That doesn't actually tell us if there *is* any good in you, or are we supposed to assume so from the fact that you didn't burn the stories and mail the ashes back to the rejectees? :) Very impressive lineup there. And Jer's only got to sell to TEL, and he'll have completed the Jay trifecta.

Great quote, David! (I loved that book.)

I can assure you, he did not burn the manuscripts. At least, if he did, he didn't mail the ashes back to me. As if I'd include enuf postage for that.

And David, I appreciated the fact you gave away the game in the email subject line, which made opening the actual message much less painful.

Wow. That is one hell of a lineup. Nice job!

Celia — It varies. I haven’t yet disposed of all the disposable manuscripts, so my options are still open. :)

Eric — Me, too. Only six months till The Wizard!

Jon — Thanks. I’m glad it helped. If there’s anything worse in the writing business than getting your hopes up right as you’re opening the rejection letter, I don’t want to know about it.

Stephanie — Thanks! I’m pretty pleased with it myself. :)

What Steph said. Very nice indeed. Wish I was going to WFC.

Wish I were going to WFC as well now! :-)

Hey, David -- just noticed how few women there are in your line-up. Don't worry - not accusing y'all of anything. :-) But it did make me curious; was that representative of the submission proportions too? Are women less likely to write pulp? (I know I am. :-)

It’s a fair question, Mary Anne — and don’t think I didn’t notice that, too.

I haven’t done a real tally yet — Jay said somebody or other keeps track of those statistics, and I’d like to contribute. But I just did a quick count with a not-quite-final version of my spreadsheet (the only one I have handy — there’s five or ten submissions that it’s missing), and came up with 38 women and 145 men.

So, mathematically, we probably should have had four women rather than three, but yeah, it’s fairly representative.

I don’t feel too bad about having three rather than four, but I definitely would have liked to see more stories from women. My guess is that the topic just did appeal more to men, but I don’t really know.

For what it’s worth, in my subjective and unscientific estimation, Ms. What’s story and Ms. Vaughn’s are some of the least pulpy in the book, and even Ms. Bear’s isn’t one of the pulpiest. But I don’t think it’s worth a whole lot. :)

Thanks -- that very nicely answers my question! :-)

It seems to me that there is an interest issue. The Zeppelin panel at NorWesCon (a con that seemed to me to be attended by a fair number of women) was predominantly attended by men. Especially when compared to the female attendence of the "how to write a sex scene" panel immediately afterwards.

Good eye, Jeremy. I wonder if the demographics would have been any different if we’d gone with Racy Zeppelin Stories?

Lusty Zeppelin Sluts of Venus

Jay, I don't know if women would buy that, but I would. Hell, I'd buy two.

"The long semi-rigid dirigible stirred emotions deep within Arsenia's loins, emotions she'd years ago suppressed like cold fusion research."

As one of your rejected contributors, I just want to say I'm still looking forward to reading the anthology. And thanks for inspiring me to write what I consider to be one of my best stories so far, even if it didn't find a home with you.

Would those be slutty zeppelins, or sluts who lust after zeppelins?

I meant to write a zeppelin story, but it crashed and burned.