Is This Mine?

There have been times when I have been a little lazy about logging submissions, but something always gets written down somewhere. Thus, I am completely flumoxed about the rejection that I received today from Wieser & Elwell.

To begin with, I don't recall waiting on a response from them for something, yet the envelope was one of my very own SASEs. Having switched over to self-sealing envelopes many months ago, I knew this thing was quite old because the flap had to have been moistened to be sealed.

Check the stamp, says I, and there was a lovely 'True Blue' stamp - with no denomination on the upper right corner. I must conclude that the stamp was one of the early issues after the last postage rate increase, which went through nine months ago.

Now, the envelope bore the scars of having been tri-folded, which would not fit with the last submission that I sent to Jake Elwell. The agency asks for the first few pages, and I would have sent the bundle in a large envelope with an unfolded SASE. Again, all indications are that they are responding to something quite dated.

The problem is, I have no idea what submission they are rejecting. Everything that I submitted to them over the years has been turned down, and there are no dangling threads. So, if I have not lost my mind, I must conclude that Mr. Elwell, at some point, sent an e-mail rejection which I dutifully logged in, and found this SASE wandering around loose during a pre-Labor Day housecleaning. To cover all his bases, he stuffed a blue card (with large print - make no mistake, author, this is a REJECTION) into the envelope and dropped it into the post.

I guess that's better than Jonathan Dolger's ploy, which is not to respond at all. He must have quite a collection of SASEs to his name.