Short Story Update

I woke up to a lovely email this morning. Morpheus Tales has accepted my short story! The editor said they really enjoyed the story.


Just one little snag...

The zine publishes every three months and said my story would most likely be in issue 13... June 2011. That's a year and a half from now. I'm not sure what to do.

The story has only been submitted once and although it's pretty fantastic to have it accepted based on only one submission, at the same time, I'm not sure if waiting a year and a half is worth it. Am I expecting too much for wanting the story to appear sooner in a publication if it's accepted? I have no problems with non-paying markets, but it does seem like a long time to wait for a non-paying short story.

See, I'm thinking of the bigger picture here. One of the novels I'm currently working on will be finished long before July 2011. In fact, I'll probably be finished within the next couple of months. At which point I have every intention of pursuing traditional publishers for this novel. I know there's no guarantee the novel will be accepted by traditional publishers and it could take a long time, possibly a lot longer than a year and a half. Yet at the same time, things move much faster in publishing these days than they used to. I do feel it's entirely possible for a novel to be traditional published while a short story is still waiting for publication... in a non-paying zine. That seems like a conflict to me.

I'm just unsure of this. I mean... a year and a half... for a non-paying story... Not sure at all. I just don't want to end up selling myself short here.

I don't know... I almost wish I had gotten a rejection letter instead...