An attempt by Young Barry to land an agent. Met with form-letter failure. (P.S. The lighting is lousy in this picture, so you can’t tell that the form letter is printed on paper that is a quite soothing and lovely shade of...
Read MoreRead — if you can stay awake for it — this truly horrible story synopsis that was deservedly rejected by DC Comics back in 1993. Then stick around for today’s lesson, kids… OK, so now that you’ve...
Read MoreThis is from many, many years ago, for an old sci-fi novel. It was quite rightly turned down — it need a lot of work. I still think of it often, though. Someday I’ll go back to it and fix it up and maybe I’ll...
Read MoreIf you combine these with my other rejection slip from them, 1 you’d get a whole sheet of paper! I wonder when they changed color from green to...
Read MoreI forgave them. Mostly because their letterhead is so cool looking.
Read MoreYou’re just going to have to take my word on this: Tor was using very nice paper for its rejection letters at the time.
Read MoreNo idea if this came before or after my other rejection from The Subourbon Press. This one isn’t personal, but it retains that torn-paper look we’ve come to know and love.
Read MoreNo, not the Wall Street Journal. You know, I usually save TWiR! snark for myself and my idiotic younger attitudes, but this week I gotta say: “The Journal” is a remarkably generic name for a literary magazine....
Read MorePublished three times a year. Three times. Think of your odds. Takes the sting away a wee bit, doesn’t it?
Read MoreI actually met Andy Zack many years later, after this rejection notice, at a writers’ conference. Nice guy. Anyway, take a gander: You know, I can remember thinking — at the time I received this — that it was...
Read MoreThirteen years ago! That’s how long ago it was that Young Barry received this little slip of paper from an agency: Note that this is not, technically, a rejection. They are, in fact, accepting my first three...
Read More“The editors regret that the enclosed contribution is not adapted to the particular needs of the NAR at the present time.” Are you kidding me?
Read More