K. Marvin Bruce

  There’s a pattern I’m noticing.   For fiction publishers.   Even if you aim low you’ll find it a struggle.   Part of the reason is the pattern. Lots of websites list publishers.   The smaller, hungrier presses either eventually close or get to a place where they require an agent to get in.   That’s the kiss of death. Although my stories have won prizes, and been nominated for prizes, I can’t get an agent interested.   I’ve queried well over a hundred, so the agent route is one of diminishing returns.   This too is a pattern. Back to the smaller presses.   I check many lists.   What I write, you see, is highly idiosyncratic.   It’s literary but it’s weird.   Publishers don’t know what to do with it.   If a smaller press published stuff like this, I’d find it. The pattern includes writers who never get discovered.   Ironically, a number of editors of fiction literary magazines (mostly online) tell me they enjoy my wor...

  There’s no feeling like it.   Finishing a story that you know is good.   You’re ready to send it to a publisher right away.   But then you hesitate. You’ve received so many rejection notes but each one stabs you afresh when another one comes.   Still, you know this story’s good.   You’ve managed to do something different than you usually do.   Will they, can they appreciate it for what it is? I’ve managed to have thirty stories published—averaging one per every two years I’ve been on this planet.   The rejection numbers are beyond a one-to-one correspondence.   And yet, I know this story’s good. Fiction publishing’s all about convincing some editor you don’t know that you do know.   You know your own writing.   I write many stories that aren’t publishable.   Writing’s that way.   When I do manage a good one I’m like a kid on Christmas morning. It takes thick skin, they say, to be a writer.   My question is should it...