Sturm and angst. This post is angst, next one is sturm (#SFWApro)

So earlier this year I submitted my steampunk psionic novel Questionable Minds to Angry Robot during their “no agent needed” window. This is the same novel I sold to Barbarian Books a couple of years earlier, but they closed their doors before publishing it.

Last Sunday, Angry Robot sent it back. Which doesn’t surprise me, or offend me — I must have plenty of competition for a very few slots — but it is disappointing.

And that leads to me brooding on how much I want to do better. It’s great that I sold two stories this year (Signs and Hortense, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished) but I want more. More sales. Faster sales, instead of after a half-dozen rejections. Better paying markets, and more prestigious markets (no disrespect meant to anyone who has published my work). Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy whenever a story comes out but ideally a writing career trends upward over time. I can’t see that I’ve done notably better over the eight years since I started selling short stories semi-regularly. Having one of my novels published would count a lot toward feeling I was in motion.

And that’s pretty much it. Later today comes the sturm.