Rest assured I’m not stooping so low as to write a review of a movie ‘starring’ Madonna. The next best thing refers to personalized rejections, falling in between acceptance and form rejection on the scale of editor response. After ASIM and Strange Horizons, the new webzine The Town Drunk also rejected “Whatever Happened to Relativity?”, but they had this to say:

Thank you for submitting "Whatever Happened To Relativity?" to The Town Drunk. After careful consideration, we have decided not to accept it for publication. While we found it to be very well-written, we feel that its various scientific inconsistencies will demand too much of readers' suspension of disbelief. Readers attracted to stories about relativity tend to be picky about scientific details.

In addition, we feel that the story gets off to a slow start; we think that the whole backstory about "unflooring" can be cut without any detriment to the piece. Also, we found some of the characterization rather heavy-handed, executed with more "telling" than "showing."

We wish you the best of luck in placing this story elsewhere. We really like your writing, so I hope you will submit something else for our consideration soon.

I guess this means I’ll have to write something for The Town Drunk as well as for Alfred Hitchcock’s, and soon. And this while I still have a story to write for Cat Sparks‘ new antho, and a workshop story to revise… Maybe this means I need to get off my butt and write?