The Bright Side of Rejection

by Giselle Renarde

It always bugs me when I rant to a friend and they tell me to "look on the bright side." I don't want to think about silver linings when I'm ranting. I just want to rant.

But after a few weeks or months or years go by, I can usually look back on whatever I found rant-worthy and realize I learned something from the experience. That's especially true of business affairs.

Like most writers, I've been on the receiving end of quite a few rejection letters. I've never been one to rant about rejection. When you're a creative, rejection's part of the profession. But it used to make me sad. Of course it did. Doesn't anymore, by the way. If you're just starting out in the writing business and you're wondering if the sting of rejection ever lessens, well, yeah, it does.  At least, it has for me.

That said, I don't send manuscripts out to publishers as much as I used to.  I was browsing through a calendar from a few years ago, and I found there was a period when I was sending out one manuscript per day. These weren't all novels, obviously. There were lots of websites that published erotica back then. And I submitted short stories to erotic anthologies, when I tend not to do much anymore.

Now I self-publish most of my work. Why, you ask? Not because I can't get published. My work has appeared in nearly 200 short story anthologies. I've been published by 2 of the Big 5, plus Oxford University Press. I'm nothing special, but I have accomplished that much.  Did it pay the bills?

Not so much.

Does self-publishing pay the bills?  Well, actually, it does. It isn't easy. In fact it's a lot of work. I've had to acquire a multitude of new skills. So the money aspect is a big one, but you know which other factor is up there with money?

Trust.

I just don't trust most publishers anymore. I've been shafted too many times, by presses large and small.

When I started writing, I submitted work to every call for submissions I saw. I've had poetry published, and an academic paper, and a touching anecdote in Chicken Soup for the Soul. If they were offering money, I could whip up a story. (Although I never was paid for that academic paper, come to think of it.)

Over the past decade I've been published by... you know, I've lost track. Probably a dozen websites, more than 20 small presses, the aforementioned big wigs, Hustler Fantasies. One of the biggest reasons I publish my work myself instead of taking my writing to publishers is that... well, first of all, most of the small presses I used to work with went out of business. Almost ALL the websites closed down.

Of the few publishers who do still hold rights to some of my books, three no longer pay me. And not because my books don't sell! Deadbeat publishers come up with all sorts of reasons for falling behind on author payments. "Oh, I'm so disorganized! I don't have time to keep track of these things! I'm terrible with spreadsheets!"

Alternately, there's: "What are you talking about? I don't owe you money."

Or my personal favourite: simply failing to respond to any email I send over the course of YEARS.

I won't name names because the funny thing about deadbeat publishers is they can always seem to find money for lawyers. And there's one publisher in particular that has been incredibly litigious and very much a deadbeat press, and I can't help remembering being so disappointed, many years ago, when I submitted a book to them... and it was rejected.

A close call indeed.
~~~~~

Giselle Renarde is an award-winning queer Canadian writer. Nominated Toronto’s Best Author in NOW Magazine’s 2015 Readers’ Choice Awards, her fiction has appeared in well over 100 short story anthologies. Giselle's juicy novels include Anonymous, Cherry, In Shadow, and The Other Side of Ruth.

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New Taboos

By Lisabet Sarai

Several years ago I set out to write a story for an anthology about voyeurism. I rolled the topic around in my mind, looking for a new and different angle on what is, after all, a well-worn erotic theme.

I realized that the kick in a voyeuristic scenario derives from the forbidden nature of what the voyeur observes. Secret parts of the body – secret behaviors – things society views as inappropriate to expose. In a culture where the genitals are freely displayed, there's no particular thrill to spying on the nakedness of a neighbor. If masturbation were openly practiced, it wouldn't matter if someone watched.

From that point, I jumped into what if mode. What if, instead of breasts and asses, pussies and cocks, people's hands were considered to be obscene? I imagined a society where everyone wore gloves, all the time. To be stripped of one's gloves would become the ultimate shame. Bare hand-to-hand contact would be the most intimate possible act. The mere sight of a naked palm could incite unbearable arousal. Prostitutes would excite their clients by wearing flesh-colored gloves that looked like exposed skin, but even a whore would not allow herself to be caught bare-handed.

Yeah, that could work....

The result was my story “Trespass”. This tale has the distinction of being my most rejected short story ever. It finally found a home in the altruistic erotica anthology Coming Together: By Hand (which focuses on self-pleasuring, but is certainly an appropriate title given our theme!), but only after being rejected by three – or was it four? – other editors.

I don't think the hand taboo was the issue, by the way. The story's pretty dark. Indeed, it turned out to be a science fiction riff on Romeo and Juliet, complete with the blood and violence. Not all that popular in today's world of romance-influenced erotica!

Anyway, whatever the editors thought, the tale is actually one of my personal favorites, so I thought I'd share a bit.

Her bedroom door was half ajar. A mirror faced the door, and in that mirror, he could see her as clearly as if she stood before him. He had a blazing, confused impression of bare skin and swelling curves, before he shut his eyes in panic. It wasn't seemly, for someone like him...

His heart slammed against his ribs. He waited for her to notice his intrusion, to scream. Instead, he heard her humming to herself, sweet and low.

Jared had to look. He couldn't stop himself, even though he knew the risk he was taking. There she was, undressing before her mirror, admiring her own loveliness. She wore black satin gloves that rose to her elbows. The contrast of her black fingers against her pale flesh kindled a hungry fire in his belly.

He watched, fascinated, as those long fingers untied the shoulder ribbons that held up her translucent chemise. The light garment drifted to the floor, exposing the perfect breasts that had been only half-visible before. She cupped them in satin-clad palms and strummed the rosy tips with her jet-colored thumbs.

Each of her self-touches sent shivers through Jared's body. His cock swelled painfully inside his tight uniform trousers. He allowed his own white-gloved hand to stray to his crotch, trying to adjust the pressure. It remained there, grasping the aching mass of his erection, while his eyes continued to follow her wandering digits. She trailed her fingers down over her milky torso, teasing herself with brief brushes of satin against skin. Her two forefingers slipped under the waistband of her lower garment, which like her chemise hid little. Jared could see her fingers as streaks of black against the gauzy fabric; he held his breath as he watched them disappear into her cleft.

Her humming had stopped. Now he could hear her panting, punctuated every now and then by a little moan. Her eyes were screwed shut. Her mouth hung half-open as she concentrated on the sensations she was stirring between her thighs. He imagined he could smell her musk, though logic told him she was too far away. A shudder ran through her body. His cock surged, straining for relief.

All at once she removed her hand from her sex. Dampness stained her fingertips an even deeper black. She brought them to her nose, savoring her own scent. Then, after a moment, she began to remove the gloves.

Jared couldn't breathe. His heart threatened to burst out of his chest. His leaking cock made a shameful spot on his spotless uniform. Could he really be seeing this? She peeled the black fabric down her forearm to her wrist. Jared knew he should look away, but no force in the universe could have made him do that. Finally she gripped the glove by the fingers and pulled completely off.

Her naked hand was alabaster white, gleaming in the mirror like some pearly apparition from another world. Her fingers seemed unnaturally long. Her fingernails, he was shocked to see, were enameled red, like the whores he'd read about. Her flawless skin looked impossibly smooth, obscenely soft, unforgivably vulnerable. She slipped one bare finger into her mouth and sucked on it. The lewdness of it all finally undid him.

With a muffled groan, he exploded, his come soaking his crisp trousers. Then he fled in terror, still shaking, taking with him a last lascivious image of the woman plunging her naked fingers deep into her cunt.

****

I look forward to reading my fellow Grippers meditation on the erotic marvel of our hands.

Why I lost the gig

by Helen E. H. Madden

I'm in the hinterlands of Arkansas this week, enjoying some time off with my family. I could use a break. Work has been picking up around here lately, and I've had more than a few offers come in from people to work with them on various projects. I think one of the sure signs your career as a writer is taking off is when people invite you to participate in their anthologies, or ask you to come speak at their events. Sometimes this is great, sometimes not so much.

I recently had a not-so-great offer come up. A friend who knows I'm a podcaster recommended me to a science group he belongs to. Apparently his group is interested in learning about podcasting. Being a geek girl who has run her own podcast for a year and a half now, he figured I was qualified to speak on the subject. Having taught some workshops at EPICon 2009 and other conventions this year, I thought I was qualified too.

And I am qualified to discuss the subject, not just because I am a podcaster, but also because I have two degrees in communications (which makes podcasting right up my alley), and I've had a LOT of experience teaching and training people on a variety of technical topics. I'm so good at teaching classes, you can give me the topic a day in advance and I'll present a whiz bang course the very next day. I'm used to being asked to teach on pat.

So when my friend's group contacted me about teaching a class on podcasting, I said sure! I like podcasting and I like teaching, and it's nice to be invited to come do things as a professional. Plus, it was an opportunity for this stay-at-home mom to get the heck out of the house for a day without the kids and act like a grown-up.

There was just one problem. I thought this was a small club I'd be speaking to, a bunch of science guys who wanted to learn the ins and outs of podcasting. It turned out to be a rather serious professional association. And my friend had failed to inform them that not only am I a podcaster, I'm also an erotica writer.

I didn't realize this gap in information until after I had already accepted the engagement. It just sort of dawned on me when the very nice lady I'd been e-mailing mentioned that her organization would like to have a copy of my professional bio with a list of professional publishing credits to put in their newsletter, and maybe do an interview as well.

"I can certainly pass on my bio," I e-mailed her back, "but just so there aren't any surprises, did Joe mention to you that I'm an erotica writer, and that my podcast is an erotic fiction podcast, and that all my professional publishing credits are also erotic fiction? E-mail me if you have any questions."

E-mail me if you have any questions is code for I'm being very honest and polite here, and I'll understand if you would rather have a non-erotica writer come speak about podcasting. The nice lady understood exactly what I meant and politely replied with Given your professional experience, I think it would be very hard to promote this event...

It sucks, but it doesn't. It's one thing for me, Helen E. H. Madden, speculative fiction erotica author and podcaster, to speak to a small informal club about podcasting, or to go to a science fiction convention and do workshops there. Those are my forums, my kind of people. They aren't bothered by the word erotica, and nine times out of ten, I got invited to speak because I'm an erotica author. But for a professional group in a corporate setting, where the members probably aren't even allowed to say the word erotica, let alone be associated with an erotica author? Let's be real, folks. This was not the venue for me.

And I don't mind. I don't mind that I lost the job because of the stigma associated with writing about sex. I don't mind that these people don't dare put me in front of their organization because someone might get offended by my insistence on exercising my freedom of speech but writing about sex. I don't mind being labeled as undesirable by the corporate world. And you know why? It's because that stigma, that "Oh my god, she's got a filthy mind!" gasp that comes out of people whenever I tell them what I do, that avoidance of eye contact, that cold shoulder, that's what I enjoy about being what I am. Let's face it, if writing erotica wasn't dirty and forbidden, it wouldn't be nearly as much fun. I like being the perverted outcast. I enjoy being shunned, and I wear my scarlet A (for author) with pride.

And besides, it wasn't a paying job anyway. };)

Nyah!

Inappropriate Masochism

By Kim Dare.


Masochism - I suppose the same could be said of any form of writing for publication, but what I’m talking about is specifically those writers who write for publication and then make their lives far more difficult and painful than they need to.

I have nothing against a little bit of masochism at the right time and in the right place – but while seeking publication is probably not the best time to indulge in it.

Rejection hurts in a very nasty way – and it doesn’t matter if it’s from a publisher or a reviewer. Reviewers are tricky – you can’t please all the people all the time, it’s easy to get glowing and scathing reviews for the same book.

But why invite more rejection from publishers than is absolutely necessary?

I’ve been writing for what feels like forever, but I’ve only been writing with a serious intent to publish for about sixteen months (it was a New Years resolution for 2008 to be exact). So, I’m no expert on anything, but I suppose what I’m advocating is somewhere in the middle of what everyone else has been saying.

I’m not saying you should write to the market as such – mostly because I’m very bad at it. My characters tend to do whatever they hell they want no matter what I’d been planning for them.

Trying to force those characters to do one thing when they obviously want to do something else is painful for me – and not in a fun way. So I don’t stress myself out over making sure they do something the market will approve of. If they do something my current publisher won’t accept – then I’ll look for somewhere else to send them. I’d rather do that than compromise the project or the characters.

But that brings me to the other side of the story – what I do believe in, is submitting each project to the right market. As Jude said – know the guidelines and follow them. And send the story to the place that is most likely to accept it. Then, if you get a letter back saying it’s rejected because it’s too X or there’s not enough Y in it, next time you send them something – try to send them something with less X or more Y.

Meanwhile try to find a publisher who likes more X than Y in their stories, who’ll be more likely to accept your previous story. Don’t keep hitting the same publisher over the head with what they don’t want – you’ll be the one who ends up with a headache!

I tend to work with all sorts of different story ideas milling around in my head and on my to-do lists at the same time. (I assume that most writers are the same.)

If there’s one of those story ideas that has a better chance of being accepted by a certain publisher or for a certain call than another story idea, I think its common sense send off the one they are more likely to accept and keep the other one for another day and another publisher.

There’s no reason to invite rejection by making getting published any harder than it has to be. I don’t think I’m advocating writing for the market as such – but maybe I’m saying that it sometimes makes sense to concentrate on those story ideas that are more acceptable to the market you’re aiming for at the moment?

As for myself?

I’ve had one or two stories that haven’t been accepted into the projects I first had planned for them, but so far everything I’ve submitted for publication has found its rightful home somewhere.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just lucky in that I happen to be writing the kind of stories that the publishers I’ve chosen to submit to are accepting at the moment. Maybe that will change - Markets fluctuate after all.

I like kink, romance and happy endings, and that’s what I write. If the demand for BDSM erotic romance dries up, I’ll be in trouble. I may have to re-think and make a few painful realisations about my chances for continued publication.

But until then, I’m keeping the masochism strictly for play time!

Kim Dare.
Kink, love and a happy ending. Do you Dare?

How to sell your soul and avoid rejection

by Lisabet Sarai


I have a confession to make. Rejection doesn't bother me much. I almost feel embarrassed to admit that, unlike some authors, I don't burst into tears, smash china against the wall, curse the editor, go out and get drunk, or sulk in my room for a day when I get the news that one of my submissions has been rejected. Obviously, I'd rather have my work accepted, but when it's not, I'm relatively philosophical.

My equanimity in the face of rejection derives from two sources. First, I'm not as emotionally invested in publishing my writing as many authors. I started writing on a lark. I continue for the fun of it, for the little bit of cash it brings in, and most of all to please my readers. I know that I write reasonably well, but I have no illusions of being a Great Writer. My scribblings explore the many facets of love and lust, occasionally in relation to spirituality, but I have no deep conflicts that I am trying to resolve, no heavy messages to deliver, no absolute Truth to impart. Sometimes I feel that I am not a "real" author, since I don't burn with the overwhelming desire to share my insights with the world. In the larger scheme of things, it doesn't matter much whether I'm published or not.

The second reason that I don't get too upset when my work is rejected is that, quite honestly, it doesn't happen very often. Again, I'm almost ashamed to say this. I'm well aware of the struggles some of my colleagues face, trying to get their work published. My debut novel, Raw Silk, was contracted by the first publisher to whom I submitted it. Of course, the book was more or less tailored to fit the guidelines of that publisher (Black Lace). And it is true that they rejected my next two novel proposals -- because they ventured too far from the formula, I suspect. However, both were accepted by the next publisher I tried (the now defunct Blue Moon Books), an imprint that handled a broader range of erotic fiction.

Much of what I write is targeted for a particular publisher or at least a specific genre. Most of my short stories are written in response to calls for submissions that detail what the editor is seeking. This significantly increases the odds of being accepted. In fact, when my work is rejected, it is mostly because it's not a good fit to what the editor wants. When I first starting submitting to Total-E-Bound, which focuses on erotic romance, Claire (the wonderful owner of TEB) rejected everything that I sent her because 1) it didn't have a happy ending or 2) it didn't focus on a core relationship or 3) it was written in the first person present, a perspective that I like but she abhors. Now that I understand the conventions of the romance genre (as well as her personal pet peeves!), my acceptance rate has gone way up.

I think that the people who receive the most rejections are often the authors who are most creative. Their work doesn't fit nicely into the cubbyholes of a popular genre. Their stories are perhaps too long or too complex or too challenging, emotionally or intellectually, to be appealing to most publishers. Garce (who proposed this week's topic) is that kind of writer. I know that he's gotten far more rejections than acceptances, at least so far. My heart aches for him, because I love his work and I think that the world should read it. He has a lot to say -- a lot more than I do.

Yet I'm more successful than he is, at least if you judge success by number of publications. Something is not right about this. It definitely makes me uncomfortable.

We authors perennially bemoan the short-sightedness of an industry which looks not for the fresh voice or the original premise but for more of what is already selling. But that does make it easier to avoid rejection. You just have to give the publishers what they want.

Am I really that bad? A literary whore? A hack who can bang out a three or four thousand words a day, once I sit down to it, with the comfortable conviction that if my first choice of publisher won't accept it, my second choice probably will? Is there no room for inspiration? For flashes of insight? For a truly original approach to my chosen genre?

Well, I try. I look for new angles. I overturn stereotypes in a quest for novelty. But if I want to be published, I can't stray too far from the publisher's specs (and perhaps the readers' expectations. I'm brought back to the issues we raised when we talked about genres a few months ago.)

I've always been good at following instructions. (Hey, I'm a submissive at heart!) I know how to mold my writing into the shape that will at least be acceptable to my target publisher and audience. Rarely does my writing take over and drive me furiously in unexpected directions, the way other authors report. It's tamed.

This makes me somewhat sad. I envy them that madness, the thrill of being overwhelmed by inspiration, "the buzz" that is so intoxicating but which seizes me so rarely. On the other hand, as I add credits to my publishing history, I recognize that other authors probably envy me.

So, Your Baby Has Been Rejected!

Veteran Grip writer Regina Carlysle is here today filling in for Dakota Rebel who is out dealing with a family situation this week. The rest of the Grip crew would like to thank Regina, and send our best wishes to Dakota and her family.

Rejection, huh? Hey, I know a little bit about that and if you’re a writer, it’s something most of us have to learn to live with. Rejection happens in the business. From a logical perspective, we know a publisher is a business and they are looking for things that are right for them but try telling that to a writer. A completed manuscript is your BABY. You’ve conceived it. You’ve nurtured it. You want to see it spread its wings and fly. We want everyone to love our baby as much as WE do. It’s only natural.

The thing is, not everyone is going to see the beauty of your baby the way you do and this can lead to rejection.

I wrote for fifteen years before making my first sale so the topic of rejection is something with which I’m vastly familiar. In those days, we didn’t have the option of internet publishing. It just wasn’t there. If you sought publication, your only alternative was with the giant publishers in New York and we ALL know how hard it is to land a contract with them. That doesn’t necessarily mean your work SUCKS, it just means they are overstocked with authors or the genre you’ve subbed to them.

In the end, it’s not about rejection so much as how you handle it. We all face it from time to time and yes, everyone can say…don’t take it personally but, dang it, it’s hard not to. I normally give myself a day to mope and whine. That’s it. As a writer, it’s important to keep going. Have a work in progress going at all times. So when those rejections come, dive back in. Don’t start second guessing your talents and just know that SOMEWHERE is a publisher who will love it. Immediately send the rejected manuscript elsewhere then go back to the work in progress. In other words, keep plugging, keep typing, keep generating ideas.

Check out Spanish Topaz by Regina Carlysle, released TODAY from Ellora's Cave.