Fishing

I currently have an offer from a publisher who tells me he thinks my 54K-word novel fits into the genre Literary Fiction. I never woulda guessed that in a million years. I am thinking that, if a writer is writing what best connects with his personal zeitgeist, then same author should give the best shot at a genre guess and fire the story off to whoever. The worst that can happen is a rejection. I published ten short stories in the Literary Magazines which publications tell you to read their archives to see what sort of thing they publish. Who has time for that? I just kept sending the stories out – to, on average, maybe 30 mags before I got an acceptance. I was fishing from a boat dangling in space and still got bites. Write a QUALITY story and some fish swimming in the depths of publishing will strike at it. 🤪

Joe Smolen

Joe C. Smolen, AKA L.W. Smolen is an Oregon Coast writer of insufficiently exaggerated notoriety. Never having been arrested, he lives with his wife Sherrie and the ghost of their black, Standard Poodle Rico Suave in a really pretty good, Prairie Style house they built themselves. Since the Literary Magazine Fleas on the Dog of Kitchener, Ontario has permanently stopped accepting submissions, in order to read L.W. Smolen’s 2021 short fiction, A Real Guy, you are referred to joecsmolen.com. Some of L.W’s other, subsequent short fictions are archived at Olive Tree Review, Ginosko, Cardinal Sins Journal, Wrath Bearing Tree, Wilderness House and etc. Kirkus reviews once interpreted his work favorably.

https://joecsmolen.com
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The Girl at the Outfield Fence