Andromeda Spaceways

I submitted ‘ A Mother’s Child’ to Andromeda Spaceways In Flight Magazine a while back.

It was subsequently rejected – Bastards -  with the following comments:

“This is good but not exceptional. There are too many characters. You need to familiarise yourself with our magazine.”

I have to say that the submission service at Andromeda is excellent. Each submission is assigned a unique number. Once you have your submission number you just visit the tracker page on the Andromeda website and you can see exactly where your story is within Andromeda’s reader process.

They basically have three stages. Stage 1 is an initial reader, stage 2 is a second reader, and stage 3 is the editors. It’s worth noting that there are more than one editor.

It seems like a robust process, and very transparent, which is a writers dream.

The feedback from Andromeda was also appreciated. It tells me that the story isn’t a complete dead loss. It’s one I’ve always liked and has had favourable reaction at Triggerstreet.

I had read Andromeda before submitting, and I thought the work well placed. However, I didn’t consider the number of characters when I was reading editions of Andromeda. A Mother’s Child has four main characters. I have to admit that the stories I’d read in Andromeda had one or two, three at most. The stories were also at limited locations while ‘A Mother’s Child’ had several locations.

It was a lesson learned in what to look for when trying out a magazine to see if it would be a suitable vehicle for my work.

I would submit to Andromeda gain, but I’m not revising A Mother’s Child for Andromeda. Reducing the characters would necessitate changing the story, and I wrote the story I wanted to write, and more importantly read.

Good luck with your own submissions.

Mike.

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