Episode 1503: One More For The Unofficial Blacklist

Another mildly infuriating submitter this morning. I think I've rejected 10 stories of his within the past month, and he finally fired back a request for me to point him to the 'best' story I've published in the past year. (Yes, 'best' in inverted commas, which seemed a little sarcastic, if you ask me.) One friend had the brilliant suggestion of just sending back the journal's URL and telling him that this was the best I've published all year and that he should read all of it. I'm not naïve enough to think that there aren't people who submit to me purely for the sake of chalking up another publication credit, with no interest in the rest of the journal's material, but at least don't make your ambition so naked. Plus there's just something about his stories that tend to rub me the wrong way. From his self-inserted copyright symbol (and let's not get into how amateurish that makes him look), I can tell that most of the stories are more than a decade old. They also read as if they've been filtered through the worldview of a businessman, which given the bragging in his attached biographical note, is entirely plausible as a conjecture. Well, he's another one headed for the unofficial blacklist, I'm afraid.