Slightly Obnoxious Rejection from Fence

Dear Jackson Bliss:

Thank you for sending us [ ]. We appreciated the chance to consider it, but it didn't work for Fence.

Sincerely,

The Editors of Fence

And that my friends, is how not to write a form letter rejecting a story through email, especially after 10 months. To add to the frustration, everytime I sit down a read story from Fence, I always like (sometimes quite a lot), but I'm never blown away. And my story [ ] will blow your shit up. Their loss.

Maybe They Liked My Story. . .

I was checking up on the status of one manuscript I sent to FENCE Magazine 7 months ago. Of course, being a dumb ass, I hoped that this great lapse of time meant something. Maybe all the editors are sitting at a table, sipping espressi, discussing the merits and demerits of each piece, and one of the editors took a personal liking to my story and defended it with so much passion and intelligence that the other editors took a step back and were like, yo, let's do it! Let's give this Jackson Bliss a act in the Great Literary Show. . .

Reality Check: But when I woke up from my day-dream and tried to check my submission on their high-tech submissions manager, the fucking thing didn't even recognize my email address, even though I'd registered last year when I'd submitted my last story. It's as if I'd never submitted that piece. So, being a stubborn artist at the core, I did the SAME FUCKING THING OVER AGAIN AND REGISTERED AND SUBMITTED ALL OVER AGAIN. But this time I submitted a different story. Ah, signs! If only literary fiction writers would accept all the signs the universe is giving us, none of us would write.

::

On a good note, I recently finished another short story I'm very fond of, about a woman in Lima who drugs tourists and steals their shit. This actually happens. Oh, another thing, I think Erika and I are moving to Argentina. Fingers crossed.