'll get the simple contract to you. Is it original (unpublished), or would this be a reprint?

Thanks again for the great story, I think it will make a great addition to our line-up!

Brett Reistroffer - Editor, Bad Dream Entertainment

 

 

Brett,

 

Thanks for your kind words regarding what has been a difficult-to-place story. I agree with you regarding the ending and have always ping-ponged between the open-ended section and a perceived need to explain the aftermath. I have no problem losing the last section for publication. The story is previously unpublished.

 

Also, if you think the amount of time it took between submitting and your response is a long time, you and I just became BFFs!

 

Sincerely,

 

Chris Nadeau