An Important Note to Our Authors

[bailey...@darkrecesses.com]

Over the past month and a half I have noticed an increasing number of
queries for work submitted in September/October of last year.

What I am discovering is that some work sent in October, or notices
sent out to our authors in October, have not been reaching their
destination.

If you have submitted something during those above mentioned months
and have not heard from us, please query.

We are pretty much caught up on all submission reading with a wait
time right now of no more than 4 weeks to be notified of your story's
status (moving past the gate or rejection). As always if you have not
heard from us within the 16 week r/t, query us and we'll look into it
asap.

Bailey

[weaselheart]

Rather than add to the list of email queries I thought I'd ask my
question here, in the hope that any answer might be useful to
others :)

I've tried looking on the Dark Recesses website, but couldn't find a
definitive answer - When an author sends a story to you, do you send
an automated acknowledgement back? I only ask as it's not a bad thing
to wait the full 16 weeks if the story is in the system, but it is a
long time to wait only to be told 'sorry, didn't get to us, send it
again...'

*goes back to patiently waiting* :)

[Bailey Hunter]

Thanks for posting your question up, WH.
We don't have an automated reply system for letting folks know their
submission has been received.

I did have one originally, but we were receiving stories embedded in
the body of e-mails, attachments that weren't in a format we could
read, or missing the attachments all together. These submissions
would get a response saying everything was fine, when in fact it
wasn't, so I did away with the autoresponder.

Our submissions are being responded to much faster now with the
addition of Chief Editor, Vincent VanAllen, so the 16 week wait is
very rare now, especially for a 'no sale' notice (I hate the word
rejection).

While we request that you don't query about the status of a story
before the 16 weeks are up, if for some reason you are honestly
concerned it may not have gone through at all, you may send query
about whether it was received.

I agree that 16 weeks is a long wait to find out the story didn't even
make it. This is why I am pleased that our slush pile is being
handled in a much more timely fashion now. I am looking into options
that will help authors feel confident their work was received, at the
same time not lying to them inadvertently as was happening before.
Once I have found a system that works best for all I will put up a
notice, but for now, I will continue to let you all know what our
current r/t is, so you can guage your writer's patience accordingly.

I appreciate a writer's patience - the strongest in the world while at
the same time nearly killing us to have it.

Bailey