Apparently, my fiction submissions can kill a publisher…
About two months ago I submitted a short story to a market I found on Duotrope’s Digest (a great database of fiction markets, btw). My story was a superhero story and this was a superhero magazine. Perfect, right?
Maybe not so much…
Checking my submissions calendar the other day, I found that it had been well over the magazine’s listed average response time and I still hadn’t heard anything from them. I tried going to their website to see if there were any announcements regarding submissions–but found out that their website was down.
So, I checked the listing again in Duotrope’s…and found that they had been declared a “dead” market last week.
Sweet baby gherkins! I killed a publisher!
Oh well, I need to work on the story anyway, or trunk it. But in a business where 9/10 of the time you feel pretty powerless, I did get to feel mighty for about 8.7 seconds.
Shedrick
Serial Distractions 
Way to cull the herd! It was probably weak and sickly anyway. It needed to have its DNA removed from the gene pool so that the others are stronger. Removing the weak link is the best way to strengthen the chain. Now submit your story to one of the up and coming younglings, you’ve given them room to grow, they owe you.
Ha! Of course, the problem is I did submit it to the stronger ones and they used their antibodies to reject it…