Well, it’s exactly three months since I received my first acceptance letter for a story at Cicada, a pro market, I just found out yesterday that the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is buying “From the Mouths of Babes,” a story I wrote pre-Clarion but significantly revised after I got home. To be perfectly honest, I’m beside myself with yippee-ness.

In case you don’t remember, I identified the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction as one of my “dream” markets, meaning it would be absolutely dreamy if I ever got published there because it’s the Big Time. Seriously. Both of these magazines get literally hundreds of stories each month and with narrow profit margins they can’t afford to shepherd new writers along by publishing so-so stories.

Again, like I wrote when I got my first story published, this sale doesn’t get me in the door anywhere else. My submissions will still have to rise from the slush pile like everyone else’s. There’s the added benefit of being able to mention these two publications in my cover letter which may give me a little more sympathetic of a read, or it may not. Putting them on my cover letter shouts out “I am not a hack,” but it in no way guarantees anything else. It does not grant me the benefit of the doubt. Simply put, I need to continue writing stories good enough for the pro markets if I expect to keep getting published.

All humility aside, this is a tremendous confidence boost. It happens once and there’s a slight chance it’s a fluke (although that’s highly unlikely given the tremendous amount of competition.) It happens twice and it’s pretty much confirmed you have the ability to write a saleable story. It happens three times and you’re deemed good enough to join SFWA, the professional writer’s membership organization for speculative fiction. In January, becoming a qualified author seemed a remote possibility. Now I’m just a single sale away. Best of all, I’ve only sent out five stories since coming home from Clarion; two of them have now sold to major markets.

Humility reinstalled, even three stories is nowhere near enough exposure to make a name for yourself especially considering Cicada is outside the genre. I would say it would take four, five or six stories in the major sci-fi/fantasy markets before your name has any kind of weight whatsoever. Given the publishing schedules of most markets, that’s still years away in the best-case scenario. In addition, the combined word count for both of my stories is about 6K words. It’ll be a bigger achievement to sell a 6-10K story to a big market–the longer the story, the better it has to be.

Still, this puts a lot of gas in my tank. I’m still motivated from the first sale so this just adds to it. Selling a third story before the end of the year seems like an aggressive but realistic goal now, but I’m not going to be bummed out if I can’t achieve it. I have no doubt whatsoever that this isn’t my last pro sale; however, I fully realize I might have to wait awhile for the magic number three and that’s fine. I haven’t been writing seriously for that long, and I’ve been writing decent stories for even less time so enjoying the success I have in the eleven months since Clarion is remarkable, especially considering how little I’ve put out there.

In conclusion, I’ll enjoy the big yippee for today and then it’s back to pounding keys in search of number three.