Bob forwarded an e-mail…

Bob forwarded an e-mail to me yesterday, from the Fiction Coordinator at The New Yorker, asking if there were any unpublished stories from my collection that they could take a look at.

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You get the idea.

I suppose I'm so astonished because, of course, they've already rejected a good number of the stories in my collection -- but then again, that was probably some random intern who walked into a very big room piled high with manuscripts. So *this* is how you get their actual editors to look at your work...

It probably won't end up with them buying anything. I keep trying to tell myself not to get my hopes up. But it's very hard.

In case it wasn't clear, I would just about keel over and die with pleasure if The New Yorker published one of my stories.

8 thoughts on “Bob forwarded an e-mail…”

  1. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    What I want to imagine is that a top editor at the NY read about this deal in Publisher’s Marketplace, was intrigued, googled me, found my website, read some stories and loved them, and then eagerly wanted to know what I had that hadn’t been published yet.

    Whereas I’m sure the actual situation is that this is a standard form someone administrative sends to anyone who reports a good deal for a short story collection in PM. They probably get several of these every week, and just routinely check them, just in case.

    Being realistic is hard. 🙁

  2. Being realistic is especially hard after you’ve sold two novels to an unrealistically high-end publisher for an unrealistically nice amount of money!

    Congratulations, Mary Anne! Congratulations!

  3. Mary Anne, incidently, I was going to come on here soon and ask if your agent was planning on submitting your stuff to the New Yorker. The type of mainstream fiction I’ve read of yours is very similar to the New Yorker style, so while part of me is quite astonished that you received this query, another part of me knew this was coming, just not so soon.

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