So, I’m a bit bummed.  Back in the summer, I started writing a speculative fiction short story with the intent of submitting it for publication to Icarus, a quarterly magazine that publishes spec-fic pieces featuring leading gay male characters.  I sent it out to a small group of friends who agreed to proofread it and offer critiques.  Due to it taking time for my readers to get me feedback and my health issues toward the end of summer and the beginning of fall, I kind of let the whole thing slide.  A couple weeks ago, I started thinking about the story and started thinking about picking it back up again.

It looks like if I’m going to get back to the story, I’m going to have to start by hunting for a new magazine to submit it to.  When I received my notice that the Winter 2013/2014 issue was available, it came with an announcement that the magazine is being discontinued.  The winter issue is the last issue it will be.

So now I have a story about to enter into the editing phase without a home.  Which is a bummer.  So far, my quick Google search does not show any other magazines that focus on spec-fic with gay male characters, so I will have to look for a magazine that either focuses on spec-fic in general or one that either focuses on any story with gay characters or stories written by LGBT authors.  Which is fine by me.  The bigger problem is that in its first draft form, my story is already almost 5,350 words long.  (To add a few things suggested by readers, I expect the final draft will be a bit longer.  Icarus allowed stories to be up to 9,000 words (they they reminded authors that longer was not always better and the magazine preferred something closer to 5,000 words.)  Other magazines, like Apex (5,000) and Jonathan (3,500), have much lower maximum word count limits.  So either I have to revise the story to meet those limits (which would be challenging at best), or I have to cross a bunch of possible candidates off my list of places to submit to.

Part of me is tempted to just forget about it, post the story to my WdC portfolio, and start over from scratch with a new idea to get published.  After all, that was my main purpose in writing this story.  I wanted to actually get published.  (Plus the fact that I would’ve gotten a small amount of money if my story hit print was a nice touch.)

But damn.