accepted

There are times when I feel like telling people I get rejected for a living.

I don't, though, because there's not actually much of a living in it. The thing about having your writing rejected is that folks are kind enough to do it absolutely free.

As much as I would like to be a professional writer, there's a whole lot about being a writer that has absolutely nothing to do with the endless hours spent writing, writing, and re-writing. Like, say, the rejection. You spend weeks researching publications, compiling submissions, and mailing them off on a wing and a prayer so that every day for months you can trudge out to the mailbox and collect your rejection letters.

Today, then, is a good day. A special day.

Today is the day I went to the mailbox and found an acceptance letter.

I've had work published before and have even been paid for it, but a couple of months ago, I finally had enough short fiction and time together that I could start mailing off submissions. I mailed just under a HUNDRED of the freakin' things.

And guess what?

"Love, in a Taxi" -- the very first short story I wrote in my Year-of-Short-Stories (in which I wrote a short story a week for a whole year) -- has been accepted for publication in ART TIMES JOURNAL.

It isn't a major literary journal, or anything, but it's got a circulation of twenty-eight thousand, primarily in New York. New York, as you may know, is where all the publishers are. So, there's that.

This has been my first effort to sell my fiction, so I like the serendipity of the fact that the first short story I have sold is, in fact, the first short story from my year-of-short-stories.

I may have just wet myself, a little. On the face. From my eyeballs.

You sit in your house and you arrange a million words, thinking that someday...

Well, someday's today. Please proceed to your local alcohol-vending establishment and have a drink on me. Just tell the bartender to put it on my tab.