Urgh. So here's another weird submission question: I recently moved, and while I was getting mail at my new place for the first month or so, the Post Office randomly decided to hate me and stop delivering mail. (OK, so it had something to do with the fact that someone took my name off the door, and I didn't notice, or realize they'd stop delivering to a street address once I did. But still. They should love me. My unsolicited slush sub postage is keeping them afloat.) Because of this, some of my mail has been bounced back to the sender. After going through my submissions database and checking against The Black Hole, I'm fairly certain everything was too recent to be getting rejected by the markets-- except for one, which judging by the response times and the submission date almost certainly got kicked back to sender. What should I do here? Wait a month or two for the ordinary response time limit and query with SASE, or send a letter now with SASE and an explanation of the situation?
Posted by rickfisher (Member # 1214) on :
My feeling is that you should send a letter right away. You don't need to ask about the status of you story, just let them know the situation, and that IF they have already responded, could they let you know what they said (in the SASE). But I don't have any outside documentation for that, so if anybody has heard differently from a reliable source, pay me no attention.
Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :
Something very similiar happened to me. I had a submission and Realms of Fantasy and then moved away...a few months later I began to get nervous because I thought the Post Office would stop forwarding mail any day now. So I just sent a firendly e-mail, in that case, to the slush pile editor. In a different market I might have chosen a snail mail letter with a new SASE enclosed and a brief explanation that your address has changed.