I write eulogies for people I don’t know, or didn’t know; never will know. People who aren’t people anymore and maybe never were. That’s why I do it. If I don’t, they wouldn’t get one, and without the words there’s no proof of their existence.

I don’t charge them anything of value. They couldn’t pay anyway, and the families, well, there’s a distinct lack of gratitude when you hand them a bill for a eulogy they didn’t ask for. And after they’ve read the eulogy? I’d advise against it. Charging for them at least. I slip the eulogies to a family member when and where I can. Get in, get out.

I’ve been to enough funerals to know mine is a necessary profession. Unlike me, most people don’t plan ahead with pre-death confessions of love for the people in their lives. As many funerals I’ve been to, I’ve never seen a eulogy written and delivered by the deceased’s family. It’s a trope, a lovely fiction to wrap up the story. My services should be appreciated, I make our dreams reality. I’m not perfect; I don’t expect them to keep everything I write. You’d think that’d be obvious. But I regularly find my gifts in the trash. So, I edit for them.

Five. I offer five revisions, with an editor’s note attached to my final pass in case they still aren’t happy with it. I’d hate for them to toss the completed work. They usually do.

When the big day finally rolls around, I watch from the back. They usually pick me out, freeze up, fixate on me. Cry. Which is convenient given the grief-ridden setting.

How could I write a eulogy without knowing the deceased? Simple. I befriend the family. Get to know all of them. I extract every detail, make sure it’s the truth. And then I arrange the funeral, beginning with the murder.

If it resonates, that’s not my fault.

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How to spend $1,285 and remain unpublished: a few hundred on submissions, the rest on hard lessons.1 If you’re like me, you’ll read this and make the same mistakes anyway.

What Did I Buy?

34 submissions, eight beta readers, five subscriptions, one Duotrope membership, a Squarespace site, and Scrivener for each OS I use. Was it a waste? Depends on perspective, but probably, by many standards, especially since submitting doesn’t have to cost anything. Plenty of publications read work for free.

Submissions

Four total manuscripts, three of them short stories, and 31 submissions on just two of the manuscripts. The piece I submitted most? A novelette.

Print vs. Digital

I favored print publications at first because I wanted to hold something real in my hands. I don’t care about print anymore. Submitting a novelette for print publication was costly. Many pubs won’t even read a short story for less than three bucks, and I found novelette submissions to average ten dollars each.

Moving too quickly

I misspelled a publication’s name in my cover letter and withdrew immediately. They didn’t refund me, so I didn’t resubmit. It’s happened more than once, and it’ll probably happen again. Now, I copy and paste the publication title where appropriate.

I’ve also submitted unfinished manuscripts. Now, I sit with a finished piece for a while before sending it out, even if I’m dying to see another rejection letter.

Hybrid / Vanity Publications

These were an odd thing to stumble upon. I didn’t know what hybrid or vanity presses were until after I’d paid to find out. They have their place—just not for me. I learned the hard way. They got the money I might as well have burned, but I kept first-publication rights. Call it a reverse-rejection.

Slowing Down

I could’ve avoided some of these mistakes by reading more closely, paying more attention, and actually subscribing to the journals I was submitting to. Part of the problem was finding small presses willing to read a novelette at all; the market’s thin for anything between a short story and a novel. I’d read that before submitting, but that goes for most of my “mistakes.”

The last rejection I received for the novelette encouraged me to keep submitting it, despite my plans to shelve it. These are the fumes I’m running on, and the high’s great. I’m no longer racing to get published, but I’m not exactly slowing down either. There’s always more to do, or buy.

Subscriptions

Many publications nudge you to pay—reading fees, contest entries, subscriptions, etc.—to avoid “wasting editor time.” Maybe it’s fair that editors ask us to pay for wasting their time. Rattle is the counterexample: ~60,000 poetry submissions a year on a paid circulation under 10,000 and still handles the pile without fees.2

Granta

Granta, with its polished media kit and relatively large audience, still charges submission fees. They encourage you to read the magazine first, then offer 50% off a subscription after you’ve paid to submit. Familiarity as a reward, not a prerequisite. And yes, the “Granta subscription discount” page looks like anyone can reach it.3

Granta reports a paid circulation of ~23,000 (readership ~37,000); it’s effectively endowed, holding ~£9.33m in long-term investments that yielded ~£263k in 2024—only a sliver of a ~£1.81m annual budget.45 At this scale, charging writers £3.50 is a policy preference, not physics. Similarly endowed peers, like Rattle with ~$7.33M in assets, keep submissions at $0.6

I sent work anyway. The next issue was “China.” My piece wasted their time, for that and any other editions they had planned.

The New Yorker

The New Yorker boasts more than 9 million print readers,7 which is likely why I bought the subscription before deciding not to submit—I wanted to see what kind of audience I’d be interrupting. I’d read it before, but never subscribed. The idealistic vision of the magazine had been with me since college.

As luck would have it, Google still sports a link to an outdated media kit, likely forgotten by someone at Direct Action Media.8 What I like about this kit is the detailed audience metrics not usually available as a first-pass download on the open internet. If only I had found it sooner, I’d have saved on the subscription fee and learned what my subscription revealed over six months—their audience is not mine.9 Older, affluent, managerial; median age ~48; long attention (avg ~72 minutes/issue); a million-copy rate base, about four readers per copy. Definitely not my lane.

The very idea of media kits, complete with demographic data, seems to signal that I’ll never publish with a publication that has one. Still, it’d save everyone time if each pub were this transparent. Like kids vying for a trip to Cedar Point, literary magazines have to be big enough to capture that kind of data. How do they get that big? Readers. And for most small publications, those “readers” are writers.10

Contests: They’re Expensive

With the average cost of a lit mag submission at $3, I could have almost doubled my number of total submissions if I weren’t gambling on contests that charge up to $30 each.

Is there ever truly a good reason to submit to contests? Sure, if your chances are basically certain. Otherwise, this has been the biggest money sink. Fine if you can afford the gamble, but my work probably isn’t suited for traditional contests, let alone traditional publishing. I even paid extra to have my work reviewed by an editing team for a novel-excerpt contest,11 only to be told that I shouldn’t have submitted a novel excerpt. What’s obvious to people used to the pub game wasn’t obvious to me in year one. Apparently, novel excerpts should be self-contained stories with arcs.

Beta Readers

Family only goes so far, and if you’re like me, reading groups won’t cut it either. I am fortunate enough to be able to pay for beta readers, but it does get costly, so I use this sparingly. DM me for recommendations.

Website

This one’s funny because I built it before finding Substack and then never used it. This could be a waste of a couple hundred bucks, so I think I’ll take advantage of migrating More Weight when the sunk cost has eaten enough of my will to resist.12

Other Tools

Submittable is a good tool. Duotrope is better if you’re hunting for places to send work. Is it better than Submission Grinder? At least Submission Grinder is free. I use both. But we should already know the publications we’re submitting to, right? Really live and breathe the nuanced taste of the editors. Let’s call these tools subscription aggregators. To that end, Chill Subs feels cleaner and easier to use. Looks like I have my next target to dump money into.

Don’t buy a word-processing tool for short stories. Google Docs works just fine for that. Unfortunately, it took buying a tool to realize there were standard manuscript practices outside of double-spacing lines.13 Accidentally buying Scrivener was the best thing I ever did for novel organization.

What I Could Have Bought Instead

Vacation, bills, funeral costs, etc. But nothing tops the pursuit of validation.

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13

You don’t have to buy a word processor to find manuscript templates. William Shunn’s website has everything you need for free.

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I woke up with tattoos today. How they crawled into my arms and took root is anyone’s guess.

My dermatological defenses aren’t what they used to be.

The snaking serpents defiling my arms and chest are beckoning for their accomplices. I can almost feel them slithering, writhing for my attention. I won’t look at them. I can’t let them win.

One word weighs heavy on my mind. Removal.

I called the first Google-search hit I saw.

“Not even lasers will work, I can tell. These things usually don’t work out. Not with this kind of infestation.“

Infestation?

I hung up, more paranoid than ever. He didn’t even see the tattoos. I had only described them, their grip on me, their… voices. I shouldn’t have told him about the voices.

Then, I found the note.

I tore it off the fridge, “Tat appointment 4/23.”

Two months ago to the day. My handwriting.

There was a number written below, so I called, hands shaking as I tapped the familiar number into the phone.

The line crackled and I started in, “Hello, did we—did we just speak?”

“So, you know?“ The man’s voice sent a chill down my spine.

“No. I don’t know. Or, I do. I just… “

“It’s ok. You told me this would happen,” the artist said.

I swallowed my last drop of spit, mouth dry.

He continued, “Yeah. You made me promise not to let you get removal, or try to cover them up.”

“Why, why would I do that?”

“That, you wouldn’t explain. You paid me double, and even gave me a generous tip. You said the hassle would have to be worth it… “ The artist cut his thought short with a sigh.

“So, this isn’t the first time then?“ Sweat tickled my skin. Or was that the tattoos?

“Not even close. I’m actually starting to… “

“Worry?“ I interrupted.

“Yeah.”

“Me too. I think I need another one,” I said.

“What? No. No more.”

“I’ll go somewhere else then.”

“No you won’t.”

He hung up, my arms still crawling.

I pulled on my boots, flung a black tank top over my shoulder, and slammed the dirty screen door behind me on my way to the tattoo shop, cigarette between my teeth, ink on my mind.

If it resonates, that’s not my fault.

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Jan 23, 2025
I started eating lead with my food because I want to know what it’s like to be a serial killer.

Excitement has long since left me, and having exhausted every last whim or hedonistic fancy, what’s left?

I would have never guessed, but lead is widely available, despite the effort to filter it from our waters. I buy mine on Amazon—the Two-day Prime shipping I enjoy is free, but usually it arrives next-day.

The ingots I get in the mail are 1 lb. each, make a kind of clacking sound reminiscent of dominoes falling atop each other, and are unevenly cast. The lines, blemishes, and uneven bumps and craters in the silvery bars are kind of like me without the inherent value we assign to precious metals.

Our Oracle of Delphi, Wikipedia, had nothing on leaded serial killer recipes. So, I scrape shavings into my morning cup of joe. I eyeball it, make sure I can swallow it comfortably. I do the same with my evening tonic water and vitamin ritual.

Feb 27, 2025

I don’t feel any different.

I’m still me. No voracious appetite for the macabre, no fangs, no elongated and sharp fingernails, no thirst for blood. One month and I’m devastated. Not even a slight interest in meeting new people.

I wonder if the change will be abrupt, like a light switch. One day I’m finishing my daily run, I wipe the sweat from my brow, and click—like an accomplished werewolf, I’ve got the instinct, the nose for fear and an insatiable need to devour. I’ll have direction again.

As far as I’m aware, not even hard drugs can change someone so completely; well, no one wants to be a drug addict.

April 4, 2025

It dawned on me today that anyone can buy lead and shave it into anyone's drink.

May 2, 2025

I think the transition is more like aging wine.

June 22, 2025

I cast my own lead now. Local tire shops basically give it away for free. I fear I may have gone too far.

If it resonates, that’s not my fault.

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Unfortunately, you remember every sickening detail, after. It’s like a regular memory on steroids.

If Lou Ferrigno or Arnold Schwarzenegger were memories, the memory of your death would be Ronnie Coleman—every possible muscle, vein, and artery bulging with grotesque definition, dried out like beef jerky and flexing to the very last striation.

Light weight, baby.

They bring you into reception when you wake up. How much time passes between your death and then is unclear, but you’re cleaned up and handed refreshments like you’ve been asked to wait at the car dealership. I was lucky and had the room to myself before they called me back.

“Mr. Richardson, please take a seat. I expect you have questions, not the least of which concern what happens next. You may have guessed, some of what we discuss will determine the outcome of your queries, and I ask that you hold until we are finished. I’ll gladly clear up your remaining uncertainties at that time.”

I nodded. What else could I have done? Raged? Probably. But something told me I’d be better served on my best behavior—keep my cards close and see how it played out.

The old man across the desk fixed his glasses back into place, then he clicked and typed for a few seconds before looking up at me again.

“Now, Derek. Can you recite your full name and cause of death?”

I was surprised by the informality. Who asks about something so personal, so immediately?

I stammered, “Uh, sure. Um. Derek Louis Richardson. Car accident. Well, technically asphyxiation. The seatbelt wrapped around my neck, crushed my esophagus, and as the car hung in the tree I—I couldn’t get free. Somehow I remember the car falling down the hillside, but I was dead at that point, no longer gurgling for air.” Like I said, sickening detail.

“Perfect. Just had to confirm we’ve got the right Derek.” He chuckled. “Now for my favorite part. This will take a while, but I assure you, I’ll enjoy it. You may too.”

I looked at him suspiciously. What was he talking about?

“Lies, Derek. We get to dissect each and every lie you’ve ever told. But that’s not all. For each one, we bring in those affected. Ready?”

“Fuck.”

If it resonates, that’s not my fault.

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It’s probably not recommended, but I can’t work on a single project at a time.

Some of these I’ve started.
Some of them I haven’t.
Some of them I won’t.
Some of them I’ve already finished.

• More Weight

• Accordance

• Consonance

• Coherence

• Decadence

• Creature of Habit

• [Title Redacted]

• Emily

• Leftovers

• Sterling Promises

Accordance started as my first novel.

Now it’s the first installment of a planned trilogy.
Before even querying.

That’s probably not recommended either.

If it resonates, that’s not my fault.

I wrote something I deleted. I wrote something else and deleted that too. I thought about saying something honest, then said nothing. That seemed honest enough.

Then, I returned to what I deleted.

I eat food that I’ve left out all day. Not because I forget.

I wait. Let it sit. See what might happen.

Nothing ever does. I eat it anyway.

By the time of the eclipse, I'd been doing this for about three months. Why? I’m not sure. Who ever is?

If it resonates, that’s not my fault.