JJ Adams quit working at F&SF and started his own magazine called Lightspeed. I sent him a story today. It was one that I had written a couple of years ago and given up on. I found it, read it, and decided it was pretty good. Rather than send it into a friend who needed it for an anthology, I decided to wait a day or two and submit it Lightspeed after giving the story a good polishing.

Now the problem is that I submitted this self same story to F&SF where it was rejected by none other than JJA who was then reading slush at F&SF. Since JJA can’t possibly read more than the first paragraph or two of the 50 or 60 submissions he gets every day, he probably won’t remember it, and it will get a form rejection without an angry note.

This doesn’t count as a resubmission, technically, but I know editors don’t want you wasting their time. It was an honest mistake. I rarely submit to F&SF. The story was a pretty good one, so I had hopes that it might break out of the slush, but 6 rejections later I am not as proud of the story as I was when I subbed it to F&SF.

It occurs to me that I should take all the F&SF rejects, give them a new title, and resubmit them to F&SF. Since JJA no longer works there, they will be new to Lisa Rogers or Stephen Mazur, or whoever is reading slush now. Nope – I can’t afford the postage. It will be electronic only submissions for me for a while.