The horror. The HORROR.

Forgive me, gods of writing, for I have sinned.

I sent a piece for consideration that I did not thoroughly edit. And holy shit I found some stinkers on my umpteenth read through. 'Due' instead of 'do'? Missing and double words? Kill me now, spare me some of the shame.

And the bitch of it? They wrote back to say it had passed first reading and was being considered for placement. I'm hoping that the story kicked so much ass they could ignore the errors sprinkled in. That's what I will hope to my dying day.

I think I made a blog post about this earlier, where the story has one of these mistakes in the first paragraph. I did not go into the vivid, horrifying detail. I may, should they say 'Clean this up and we'll publish it'. I never will, however, if they reject it after these few months. If that's the case I will delete every single post about such terrible things, and we will never speak of this again. Like a bond that people take after they've killed somebody and dumped them in a river.

So if you're reading this in the future, I have either lied or the piece was accepted.

Wordslinger-117 out.

Dear Fuckface

"Did we say we liked Aurora Wolf in an interview? I'm sorry, we lied about that. Yeaaaahhh it happens. Sometimes. Here's a form rejection."

Let this be a lesson to any brave man or woman, scouring this blog: because an editor of one magazine mentions in an interview that they like another magazine, it does not mean that the story you submitted (and almost had accepted) to said liked magazine will go over well with the other magazine.

Still with me? Good. It all comes down to finding the right match with the right editor, I guess.

So there's a form rejection to add to the stack. But at least now I can submit to other people and see if I can get a match.

There's an analogy in there somewhere about blindfolds and playing craps and something, but I'm too busy to search for it. Must. Submit.

-Wordslinger-117 out.

Goodnight, Sweet Prince...

Borders is filing for Chapter 7. Everything must go, all assets liquidized.

As a former Borders employee, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand: BURN IT ALL! TO THE GROUND! Dance around the funeral pyres of the establishments, lifting your wailing voices to sing the ruin of their corporation! I remember working and Borders and absolutely despising upper management. I hated the corporate rules handed down by some unseen force to essentially make my life suck. $6.50 an hour to have your soul constantly eroded was the going rate.

On the other hand, I had fun. A lot of fun. I met some of the coolest people I ever have working there. Borders Books, Music and Cafe in Stony Brook, New York had great people working there (for the most part. I'm talking about YOU, Jillian! Hater! (actually I loved Jill, she was cool... for a hater)). I managed to get paid for putting books on shelves, screwing around with friends, and occasionally helping people who didn't know how to type things into the Info computer. The hours sucked, the pay was shit, and the boss was a soulless she-beast who would only lumber out of her office to yell at us, but I had a great time working there.

So it is an end of an era. Eric over at Pimp My Novel has said he expects this to hasten the transition into new media, to make print books secondary to electronic. Probably true, much to my chagrin. It's a little scary, trying to get into this world, this career, especially as everything is changing so radically.

But like those corny motivational posters say, ride the wave of change or be crushed under it.

R.I.P. Borders

1974-2011

Wordslinger-117 out.