Hey Toronto!

Sorry I’m sometimes rude about you and all (but to be fair, every non-Torontonian Canadian is rude about you sometimes) and that I haven’t visited you in like five years, but ignoring all that, look at the number of my books that are in stock at a variety of Toronto Chapters/Indigo locations:

So, Torontonians, descend en masse to these Chapters/Indigo locations and please buy Enid Strange by Meghan Rose Allen.

I promise I’ll be nicer to you Toronto. I swear.

Sincerely,

meghan

Ed. note: the e above is missing its accent in the title and I am looking at wordpress info on how to fix it.

My almost award winning story, Darién Gap is now online at The Puritan XXIII. This is the longest piece I’ve published (around ten thousand words) but it’s also one of Geoff’s favourites, so you’ll be reading a story with the Geoff stamp of approval (which would probably look like a lot of dots and arrows going around in some odd arrangement (this is a category theory joke)) and we all know the only reason you’re coming here to check out what stuff gets the Geoff stamp of approval.

So please check out my story along with the rest of the issue.

And this concludes all the pieces being published that have been accepted. I have no new publications scheduled, which can only mean one thing: time to write and submit some more short stories!

Make a list of all the nice things that people have said about your writing, Geoff said, tired of listening to me complain about feeling unloved. Nice things by people who didn’t have to say nice things, like strangers.

So, in the past few weeks, I’ve gotten:

“I loved it!” via twitter from Reading In Bed.

“Brutal, crushing story” via twitter from Kim Fu.

“Our Editorial Board was really captivated by this original and emotionally stirring piece” via email from Prism Magazine.

“Love the comedic touches! Strong writing, characterization. Would love to see more writing from this author” via email from The Antigonish Review.

The last two, sadly, were part of rejection emails (no Prism or Antigonish Review publications for me yet). But those are better than the other rejection email I got about how they only publish pieces with “meaningful conflict” and my piece’s subtle-women-to-women-undermining (most girls are nodding and know what I’m talking about here) was either two subtle or read by men who, luckily, haven’t been privy to the cattiness that sometimes occurs between girlfriends. I’m giving it a 75% likely the first and 25% likely the second.

So positive rejections and unsolicited nice things, but the feeling-of-failure creep is still setting in. I have a story, the one that has “comedic touches” and “[s]trong writing, characterization”. I think, in terms of short stories, it’s my best one yet. I read a shitload of short stories before writing it (Alice Munroe, Rebecca Lee, Miranda July, Charles Yu, etc.), so I was in a read short-story mindset. I think it’s funny and touching and deserves a really good home. But I don’t know where to put it – I’m sure it could find a great home online, but it feels like a story you flip through the pages to read. Some of my stories seem like they belong on a screen. This one doesn’t.

So I wonder – should I submit it to the Fiddlehead contest? Maybe an online journal I really enjoy like Little Fiction (although they were the ones who thought I had inadequate conflict above) or Compose (although they also recently rejected me as well)? I could go big and try Room? Joyland (they never say no, they just don’t email you when you don’t get accepted, but there rejection turn-around time is a month so at least one isn’t waiting too long)? carte-blanche always rejects my stuff. filling Station too, and they always give the most ridiculous reasons for it.

This list I’m making has me realising I submit to a lot of places and know a lot about their rejection policies. But it’s also making me gigglge, so that’s not too bad.

Staying positive. I’ll submit it somewhere soon, and we’ll see.