Joshua Cochran’s Blood on the Floor: How Writers Survive Rejection, featuring my story “The Diction-fairy,” is now available on Amazon.com! Blood on the Floor is very much a “by writers for writers” sort of project – an anthology about rejection, and how we cope with it. Some wrote poetry, some wrote literary thinkpieces, I wrote a fantasy story about a writer and his childhood friend.
As a writer, I’ve dealt with hundreds of rejections since that first one in 1999. I sent off my story, “The Remedy,” to Asimov’s Science Fiction & Fantasy. And in 1999, electronic submissions were only for strange, edgy little indie magazines, not respectable markets like Asimov’s. It took six months for the rejection letter to arrive. I was devastated – certain they had my name written down for the ‘automatic rejection’ list if I ever submitted anything else. Nowadays, I have rejections down to a regular system, and rejoice in every rejection letter I get – it’s one step closer to finding the right market for that story.
But I agree with what one of the other featured writers said: “I wish I’d had a book like this when I was just starting out.” So if you’ve ever felt the sting of rejection… felt the thrill of getting a response turn to ashes… wanted to set a magazine’s offices on fire… go ahead and buy a copy of Blood on the Floor. And if you happen to know a writer, can I highly recommend it as a Christmas present? They’ll thank you when the crying stops.
Other than that, I’m mostly really excited for this weird little anthology, and I hope it does well. That and enjoying the Zen of being accepted to a rejection anthology…
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