Submission Accepted !!! (or, a Twinge of Writer's Remorse)

First the good news: my short story "Multiple Lacerations" has found a home, accepted by Rebecca Anne Renner at Barrier Islands Review! (Cue the Snoopy dance music, glitter confetti drop, and the popping of champagne corks.)

I'm particularly happy because I'd just about given up on this story. It's long for a piece of flash fiction, 974 words, with at least 300 of those words given over to describing a moment of violence as a moment of beauty, in graphic detail. It's been rejected by at least half a dozen journals after going through two major rewrites. And now it's been accepted. Thank you, Barrier Islands Review!

But now comes the writer's remorse, a twinge of which I feel as I'm about to write three emails of Withdrawl to the other journals where the story is currently waiting judgement. What if one of "those" publications would also have wanted "Multiple Lacerations"? Would I have been better off not submitting to Barrier Islands at all?

After all, Barrier Islands Review isn't one of the "Top Tier" literary journals, by any means. It's not a publication credit that many other editors would recognize (yet). In fact, it's a online (PDF) journal that started publishing only this year, and includes encouraging new writers among its stated objectives.

Well, guess what. I AM encouraged, and I'm happy to be a part of this new publication. Long may she live.

Thank you, Rebecca Anne Renner, and may the establishment journals be damned. Cue the Snoopy music.

Thanks for reading,

Stephen