Does anyone remember the high quality, short lived Heat City Literary Review? It was a really nice literary journal, based if I recall correctly in Boston. It seemed very promising. Their first couple of issues were very high quality using professional materials, excellent professional perfect bound glossy covers, about 90 pages. I loved their covers — artsy in a professional (as opposed to both boring standard lit journals and zines) way. I was in the Volume II, back in 2005. I had spent most of my career publishing poetry for the most part, yet also occasional fiction. My (incomplete) records indicate my first professionally published piece of fiction occurred in 1991 — a long-forgotten story “brilliantly” titled “Blank” in Volume 3 of the wonderful Journal of Sister Moon (1991). My next story appeared in Volume 12 of The Altered Mind in 1992. It was titled “A Premeditated Shooting.” The same year Grind published one of my pieces which was reprinted in a magazine that seemed to love me a lot, Graffiti Off the Asylum Walls. Starting around then, they listed me as one of their featured writers they published in virtually every annual Poets Markets and Writers Markets for years to come. (Thanks editors!) I kept publishing short fiction on a regular basis through 2005, with what was then called a piece of “short fiction” (now called Flash Fiction) in Volume II of the Heat City Literary Review. You can see the cover here and you’ll spot my name on the cover. My story was titled “Egging” and it remains one of my personal favorites. Such a favorite that it’s been on my Academia.edu profile for several years so if anyone wanted to, they could read it there for free. (Actually, now that I think of it, I’ll post that cover here now…)
So the magazine started off with a boom complete with press releases, a publication party, fanfare and great dreams and expectations. Some time later, Volume II was published. And then crickets… Nothing. Who, what where? Disappeared. I never heard from them anytime after that. I heard very little about them. Call it a rumor or call it a personal suspicion, but I recall thinking it was basically a money issue. As in there was no more. I have no idea, but after spending years on many personal publishing ventures, I can tell you the production costs can be insane, any money made will usually still keep you in the red unless you’re well established or lucky to start out with the funding and support that a magazine like the Oxford American did. My guess is they had some initial funding, wanted to start with a bang and go big, quickly found out doing litmags — especially high quality, high cost ones like theirs — lose money immediately and sometimes forever, and they blew their money quickly and must have shut things down as a result. Weird that a magazine that looks and reads that good with such great promise folds and utterly disappears in less than a year. Odd. And disappointing.
But I’ve thought about them recently and wondered if any other “old” writers remembered that mag along with me. (And for what it’s worth, I went on an extended creative writing and publishing break after decades of pushing myself, but proceeded to write book reviews, essays of varying types and helped edit a litmag called Ray’s Road Review, which we sadly had to shutter by 2017 due to my deteriorating heath.)
A couple of years ago, I had gotten sick of writing commentary and analysis for geopolitical issues, foreign policy, health, tech, defense, etc., (though I was doing well and had a large audience) and wanted to “get back to my roots,” if you will. So while not intending to ditch what I’d been doing, I reentered the fray of creative writing and publishing, although with short fiction as my primary vehicle, along with poetry and creative nonfiction. Yet things have changed a lot and so have magazines and submissions. I’m obviously a dinosaur and feel cranky about things and it’s been brutal and rather insulting, because I just went through five issues of the Index of American Periodical Verse, an uber-elite index which published the best poems and poets from some 250 high-end literary journals each year. And just because you may have been published in any of those, and even if by a lot, that was no guarantee of inclusion or listing. Their published criteria for being included “the quality of poems, their presentation, and the ‘status or reputation of the poet’!” I always checked for certain writers and very few of my writing professors were ever listed, elites like Ferlinghetti sometimes had one poem included (citation/ indexed reference). Poet Laureates were sometimes made fools of. I never knew I’d been included in any until I found some via Google Books. On my Bios, Directories, and Directory Series page, I’ve updated it to show inclusion in at least six confirmed volumes with several more on their way to me for inspection. I have links for half of them.
The point? The point is over the course of my career, I maintained a 53% acceptance rate, which was higher early but fell as I submitted to more top tier journals. But the thing I KNEW and which was confirmed for me this week is that the most elite journals in the world accepted my work at a 40% acceptance rate! Lots of expected rejections from places that included the Florida Review, Black Warrior Review, The Sun, Triquarterly, Tampa Review, etc. Conversely, some of the journals accepting my work and for which I was mentioned in numerous directors and in some cases in this the Index of American Periodical Verse included the Minnesota Review, Hawai’i Review, Malahat Review, Pearl, Rag Mag, Southern Review, Wind, Antigonish Review, Black Bear Review, Lullwater Review, Wormwood Review, Chiron Review and many more. Not shabby. 40% acceptance percentage from those type of lit journals and over 60% for smaller mags and zines.
Again, the point? It’s been a discouraging year because although I’ve had dozens of acceptances and publications, my rejection rate is obscene, something I’ve never experienced before and honestly, most of these mags would likely never be considered good enough for indexing in these types of resources and most of their writers wouldn’t make the indexes either, as was the case for many of my peers long ago. And while my acceptance percentage has been steadily rising, it’s been a lesson in humility to have the type of response I’ve often received. Which is funny as I spent years teaching seminars on how to get published for writers guilds and universities around the country and I always told people not to get discouraged because every writer — even the best — get rejections, that it’s part of the game. I guess I need to take my own advice, eh? But so far in 2024, I’m getting acceptances or publications from at least one publication a week and I hope to improve on that as I continue to send stuff out. Much of my work is now in longer fiction though, so many fewer 500-word stories and more 1500-2500-word stories. Wish me luck. In the meantime, if anyone remembers the Heat City Review or knows anything of it or its founders, let me know. I miss it and even today, still read through my physical copies for pure enjoyment.
Thanks for reading, feel free to comment or message and if you are writing, continued luck in it and to all, have a good day.
Cheers!
Scott Holstad
ORCID/OCLC: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9686-6471
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