Back in the summer of 2012 I wrote a story called ‘Questions for the Ages.’ It’s a strange story, written as an excerpt from a guidebook for time travelling cops. It was structured as a series of questions that the cops could ask people to determine whether they were fellow time travellers or a product of that time period. The idea was that through the questions the reader can glean something about the state of the world and in particular that year. Here’s a brief example from the story:
2017 – “Can you spare a U.V. pill?”
2018 – “How much does a trip to the local S.A.D box cost?”
2019 -“When was the last time you saw the sun?”
It took me a long damn time to find a home for this weird little piece. I got a lot of nice personal rejections, as well as a few puzzled ones from editors wondering if it even constituted as a story. Finally, on its 12th submission*, it was accepted by Phobos to be in their Emergence issue. That issue is out now, and you can buy the print edition from Amazon here (I believe a digital edition is forthcoming). It looks to be a really cool little issue, and if my piece is any indication, a very weird issue.
*Saying that this was the 12th time I sent out the story sounds like a slag against both my story and Phobos, but it’s not. Phobos is a relatively new market, and it just happened to have a submission call that fit my story, hence why I sent it to them now instead of earlier. As for my story getting rejected 11 times before being published, well, that’s just the way it is (ohhh, some things will never change).