At last, the new edition of the Mississippi Review is on line and I can see who beat me out.
Check the writing first? Hell no. Go to the end of every story and look at the author's bios. What do I find but that, of seventeen stories selected, only two were written by those not listed as previously published. Two. Out of three hundred submissions. Worse than one in a hundred, and those are some mighty bad odds.
One of the stories is in a very serious vein, while mine was entirely humorous. The other, from a college professor, reminded me very much of a college exercise in plagiarism. There were footnotes to the short story. Can't compare my little blurb to that; it's apples and armalite.
As for the rest, from the previously published, I can see where my story was on the right track. Why was it not selected? Perhaps it was too similar to a couple of others, and the previously published will always win out in that contest.
So I'll keep submitting, pounding on the doors of the literary journals until they let me in. I'm not far off.
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