Happy Blog Day Everyone!
Today, I wanted to talk about my new (well this draft anyway) Arthurian inspired Novella series...but I had a rejection today so I'm going to talk about that instead.
The Comic Tales of Brennan and Riz
It's hard to tell in comic form but I was trying to reference old looney toons cartoons, the classic Wiley Coyote vs Roadrunner affairs. Not sure I got it as I envisioned it, but I think Riz was well worth it, proper size perspective be dammned!
Getting close to the old #25 milestone, a quarter of a year old for these comics. I have inklings about what I'm going to do, so we'll see in a couple of weeks if it happens or not.
Phantom Dawn: Memories of a Rose
This is a new segment I'm starting today, for the whole purpose of archiving this story thread I started way back in March 2021 that lasted till July-August that year. I started it using the #vss365 twitter tag and drawing a page to match the story, sometimes it meant drawing the page and then the next day, frantically trying to mash the prompt in there.
Today I'll post the first 3 installments but I'm not sure at the moment how many will appear each week, let me know in the comics what you think of it!
(First posted March 29th 2021)
There was only the black.
The young woman, allowed herself to sink further into the abyss. Overcome with the loss of identity.
A rose appeared, floating in the dark.
Without #vacillating, she reached for it, gasping for air, a reason to live again.
(First posted March 30 2021)
The girl woke with a start, throwing off a blanket. It was dark, yet no stars pieced the night. She felt like crying despite not knowing why.
"Ah! You're awake," a voice said.
The girl turned to see #porcine like creatures runing around an old man.
(First posted March 31st 2021)
Respectfully the girl bowed her head imitating some custom that was entrenched in her psyche.
"No need to be so #Obeisant!" The old man chuckled. "You're among friends, What's your name?"
The young girl hesitated, she didn't even know her name.
Rejection
Soo... Where do I begin here? Guess I should start by saying that at the beginning of the year, I submitted a pitch to a certain companies publishing arm. It wasn't my best work (mainly because my best work involves a talking rat that isn't something that really appears in that particular setting.) However I was confident in my idea. Still that confidence didn't betray the idea that I was going up against a thousand+ other applicants. I worked on my pitch, and worked hard on my writing sample and I clicked submit, leaving it in the hands of the fickle gods. 4 months later...I got rejected. The email itself was a clear mail merge of polite necessities, a dear John as it were but on a grand scale.
Here's the thing though, I was expecting it but it still felt like a gut blow. This particular company only open their doors to submissions once a blue moon, if that.
Of course, this isn't the first time I've been rejected. During the early 2010s I sent Daemon Soul to any publisher I could find that allowed open submissions and had it threw back at me every time. I then tried magazine submissions but, yeah, nothing worked there either and i started writing less and less (till I got my hopes up by a certain publisher that they were interested in Daemon Soul but that turned inti q nightnare pretty quickly once I realised that they were a vanity publisher).
Even after I found some small success with Brennan and Riz, I was rejected from different short story competitions (one of them thr exact same competition that I first entered BrennanandRiz into), failing to make the short list each time. I've spoken already about one of these instances on this very blog, doing a full on autopsy of the work.
What am I getting at here? Well, this is why I hold tremendous respect for the writers out there are in the query mines, those that keep on submitting to each and every magazine/ website they can. That they can keep getting back up after every rejection and trying again.
Right now, it's a fear of rejection that is keeping me from querying Daemon Soul again. For ages now I've had the landing page of Query Tracker open but daren't do anything with it. My fear stems from the pessimism that I know that no one will accept it. I have defeated myself before I even started. This has also spread to the short stories I mentioned a few weeks ago, and what drove me to rewrite one completely, a fear that it wasn't good enough.
For those wondering why I can't just talk to my own publisher about DaemonSoul, well the truth is they don't want it. They're only interested in my Brennan and Riz work.
What do I do now though?
Someone I know is getting ready to re-enter the query mines and they are pulling no stops with their preparation. Make no mistake, this person deserves to be published a thousand times over. Its just that it made me question myself. Maybe, just maybe, I can try.
I'll accomplish nothing leaving the files to rot, and as always, the path to self publication is open (though that's another area where I wouldn't know where to start and I don't have funds for an editor or even a cover artist).
Still, I need to do something, and that first something will probably be rejection again but if I can stand up faster like everyone else does, then I'll have made an improvement on me, after all it's been said that every rejection brings them closer to a yes.
I've seen it happen, I know people who it happened to. I just need to be brave like they were in taking that first step and reaching out.
This has turned out to be a much harder topic to talk about than I anticipated, I've had to re-order my thoughts and prune away some personal stuff. Next week I'll talk about something happier, and maybe I'll have gotten another rejection on my path forward.
Till then,
Keep writing.
Peter James Martin
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