Award-Winning Editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, Forever Magazine, The Best Science Fiction of the Year, and More

Rejected by Clarkesworld

For years, authors have been walking up to me at conventions and declaring, “You rejected me!”

Now I have a proper response in business card form:

 

And the back side:

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23 Comments

  1. Ooh! Ooh! I want one! (Or, er, two.) 🙂

    • 🙂 I’ll have some with me at Capclave, World Fantasy and Philcon. Will you be at any of those?

    • Those are inspired! You realize you’ve started a *thing* now, right? 🙂 Reject me! Must. Have. Card! (Seriously, want card.)

  2. Dan Davis

    Perfect! Heading down toward Atlanta any time soon?
    Next up: T-shirts? 😉

    • Furthest south I’ll be is Capclave (just outside of DC). SASE is an option for those outside the range of my usual travels.

      Actually, we tried to do a t-shirt of this one, but I wasn’t happy with the quality of work from the places I tried.

  3. Samantha Henderson

    WANT

  4. Greg Beatty

    If I ask nicely, will you send mine to Romney?

  5. I have this in notebook format from ReaderCon. It’s become my default notebook for conferences.

  6. Grayling Fox

    Sending SASE tomorrow. I’ll carry it proudly.

  7. So I just have to find you at a Con and you have those cards? Sweet.

    Do you have one for “Nick gave me an encouraging rejection letter back in the day when he was rejecting stories” – maybe the same one but with a sad hopeful smile?

  8. Paul

    I didn’t even get a rejection. I guess my story was so bad even the intern didn’t want to dwell on it.

    • Really? Did you get a confirmation number from our submissions system? Can’t find anything associated with your email address, even when I go back a few years.

  9. Geeta

    I am a card carrying member of Clarkesworld now! 😉

    But, honestly, your submission system and response times are perhaps one of the best.

    • They definitely are! Clarkesworld and Lightspeed are the two best magazines I’ve seen when it comes to submitting things and getting a quick response.

  10. I have three. gggrrr Should I stop counting? ;->

  11. Brilliant. I absolutely need one of those! Sadly won’t be up to cons this year or next… MAybe I can get one in 2014 (and I will certainly rack up a few more rejections in the meantime!).

  12. I need to get rejected ASAP!

  13. Not to be a grammar maven, but if “bearer” is singular, the pronoun should also be singular, because the sentence requires agreement of number.

    (If you reject my comment, of course, technically I am entitled to one of your cards.)

    • Yes, you are technically correct. Unfortunately, English lacks an adequate gender-neutral pronoun, so I went with “them.” I’m not alone in finding it an acceptable alternative:
      http://oxforddictionaries.com/words/he-or-she-versus-they

      • I’ve given up the fight against “they” as singular third person. It seems clear it’s ultimately going to win, and it honestly is the most elegant of the contenders. (I say this as a longtime “he in one example, she in the next” proponent.) The only thing standing in my way is my 45-year-old “ear”; it just sounds wrong. But I like to think I’m flexible, and I certainly applaud the move to gender-neutral language.

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