Rejection

I got my first rejection letter from a publisher yesterday.

I wrote a short story, you see. It is a suspense/crime/thriller story. Well, that's what it's supposed to be, anyway. I don't know if that's what it ended up being. But whatever it was, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine didn't want it. The form letter was very encouraging, though. I have never been rejected so politely.

Now that I have my first one, I can get over the fact that I don't write very well yet, and perhaps get on with writing prolifically.

We'll see how that goes.

By the way, I have seen only one other person respond to my challenge to write an entry for the Bulwer-Lytton contest. What's up with that?

Oh, and Happy St. Patrick's Day. May you always be green and not with envy. Top of the morning to you, and all that jazz.

Here is a joke, to celebrate the day:

Into a Belfast pub comes Paddy Murphy, looking like he'd just been run over by a train. His arm is in a sling, his nose is broken, his face is cut and bruised and he's walking with a limp.

"What happened to you?" asks Sean, the bartender.

"Jamie O'Conner and me had a fight," says Paddy.

"O'Conner! But he's just a wee thing!" says Sean, "He couldn't do that to you, he must have had something in his hand."

"That he did," says Paddy, "a shovel is what he had and a terrible lickin' he gave me with it."

"Well," says Sean, "you should have defended yourself, didn't you have something in your hand?"

"That I did," said Paddy ... "Mrs. O'Conner, and a thing of beauty she is, but useless in a fight."