Rejection number 195 came right on the heels of number 194. Too fast for comfort.
A nice long note for “Crazy,” another one of my valkyrie short stories, but a form letter for sure, because I’ve been rejected by this zine before, and they always read exactly the same:
“We at xxx thank you for your short fiction submission. After thoughtful consideration, however, we have concluded that unfortunately it didn’t work for us, so we’ll have to say no. Please understand that this No most likely means “Not Quite the Right Fit,” not “No Good.” Reading the unpublished work of so many talented writers is a responsibility we take very seriously, and we feel privileged that you chose to place your writing in our hands. We hope you will consider submitting to xxx again in the future as a possible home for your work.”
Time to resubmit.
CR Hodges
CR Hodges, Author 
I wonder if the person who wrote this rejection notice actually read it before they sent it. I hope they didn’t refuse your submission on the merit of poor punctuation. lol
Te he
Have you read queryshark before? Sometimes its stupid little things in the query that agents reject immediately. You can submit yours there and the queryshark (a real agent) will critique it. Just a thought.
Thanks for the tip, Nicole, I’ll check Queryshark out–sounds like it could be very useful. I did sign up for a query writing class with Writer’s Digest which also includes a query critique–I’ll report back when that is done (took the class, need to submit the query for critique).