I was kind of waiting for this, and yet dreading it at the same time. I checked my mailbox today and found a nice big envelope from Open Book Press. Since they already rejected Muddy Reflections, I was wondering if they rejected my second query letter and not the submission. The envelope was my submission, all 19 pages of Courier-goodness with the same rejection letter as before.

For some reason, my heart said that the first letter wasn't for the submission itself. And this is the case where they actually looked at it and rejected it. They also sent back the SASE untouched, do you not send a SASE when they ask for a sample part?

I eagerly paged through the submission themselves. Maybe I'd get some feedback on the first three chapters, being that I was told to make it double spaced and bind it in a format to make it easy to check.

Nope.

The only thing inside was a single post-it note that said "good". This confuses me. I mean, I know its a rejection and two for the price of one submission, but the "good" leaves me with just a shard of hope that maybe they didn't mean to reject me. Yeah, a dream, but it is still there.

Regardless, someone there thought Muddy was good. So, that gives me hope that I still have a chance to publish it. I should send out another series of query letters, but maybe next week; I'm hoping to get some feedback from someone on the novel in the next couple of weeks and see what changes I need to make.

Until then, just keep writing!