The Free State Review published my story Spaghetti Sauce a few days ago in their tenth issue. This is a bit of a momentous occasion for me given my long pseudo relationship with the magazine.
For the most part, when you submit stories to be published, the vast number of rejections come in as standard boilerplate form letters. We regret to inform you….blah blah blah. However, from the very start, the fiction editor at the Free State Review was different. Since 2014, I have sent the Free State Review a total of 9 short stories. For every single one, I was sent back a detailed review with notes on how they felt the story could be improved. I can’t emphasize how rare it is to get that kind of feedback and how appreciative I am for getting it.
In the end, all of the feedback paid off. Last spring I finally got word that the Free State Review was going to publish one of my stories, and finally last month it appeared in print. Oh what a great feeling it is.
Spaghetti Sauce was a story that got picked up quite quickly once I put it out there. It was only rejected 3 times before being accepted for publication.
If you want to check it out, it’s on the website:
https://www.shawnwcampbell.com/spaghetti-sauce
If you want to check out the other great stories published by the Free State Review, you can here: