May the Odds Be in Your Favor

During the past month I saw a call for submissions for a super-niche genre fiction zine. The zine’s account has two dozen followers on Twitter, and the submissions post has three dozen notes on Tumblr.

Since it’s a digital zine that didn’t seem to have a lot of interest, I figured that it was probably a reasonable use of my time to custom-craft a piece of writing according to the zine’s super-niche specifications. I put a solid month of work into the story and felt confident when I submitted it.

I received a rejection email yesterday evening. What the head editor wrote is that, although he and the other two editors genuinely loved my submission, it fit into three distinct thematic categories that already had other finalists. Apparently they only accepted 15 stories… out of more than 350 submissions.

Again, the zine’s Twitter account has 25 followers, and its submissions post only has 35 notes on Tumblr. This is a small zine that isn’t listed on Duotrope. And, I can’t emphasize this strongly enough, the call for submissions was highly specific and super niche. How did they get more than 350 submissions?

Is this just the level of competition people are up against these days? Did I perhaps pick the absolute worst time to start a career as a writer?

Agnes and Zidan

One of my art resolutions for this fall was to create character designs of Agnes and Zidan from An Unfound Door. I shared rough sketches and descriptions with Lalou on Tumblr, who refined the designs and created color palettes.

Here is Lalou’s work:
https://l-a-l-o-u.tumblr.com/post/664236966903201792/commisisons-for-pocketseizure-these-were-so-much

And here’s mine:
https://rynling.tumblr.com/post/669767773691543552/remembering-speechlessly-we-seek-the-great

This illustration was so incredibly time- and labor-intensive that doing literally anything else feels easy, so I sat down yesterday afternoon and made this Deltarune comic from scratch. It’s nice to know that I leveled up. Even if it’s garbage, it’s cool that I can snap my fingers and make a comic appear.

The Philadelphia Uniform

I got my Covid booster shot over the weekend, and it fucked me up.

I didn't have any problem with the first or second vaccine shots. I'm about 99.9% positive that I got Covid last spring, and it did not affect me in the slightest. But man. This booster shot. I am not doing okay. Among other symptoms, my left arm is swollen to twice its normal size. It's a mess.

I can't get my arm through the sleeves of my work shirts, so it looks like I'm going to have to have to teach the last week of class in a tank top and tracksuit jacket. While I'm at it, I might as well put on the matching pants and go full tracksuit.

Here's the real question: Do I wear fancy designer boots, or bright red Crocs?

ETA: My arm got better! And the booster shot was definitely worth the trouble. There's been a rapid rise in Covid cases at my university during the past week, and in-person gatherings have been indefinitely canceled. All the kids have their booster shots, and they seem to be doing fine despite testing positive. Good luck to us all during the ongoing pandemic, I guess.