Submission Process

One thing that I no longer do is submit short stories to various markets. There are a number of reasons for this. A lack of desire, or execution of creating short stories is not among the reasons. I still plot and write stories from time to time, but the sad fact is that there is a lack of markets for me, and so the stories remain locked away in my computer and on various thumb drives.

The biggest problem these days is the mentioned absence of markets. There are plenty of places to sell stories that are in the amateur and semi-pro marketplace. However, these places pay little or nothing and are mainly in electronic format only. I don't want to write to have my work appear for no payment (or even token payment) and I don't care for ephemeral electronic media. Because of this, such markets aren't a place for me and I do not submit my work there.

Next comes the biggest problem. Starting a few years back I found myself blacklisted by a number of editors and publishers due to my political and social stands. There is no room, apparently, for people who don't toe the current popular line in such matters. I saw my prospects vanish instantly when I finally became sickened over the things I saw, and wrote about my honest feelings. Almost immediately, editors refused to look at my work out of hand, and word went out to bar me from various markets. Requests for submissions from me--which had been vigorous before--disappeared.

So it goes.

These days the only option that has generally been left to me is self-publishing; but I detest the self-published marketplace as a wasteland of trash and shit. Because of this I have largely avoided the self-published scene except mainly to promote other published work (such as my WORKING CLASS HERO project), and to re-publish my out of print novels.

I don't expect this situation to change, and so my short story production, which was once vigorous, has been reduced to zero published tales. Oh, well. There's nothing to be done for it.

I think the last time any of my stories saw print was in my collection A CONFEDERACY OF HORRORS from Hippocampus Press. You can buy a copy in ebook format, and in print format, with a brilliant cover by Pete von Sholly.

A CONFEDERACY OF HORRORS by James Robert Smith.