My newest Storytellers Unplugged essay is online: Genre Bender.
I awoke this morning with most of a new short story rattling around in my head. I grabbed the ledger that always sits on the night stand and jotted down a page and a half of notes, afraid that the precious prose would evaporate when I woke up fully. This was a strange case of a potential market inspiring a story, instead of the other way around. This market has a fairly strict and narrow word range, and I’m not yet sure that I’ll be able to tell the entire tale in the limited space allowed, but I’m going to give it my best shot.
I received two rejection letters yesterday. One was a form rejection, a card tucked into my SASE that didn’t even mention which story they were rejecting. (Fortunately I keep good records.) The other was a personalized e-mail rejection apologizing for the length of time it had taken (5 months) and reporting the editor’s struggle over whether to accept the piece or not. All things considered, I prefer the latter, although acceptancance letters trump both.
Usually on Law & Order, I have a fairly clear idea whether they are trying the right person for the crime. This week, the one about the reality show, I wasn’t convinced that they had. Certainly, if I’d been on the jury I would have voted to acquit because there was ample doubt. By contrast, I knew who the killer was on The Mentalist the moment he appeared on screen. Not because he was a recognized actor; he wasn’t. But because The Mentalist has done the same story at least once before, and I was a little disappointed by how obvious they were about it. The payoff at the end was a nice touch, though. Pun intended. That was “Jacob” from Lost, wasn’t it? The head of the biker gang.
