Remember New Blood magazine? A couple of weeks ago, I showed you their combination rejection letter/subscription sales pitch. Well, apparently I gave it the old college try one more time (literally — I was a freshman in college when I submitted this…) and was the recipient of a second, briefer rejection:
You’ll notice no subscription pitch this time. As I recall, I “bit” with the first letter and subscribed. I’m sure my logic went like this, “If I subscribe, he’ll have warm fuzzy feelings towards me and be more willing to accept a story of mine!”
Well — spoiler alert! — it never happened. I vaguely recall the magazine and while I don’t wish to speak ill of anyone’s hard work, I remember not being terribly impressed by it. So why did I keep submitting stories? No idea. I was pretty clueless at the publishing game, y’know, and I think at that point in my life I was just desperately sending out stories anywhere and everywhere.
Still, it was nice of him to say something, er, nice to me in this letter. I don’t know if he genuinely thought we’d connect on something in the future, or if he was just being kind. Either way, I’m sure that teenage Barry didn’t properly appreciate the gesture, seeing instead only the word REJECTED! hovering over the paper in giant, glowing letters.