A story I am particularly proud of is “shortlisted”—that is, the editors told me they liked it and wanted to hold it longer—with a paying online journal. This particular story had been shortlisted three times before, each time by a journal that pays professional rates and does not allow simultaneous submissions. As a result it has been held for months, and then rejected three times already. It is sad for me to recognize how long ago I first drafted this story.

I desperately want a journal to publish this story. Three well-published literary friends have read it and helped me revise. The editors of this current journal said they would get back to me with a decision by the end of February. It is now the end of March.

To say I am anxious would be understating my feelings about publication of this story. Fourth time’s the charm? I don’t want editors to lower their standards for my story. I want them to love it as much as I do. They see a lot of great work. I want mine to belong to that rare group. I could save myself a lot of pain if I could lower my own standards. I could send it to smaller, nonpaying markets. I could send it to minor journals that have asked for my work. But it feels to me like an important story, a great story with an impact I will never replicate. Or is it merely a good story that is simply never going to be good enough? I really cannot say.

I read a lot, and I am pretty sure I know what my favorite journals are really, really looking for. It is not my story. I recognize the quirkiness of my story’s genre, which is mildly disturbing but not disturbing enough to be classified as horror. It is fantastic, but not in the conventional way that immediate labels a story fantasy. It’s not realist fiction or SF. It has humor but is not a comedy.

“If It Were True Owls Dream” is an odd, amusing, and somewhat unsettling short story in need of a home. It felt like magic when the first draft arrived. I need a little publication magic right about now.

I worked on a recent story and committed to work during April on another.

30 March 2018 update: Liminal Stories has accepted “If It Were True Owls Dream” for their summer issue! And it arrived in the same emailing—or in my same reading—as acceptance of a true story by Brevity and a request for a full manuscript by an agent I have been interested in for a long time. We had gone to Canada for a few days without internet and came home to all this wonderful news.

“Thank you for sending ‘If It Were True Owls Dream’ to Liminal.  We love it and would be pleased to accept it for publication. We were drawn in by the strong voice of the piece and found it wonderfully engaging and unusual.”