Aeryn Rudel's Blog

Peaks and valleys. That’s the best way to describe the submission experience and my own meandering path as a writer. I’ve had some exceptional years where it felt like every story I submitted had a legit shot at publication, and then I’ve had years like 2023, where I thought, why the hell am I doing this again? Still, appearances can be deceiving, and what looks like one of my worst submission years ever is maybe a little more nuanced than that.

Let’s have a look at Rejectomancy Year Nine.

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Today on The Daily NO, we’re celebrating Halloween by looking at all the rejections I’ve received on the spookiest day of the year. However, to my shock and surprise, in over 12 years and nearly 1,000 submissions, I have received exactly ONE rejection on October 31st. The only reason I can come up with for this bizarre anomaly is that I submit to a lot of horror markets, and, well, it makes sense that horror editors are not working on horror’s holiday.

Anyway, let’s take a look at my Halloween ...

Although 2021 wasn’t a terrible year for submissions, I definitely went into 2022 hoping to improve, and in some ways I did. Mostly, though, I kind of held course with a solid but not exceptional year. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it was definitely one of those years where I felt like I was just treading water in a lot of ways. (Spoiler alert: 2023 will show me the error of this thinking.)

Okay, let’s have a look at Rejectomancy Year Eight.

Total stats for 2022. 

Although...

Although 2021 wasn’t a terrible year for submissions, I definitely went into 2022 hoping to improve, and in some ways I did. Mostly, though, I kind of held course with a solid but not exceptional year. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it was definitely one of those years where I felt like I was just treading water in a lot of ways. (Spoiler alert: 2023 will show me the error of this thinking.)

Okay, let’s have a look at Rejectomancy Year Eight.

Total stats for 2022. 

Although...

I’m a car and motorcycle enthusiast, and one of my favorite bits of (now outdated) slang is “hitting the ton”, which means going over 100 miles per hour (usually on a motorcycle). For me, there’s a literary version of hitting the ton, too, and that’s getting 100 or more submission in a calendar year, something I achieved for the third time in my career a few days ago. So, I thought I’d do a little post about it and talk about what it takes to hit the ton.

First, lets look at the stats.

So, as ...

There’s a phenomena in baseball and other professional sports where a player, usually a rookie, has a fantastic inaugural season, goes into the next season with massive expectations, and then, well, puts up mediocre numbers to huge surprise and disappointment. This is often called a sophomore slump, but I’ve always thought of it as the whiplash effect. It’s so hard to be at the top of your game on a consistent basis, largely because there’s a fair amount of luck involved in that kind of success,...

When I set out to write this series, I knew I’d be writing openly and honestly about the ups and downs of the publishing business as well as the grueling grind of submitting short stories. As such, I’ve detailed decent years, disappointing years, and, yeah, even a bona fide good years. Today, I get to write about something even better, a stellar year, my best submissions year ever in the decade and change I’ve been doing this.

So, let’s jump into Rejectomancy Year Six.

Total stats for ...

I set a lot of personal submission records in 2018 (year four), and though year five wasn’t nearly as good, I maintained both a solid number of submissions and a respectable number of acceptances. In other words, I was consistent, and that’s not a bad way to be in the grueling and often cruel world of publishing. This is not to say there wasn’t some regression, but it’s the kind I can live with. Anyway, let’s take a look at Rejectomancy year five.

Total stats for 2019. 

After the b...

Today on The Daily NO, we’re going to look at the first rejection I received for a story that would go on to collect a record-setting (for me) 25 rejections before I sold it. This is definitely a case of sticking with a story you believe in, even when the NOs start really piling up.

Okay, let’s take a look.

Rejection #7

Story: “When Stars Fall”Length: Short StoryGenre: Science FictionPublisher: Diabolical PlotsPublisher Tier: ProSubmitted: 8/10/21Further Consideration Letter: 8/15/21Rej...

Welp, another month has come and gone, and it’s time to tally up and see how I did submission-wise for August. Let’s take a look.

August 2025 Short Story StatsSubmissions Sent: 10Rejections: 4No Response: 1Acceptances: 1Further Consideration/Shortlist: 0Withdrawals: 0Pending: 14New Stories: 1

I sent 10 submissions in August, which is not bad, but it does put me behind my goal a bit. I’ve got 83 subs in total for the year, and if I want to hit my goal of 15...