First Acceptance of 2026 - And The Truth About All That...

I was really excited to get my first acceptance of the year the other day, from a journal called Slash Magazine, and it will be in print. I will post the link to the magazine here when it is available. They will also have a digital edition.

I am still ploughing on with my submissions - I am up to 45 as of this morning, which is more than one per day. It seems a lot, but I have already received rejections for some of my earlier ones, so have sent them straight back out, so the submissions total is more than the story total. 

I am also still waiting for news of the Flash 500 competition, in which I have two contenders, so keep your fingers crossed for me.

I am very aware that many people feel disheartened about the ratio of their subs to their acceptances, and that is normal.  It's doubly hard when you hear about people being accepted and published, but you don't know THEIR ratio. I have submitted 45 times this year, but I have had 13 rejections and just one acceptance. The secret is to just keep going, because writing stories is what you do, sending them out is part of the process, and rejections are just part of the deal while you wait for that magical yes!

Tell me how you feel about writing and submitting? Are you feeling downhearted? I'd love to hear because I know that by talking about it, everyone can see that we are all in the same boat. Tell me in the comments what your current writing "mood" is, and let's see if we can change it together.

While you are stopping by, I would love if you looked around this site and checked out my pages, which include many of my published stories, and also visited my Substack page and clicked on Subscribe if you have not already. You will get information about all my upcoming events, workshops and courses, and news about my upcoming publications. Click the button at the end of this post.

​Hope you are all having a lovely weekend. Don't forget to comment.

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