I’m pleased to announce that my story, “Dashboard Jesus,” has been published in the Great Lakes Association of Horror Writers‘ newest anthology, Erie Tales 17, Cursed Objects. Erie Tales is GLAHW’s yearly themed anthology. It’s available now on Amazon and at local events in and around metro Detroit.
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The first thing I noticed about the listing on Amazon is that the anthology is listed as “Sean M Davis et al.” I thought to myself, “Surely, the contributors are just listed in alphabetical order.” Looking at the product page… no, no we’re not. The listing only has the front and back covers, but the back cover calls out my story’s cursed object specifically.
Is this… is this lead billing? No, probably not. Still though, pretty exciting to think about.
I generally don’t like writing for themed anthologies. If the story gets rejected, you’re stuck with (usually) a pretty specific niche story that’s a hard sell anywhere else. Which is a Catch-22 because my understanding is that non-themed anthologies are hard to market and therefore hard to sell. Mostly, I write my stories on spec–that is to say, speculation. I get an idea, I develop an idea, I write the story, then I worry about where to sell it. That usually means that I’m sitting on stories for some time while I wait for the right market to appear.
And sometimes it takes a while.
Even though I usually don’t like writing for themed anthologies, I’d intended to write Codename: Candy for ET:CO. It was a story idea I’d already been developing, so it didn’t fit the mold of writing specifically for the theme. However, I still had a little performance anxiety before starting the actual story. I needed something to jumpstart me.
Then I remembered: I already had a story with a cursed object.
I wrote “Dashboard Jesus” a long time ago, long enough ago that the actual date is hard to pin down. In the same story journal as the notes for “Dashboard Jesus” are notes for “First Word,” a story that I got published in 2010. So, maybe that counts as a classic? After I wrote “Dashboard Jesus,” I followed my MO, which was shopping it around, then trunking it after it got a series of rejections. Remembering the story in the context of the call for ET:CO, I dusted it off, re-read it to make sure it wasn’t embarrassing, then submitted it with the intention of finishing Codename: Candy and submitting it when “Dashboard Jesus” got rejected.
Imagine my surprise when I got the acceptance email.
Which is freaking awesome! Even though they’re just part of the business and it’s better to not take them personally, rejections have never lost their sting. Nor do I really expect them to. I like the stories I write; that’s why I write them. And it’s a bummer when they get rejected. But I think my take away from this particular story acceptance is that rejection doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad story; maybe it just has bad timing.
