Hello, dreamers. I’m past the six-week mark, which means I’m expecting query responses soon. Just last night, I received another one: a rejection. Always a disappointment, but it came two weeks after the agent’s stated response time. Plus I still have seven active queries. It’s not over yet. Not by a long shot.

Overall, it was an encouraging weekend. I’m fairly certain at least two of my outstanding short fic subs have been held for further reading. Prep for the next round of queries is going well. I got some enthusiastic positive feedback from a fellow author on my Writers of the Future story. And, most importantly, I finished a new short fiction piece.

We’re only halfway through March, and I’ve got miles to go before I sleep. So without further ado, here’s what I’ll be up to this week:

Querying Seven Days on Samarkand

Six weeks in, and as I said, I still have seven active queries. I’m considering firing one more off this round, but I’m reticent to do so at the moment. Because as I mentioned last week, prep for the next round is well underway. As I mentioned in last week’s “Dear Sir or Madam”, I’m currently reevaluating my query strategy. Not with regards to agent selection (not yet, anyway), but with regards to timetable.

In one of my “Dear Sir or Madam” posts last year, I’d annumerated the various “query windows” scattered throughout the year. The prime window (“Query Season”) that kicks off the year is now closed, and we’ve entered what I call the “Second Chance” window. At this point in the year, some agents are still open to queries, while others have reopened. These agents are still looking because none of the queries they received starting in January really jumped out at them, hence the second chance part.

Querying at this point is risky. On the one hand, agents who failed to find suitable new clients during the last two months may be more open to bold ideas. On the other, by this point they’ve seen a lot. And if your story looks a little too much like others they’ve passed on, well…they’ll probably pass on yours, too.

However, the main cause for my hesitance has everything to do with me. While I received some very encouraging feedback on my autumn queries, thus far in 2026 I’ve received five rejections, three of them rapid, all forms. I’ve made only modest changes to my opening pages, and I do believe all of them have been positive. I still have some ideas for what I can do to tighten things up and make them pop. But if basically the same pages got different responses, that leads me to believe the problem lies in my query letter.

Hell of it is, I felt really good about this second QL. I passed it off to several CPs, one of which was agented, and all of them loved it. But at this point it’s hard to ignore the elephants in my inbox. As such, if I do, in fact, choose to fire off one final query this round, I may use it to conduct an experiment. The agent I’m targeting is, by my estimation, a long shot: she’s fairly new and aggressive, and I’ve come to believe that means she’ll be unlikely to take up a 104k-word, literary-leaning work of adult hard sci-fi. But if she takes her time with it, and provides positive feedback, I may learn whether or not my query letter is really working.

In any event, I’m in no real hurry. I plan to take my time this week, making planned changes to my opening pages. If she’s still open by the end of the week, I might go ahead a fire off a query with my previous version of the QL, and see what she thinks.

Short Fiction

So last week in my “Writer’s Desk” post, I mentioned I’d just started a new story. On Friday night, I finished it. As it stands it’s very long (even for me), falling uncomfortably close to novella length. But that’s not important right now. What’s important is that, after two failed attempts fraught with struggle, both ending just shy of the end before I ran out of gas, I finished a story.

And I did it in less than a week. Dreamers, I am back.

With that story in the books (so to speak), I spent my writing time the past two days on sketches and “writing around”: my term for opening various outstanding short fic projects and trying to jot down a paragraph or two. See if anything shakes loose. For those new to my website, those two processes – my daily sketches and writing around – are typically how I find my next project when going through a short fic period. I typically take around a week to write a short fiction piece (sometimes less, if I’m writing an actual short story, most of which top out around 6-7k). Generally I finish on a Friday, then write around during the weekend, and by the end of Monday I have a new project. So before the end of the night, I should be working on something new.

I currently have five stories on submission. Two of those I don’t expect to hear back from any time soon: one’s an anthology, one’s a fairly new lit mag, both typically wait until the end of their sub window to respond. Another sub I expect to hear back on this week; the magazine’s current response time runs around 18 days, and as of this writing I’m a day short of that. The other two both appear to have been held for further reading, which is a very good sign.

As I’ve mentioned recently, current events have me somewhat hamstrung on short fic submissions. For years now, my short fiction has tended to run long by industry standards, which limits my market. For years I’d mostly subbed stories to what I call the “Big Three” of sci-fi literary magazines: Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, and Analog. Well, all of my current manuscripts have been rejected by Clarkesworld (Neil Clarke is notoriously finicky). Asimov’s is one of the publications holding a story for further reading right now. And as for Analog, because they picked up one of my stories, I won’t be able to submit to them again until October at the earliest.

That’s forced me to get…creative with my submissions. For the first time in years, I’ve been actively vetting available markets for short fiction. I’ve begun submitting to new markets, and my lack of experience with them makes their editorial behavior harder to predict. Of my five active subs, three are to markets I’ve never submitted to before. Later this week, I plan to submit to two other markets I’d largely ignored until the past few months.

Among many other things, my recent string of success has led me to broaden my horizons.

Upcoming Content

I have officially launched my Substack: Martians and Lasers. If you haven’t already, head to Substack and subscribe here. It’s free, and you’ll get lots of cool content you won’t find here.

For the time being, at least, I’ve decided to continue giving readers a schedule of my upcoming content here on this site. All upcoming posts will be available here unless otherwise noted. That said, here’s what you can expect from me in the week to come:

Friday: “The Cutting Room: The Editing Mindset”

Available on Substack

Editing. Writers hate it. That’s why editors exist. But the modern writer must be capable of effectively self-editing their work, even if they’re seeking traditional publication. In this month’s Tales from the Cutting Room Floor, learn a few tricks I’ve picked up to help writers put on their “editor’s cap”.

Sunday: “Dear Sir or Madam“

On Sunday, watch for my latest update on my querying journey, and learn what a “Yes” from an agent actually looks like.

It’s going to be another big week. So keep reading, and dare to dream. – MK