Originally published at Agent Incite. Please leave any comments there.

Either I installed the wrong plugin here, or I annoyed someone (or several someones) with some hacking ability. Since the first of the year, my website has been hacked three or four times affecting everything from the contact form at Onyxhawke.com to  email, and even this blog. ( Read more... )

For no apparent reason the urge to tackle the slush pile hit critical mass, and as I start writing, I'm just about two hours in, it is now 1:45 am.

Click to view

So far:
Not one has made it past five pages, most have gone supernova in the first paragraph.

I got a run of three submissions in a row that were all stuff i don't handle ( Read more... )

This is the probably not in order list of reasons for rejections of slush today. No indicators of the number for each since its mostly irrelevant. Reasons listed here may or may not be worded exactly as listed in rejection letters ( Read more... )

Seriously people, I can't say I'm shocked at getting snarky replies to slush rejections. I keep the reading schedule as tight as life and other four letter words allow, but I just don't see the value of it. Unless you are dead certain you will never need to work with someone in the future, the worth of attacking them, even mildly is certainly ( Read more... )

I'm really trying to attack the small e-mountain that is my submission backlog, but had an unhelpful thought foisted off on me by my occasional exo-brain Mo. What if i did a week of rejections using nothing but movie lines as the rejections. Then I realized that'd be opaque and make me look even crazier than most of my family thinks I am. But it ( Read more... )

Ah yes, another week of slush reading. Some of the more common reasons for rejection:

Head hopping.
Lack of emotional traction.
Lurid and impossible description.
Poor plot progression to description ratio.

And apropos of nothing, I'm almost ready to believe I can tell how fast something will be rejected by what font is used.

From the things that have not gotten a yes lately, some of the reasons are:

Too politically tinged

Laundry Lists

Lack of reason to care

Poor description

From the most recent several weeks of slush encountered, here are some random facts.

Longest read before a no: 70 pages

Shortest read: 3 paragraphs.

Most common reason for rejection: lack of interest in the main character.

Second most common reason for rejection: Unsupportable plotting quirks.

And yes, I'm still bemused by people who send me ( Read more... )

It is your last chance to vote in the P&E polls.
Dave Freer & Eric Flint are ahead in the Best SF/F Novel and Dave is currently near the top of the best Author ranks. Go vote!

In the other categories, friends of mine that I'm told were nominated included Sarah Hoyt, James Enge (for a short), Toni Weiskopf, Eric Flint,  and a few others who's names ( Read more... )

Apparently i need to be more interesting if so many people are only commenting once, if at all.

( Who comments the most on this journal? )