This month I hit a personal writing milestone - 100 submissions. And before you ask, no, I have not had 100 stories published. My success rate is 6% so I’ll leave you with that brain teaser to kick off this issue of my newsletter.

I don’t know about where you are, but it’s been crazy hot here (for Wales). I’m lucky we live so close to loads of beautiful beaches on the Gower Peninsula so we’ve been able to cool off in the (cold, cold) sea for a dip. Thus far, I’ve avoided turning into a lobster but it’s been a pretty close run thing. Unfortunately, extreme weather is something we will all have to adjust to, so I may invest in Wellington boot companies and sun cream manufacturers and retire like a king.

It’s turned into quite a long newsletter this month so perhaps chuck on the kettle and get yourself a nice cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit before reading. Any excuse for a cuppa, right?

I get knocked down but I get up again

To be a writer you must write. If you want to turn that hobby into something more, a career even, then you must submit your stories to magazines and publishers. If you want to rely on writing stories to pay the bills (good luck), then you need to have those stories published and get paid for them. The only parts of that process which are in the writer’s control are the writing and the submitting. The rest is up to the publishing gods (aka the editors).

A desirable addition to being a writer is developing a thick, rhinoceros-like hide around your ego to protect you from the deluge of rejections that will come your way as you painfully learn the ropes and develop your craft. My hide is a work in progress—perhaps only pig-skin thick—and I recognise now that receiving rejections really hit my confidence and set me back (years even) on my writing journey. Oh the wonders of hindsight…

Two key points made time and again during the Writers of the Future workshops was (1) the importance of submitting your stories (how else will they get published?) and (2) perseverance. Every writer receives a rejection, the important thing to remember is to keep going. Your writing career is a marathon not a sprint. You’ve got to hit send on those submissions, sit back and write some more, and set Chumbawamba’s classic “Tubthumping” as the soundtrack to your artistic life.

With that in mind, I have recently hit 100 submissions and it seemed like a time to crunch that submission data and see what I’ve learned along the way.

Interviews and a new media page

I had a few more media appearances this month and, even though I’ve rattled up quite a few recently, I am still getting used to interviews and answering questions about my stories and writing process. It wasn’t that long ago that writing was a kind of ‘dirty little secret’ of mine that few people knew about. With each interview I feel a bit more comfortable, though I still feel a sense of ‘why do you want to talk to me?’. It’s a nagging self doubt, imposter syndrome, my inner saboteur—call it what you will, it’s a voice inside that tells me I’m not good enough. I’m learning to ignore that voice and just keep going, both with submissions and also with saying ‘yes’ to media opportunities that come my way.

Upcoming interview: Writing Community Chat Show on 6 August 2025

Make sure you tune in to the Writing Community Chat Show at 8pm (GMT) on 6 August 2025 as I’ll be making an appearance to discuss my writing journey and who knows what else during a 1 hour long interview.

The WCCS has had some SERIOUSLY big names on before, such as our family’s favourite picture book writer and creator of The Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson, crime fiction heavyweights, Karin Slaughter and Ian Rankin, and in speculative fiction, a major name in UK science fiction, Gareth L. Powell, as well as Lev Grossman, a winner of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2011 (a very big deal in speculative fiction).

So…yeah, that imposter syndrome I mentioned, it’s creeping in for this one big time! But I am really excited for it, I think it’ll be good fun and I’m looking forward to it even if my trembling hands say otherwise.

SciFiNow Magazine

I was interviewed by SciFiNow Magazine and I’m really excited to feature on their website, which also reviews films, books and TV programmes too. Their questions really got me thinking about my writing process (how I develop my characters, story titles) and influences, as well as what I want for the future. And, a fun question about which elemental I would be from my world—provisionally titled the Stenchverse! If you really want to know how my brain works and how I take the seed of an idea and turn it into a story, this is the interview to read.

The Authors Quill podcast

I made my third appearance on Joe Montaldo’s show, which is always good fun. Joe is a real character and he makes you feel at ease. John Goodwin (President of Galaxy Press, publisher of WOTF41) joined us and they asked me great questions about the inspiration for my story and what I want to achieve next. You can listen to the interview below.

BookBrunch

I was interviewed by BookBrunch and I have included the link to their website, unfortunately, it is behind a paywall so you cannot read it for free (you have to subscribe to their magazine). Nonetheless, it is here in case anyone has such a subscription.

A new media appearances page for my website

If anyone wanted to check out my previous interviews, I’ve set up a media page on my website to keep track. I highly suspect these will cool down now WOTF41 has been released but, you never know what’s round the corner in life. And I would rather get this organised now than try and find (and remember) everything a few years down the line.

Rejectomancy

The noble art of analysing a rejection and deciphering how close you were to (or not) to an acceptance.

So, to give you an idea of what level of rejection a (not very successful) writer faces, I’ll keep a running total of my submissions this year.

This month, I submitted 9 stories and received 8 rejections. Boo! Though, 6 of the 8 were personal rejections, which feels like I was close to making the final cut. I am getting more and more personal rejections, which shows I am improving and I’ll take that silver lining. I’ll hopefully find a home for this month’s rejected stories soon.

This was my busiest month ever on the submission front and, already, this has been my most productive year in submitting stories.

Why I love ‘The Hobbit’

Each month, I recommend one book that I love and, this month, I’m recommending the book which has perhaps had the most profound effect on me as a reader: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.

This is a true classic of childrens literature—though I would say literature full stop—which holds a special place in my heart because it is the book that made me fall in love with fantasy. I have reread it many times and once bought two copies of it from Hay-on-Wye (home of the famous literary festival) from the same second hand bookshop because I could not decide between which to buy (in fairness, one is a hardback and one is a paperback). I still own both copies—I can’t get rid of either!

Disclosure: To cover some of my running costs, I have incorporated affiliate links from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops. If you buy books linked to my site or newsletter, I may earn a commission.

What I’m reading

This month I’ve been reading a collection of short stories by Ken Liu called The Paper Menagerie and other stories. The eponymous story is the only story to have won the Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy Award. It is a moving tale of a mixed race boy in 1980s USA who pushes away his Chinese mother and rejects her (and his) heritage so he can fit in. The speculative element of the story is that his mother can bring to life origami animals (hence the title), which she gifts him as he is growing up. I’m not going to lie, I shed a tear. Many of the stories in this collection draw on Chinese folklore and are the tales of non-Western protagonists, which is a refreshing change to the majority of SFF. I taught English in China for a year after graduating from university, which was a wonderful experience and left me with a soft spot for Chinese culture and history, so I was particularly interested in stories such as ‘The Litigation Master and the Monkey King’. It is easy to see why Ken Liu is such a heavyweight in the field and has won so many awards. He also happens to be a Writers of the Future alumni (his story, “Gossamer” was published in Volume 19) and his 24 hour story from that workshop, ‘State Change’, features in this collection. It’s a fun story and set in a world where a person’s soul is an item they are born with and which shapes their personality (the protagonist’s soul is a block of ice), which I think is a really cool premise (I’ll show myself out). It’s amazing to read that story and think it was born during the same challenge I recently completed. It really motivates me to keep writing and keep and keep submitting and always seek to improve.

Not content with ’just’ writing award-winning stories, he is an acclaimed translator too. He translated, among others, the Chinese science fiction novel “The Three Body Problem” by Liu Cixin (which won a Hugo award) and ‘Invisible Planets’ (an anthology of Chinese science fiction short stories, which is sat on my to-be-read pile). To top it off (for me), he also used to be a lawyer before he became a full-time writer, a career trajectory which is certainly an inspiration to me. I recently read his 2017 interview on the WOTF website and listened to his WotF podcast appearance and much of what he said about juggling being a writer and lawyer with young children and obsessing over a single story rather than writing others instead really resonates with me. I’ve kind of gone all fan-boy over Ken Liu but, frankly, he is awesome so I don’t care.

Meme time

It’s been a busy month and I’ve been trying to juggle a few things while making time to write. My munchkins have stepped up their mischievousness in general and are at the age where they pepper me with demands and questions and random things. Throw in the heat and the fact we still don’t get a full night’s sleep and it’s now the summer holidays, then, well, when I came across this meme it just really tickled me!

Until next time, keep dreaming.

Joel