A second of my stories are walking the world, waiting to be liked or discarded. This one wasn’t sent by email but by regular mail. It was strangely disconcerting. This particular paper submission needed to be printed single-sided, stapeled in the top left-hand corner and accompanied with three important items:
- Cover letter detailing my publishing history.
- A stamped, addressed envelop with sufficient postage to return the manuscript to me shopuld I be unsuccessful. (I’m hoping that the readers scribble on the manuscript as they read so that there might be something there for me to learn from. Feedback forensics: my new hobby.
- A stamped, addressed postcard for acknowledging receipt of the manuscript.
The last one almost had me stumped. You can’t buy postcards in Gorgie, it turns out. I was running around, dressed for winter on a day of sweltering and unexpected September heat, looking for a postcard. You know the kind of thing: it has a picture on one side and space for your own message and an address on the other. I could find all kinds of gift and event cards, but that wasn’t what I needed.
In the end, I found one at home. It was black and white and featured at cat in sunglasses. Not quite the image I wanted but it had to do. I’m now waiting eagerly for it to come back to me.
Here, puss, puss, puss, come here.
Aye, they’re particular 🙂 I remember finding a pack of blank postcards that came in handy for this, but it feels like a generation ago – do they really still make such things? For 3play I made my own postcards with the book logo on the front – and I think it was you who designed that logo, now that I think of it…anyway, I think you can get cute with the postcards.
I’m planning to print my own postcards for future mail submissions. The post office doesn’t sell postcard stock anymore, much to my irriation. Oh! I have the Threeplay website on a disk somewhere… Those were the days!
It took two weeks but the post card finally arrived, confirming that my submission had been received. I was getting concerned…