FAQ #1: What in bloody hell is up with my submission to your magazine?

Excellent question. We'll respond in keeping with the "hell" reference, though it's not quite the right metaphor. If you have not received word, then either 1) the email from our online system did not reach you (log in and check status here), or 2) your submission is currently in the last few days of TSky "limbo." These will be reckoned with very shortly. Within a couple weeks or so. We promise.


But, good gawd, why on earth is it taking so long?

Well, on earth it does appear to be taking a rather long time. Sorry about that. Here in the big blue Tarpaulin Sky, however--where we do nothing but float around on clouds all god-like, occasionally shooting a lightning bolt into an after-school soccer game or such--it seems like mere moments have passed since the flood, wherein we found ourselves overwhelmed by the number of submissions we received in a single month. And a short month at that. And while some of us (in our identities as lowly writers rather than godly editors) have experienced even longer response times--often only to be "rejected" with a form email, which many of you can also expect--we are keenly aware that such a long response time, to paraphrase Job 7:11, "kinda blows."

Also: this year we tried a new system for reading magazine submissions. In theory, the new system was to speed the process. But, well, not so much. Not at all, truth be told. Rather, it made it fairly brutal, I think we'd all agree, like trying to convert the Torah into pure mathematics, and no one here intends to repeat the process again. Not because the system itself cannot be made to work, we should note--it works quite well for many, many magazines--but because it's clunky in our particularly-ethereal hands.

Do you really think you're Gods?

Do we really have to answer that? By which we mean, we've received a few angry emails of late, insinuating that we think we're "all that," so we--by which we mean, "Christian"--rather than firing back with angry and ridiculously self-pitying emails detailing the myriad ways in which Christian has sacrificed himself for TSky in the last seven years, decided instead to put these FAQs together, to address misgivings, to apologize for tardiness, and, with any luck, to add a bit of levity.*

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* If Christian's levity has failed it has failed because, true to his name, he was raised half Jewish. Again, think of Job, to whom the Lord said, "When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade. When life refuses you levity, make some matzo. When you find yourself tempted to fight hatemail with hatemail, post an FAQ-thingy instead, and hope for the best."

** Image from FreakinNews.com, which we neither condone nor condemn, never having spent time at the site except to borrow this terrific image.