Here’s how it happens: I open my email and see an email with a story title in the subject line. Most of the time, I open the email and see something along the lines of ‘Thank you for submission, but unfortunately…’
But sometimes…
“Thank you for your recent submission to ___. We enjoyed “___” and would like to include it in our upcoming anthology.”
(They didn’t ask me to redact the info, but I usually do until a contract is signed.)
It took me a long time to place this story. Unless an anthology has some anchor authors (big names that can sell a 300 page anthology based on the strength of their names; usually quite expensive for small presses), horror anthologies tend to have themes to them. It makes them easier to sell.
Those themes can be general to sometimes very specific. I tend to not go out of my way to write stories for those kinds of specific anthology calls. Because the other side of themed anthologies is that, as a writer, you may end up with a niche story that’s extremely hard to sell anywhere else. For me, while it’s never a waste to write a story, those times can feel close to it. Because if you can’t sell an “alien meets ghost and they fall in love” story to an anthology that is specifically looking for that kind of thing, where are you supposed to place it?
Instead, I write stories on spec(ulation), ie I think of stories that I want to write, then worry about placing them later. Almost every story I’ve ever written has been written this way.
For example, I wrote the first draft of this story in 2010. I submitted it aggressively when I first wrote it, but it was not accepted anywhere. I’ve rewritten/edited it at least six times over the years, occasionally submitting it to a call where I think it can fit the theme, always unsuccessfully.
Until now.
It’s a themed anthology, ‘haunted objects.’ I’ve had a story idea (codename: candy) kicking around my head for the last couple years that I thought would be a good fit for the call. It’s actually kind of funny: I got this really great title in my head, so I started writing a story for it. Then, I realized that the story didn’t fit the title, so I renamed it. For some reason, I was less excited about the story after that, so I never finished that one. But I kept this other title in my head, and dusted it off as a title/concept with this anthology call in mind. As I was working it in my head, I realized that I already had a ‘haunted object’ story.
I opened the file, which was a chore in itself because I first wrote the story with Microsoft Word 97-2003. Rereading the story, I wasn’t embarrassed at all, which can happen with stories that you wrote a decade and a half ago. I touched up a couple things, but didn’t delve into editing it too deeply, since it had already been through seven drafts. And away it went.
My plan had been to write the codename: candy and ask if I could submit a second story if the first got rejected. But that didn’t happen.
Finally, my little story that I wrote, when I was but a lad (of 28) has found a home and I’m so stoked to finally have people read it.
The Chimerical Dark 