Here's a copy of what the editor had to say.

quote:

---

I wish I had better news for you, but I'd like to congratulate you on your
story, "The World When You're Choking on a Hotdog," passing the first round
of our selection process. That's no small feat. Only 15-20% of stories
make it this far.

Unfortunately, the second round proved too great an obstacle.

As a writer I always appreciate feedback on my own stories. That's not
true of all writers, so sift through what we give for anything useful to
you and disregard the rest. Keep in mind, these comments are raw gut
reactions and personal opinions that may seem harsh, but are certainly not
intended to be. So, for what it's worth, here's what some of our readers
had to say about your story:

The formatting wasn't any bother. I asked Jake about it. He said if we
liked it enough to accept it, he'd work with the formatting on the site.
Some of us actually liked it, felt it worked well in the context of the
story. But the formatting didn't sell the story on my first read. It was
the narrative style and the great writing that did it. But that wasn't
enough to keep the story in the running.

To be quite frank, it was a matter of hitting the wrong number on the
editorial roulette wheel. We see a great many stories about death and
other depressing themes. Too many. A story would have to be truly
extraordinary to sell my editorial team another depressing theme. But your
story's obvious merits couldn't get us past that hurdle. As one editor
summed it up: "...this tale is too much a bummer for me, all the way. Life
sucks, then you die. Sheesh, it's not like I don't already know that. Take
me someplace... _different_. Please?"

We wish you the best of luck finding a home for your story elsewhere and
hope you will consider submitting with us again.

---

What do you all think? Is this a good sign? Man, I probably sound like a babbling and paranoid fool. Sorry, I'm just a bit excited!

Thanks,

Jon

I'm one of the editors who regularly votes against what I call debbie downer stories, because I've grown weary of them over the years. We just get so much depressing fiction, it's hard to describe. And sometimes certain batches it seems like literally every story we read has a downbeat ending or is horror or otherwise deals with depressing themes. My point to the editor group when I offer my opinions is that we only have the opportunity to put forth a few stories each month, my personal preference is to NOT have the majority of what we put out downbeat or dealing with dark dark themes. Some months I seem to have more influence than others.

You should definitely sub the story out elsewhere as-is. There don't appear to be any specific concerns with the story (they would have been mentioned in that detailed feedback - sidenote, you might want to consider asking permission before posting the contents of an email from an editor, perhaps you did this. I don't imagine anyone on FFO's editing team minding, we're all basically Hatrackers anyway, but some folks get annoyed to find their notes posted publicly.) aside from being a subject matter/theme that is just over-represented in FFO's slush pile. This happens with loads of magazines, you can often read their "what we don't want to get" bits in their submission guidelines to figure out what kinds of stories they don't get often enough. FFO we don't get upbeat/positive stories often enough, and for my personal preference - not nearly enough sci-fi!

KayTi, I was thinking about asking permission from the staff to post the note first, and probably should have. I didn't think it'd be a big deal though, as the note isn't too personal. Next time I'll be certain to ask first, though.

I never realized you guys got so many stories a month. That makes me feel even better! Haha.

Do you have any suggestions as to another market I could submit to? I don't know of many flash-fiction markets, myself.

Again, thank you both. This is the first time my work has been taken seriously, so it's a pretty big (for me) deal.

I know several folks here on Hatrack have sold to Every Day Fiction. There's another newer flash market that I'm blanking on right now, too (usually flash fiction markets have the word flash in their title, EDF is an obvious exception.)

You could check out the bragging rights (it's called something else - hatrackers in print or somethign...publications and reviews perhaps?) forum here on Hatrack to see where people are selling, too.