1. got 18 acceptances in jan, and 32 in feb, by various online or in-print magazines, including renditions (hk), dmq, ginosko, wayne lit rev and antartica j. so, feb 2020 was the month when i had obtained the most acceptances in a single month period since i began to make poetry subs towards the end of 2004. luckily, some of the magazines, like dmq, ginosko, brief wildness, impossible task ( a new calligragphy) and isacoustic have finally accepted my work after i don't know how many subs i have made to them (at least a dozen times?). -- once accepted, i will never submit to the same magazine again, as a rule.
2. it's become a great nuisance to check whether my accepted poems do acctually appear as accepted or scheduled. in my file, there have been more than 90 acceptance emails accumulated up to now. sometimes, when i spend a lot of time trying to clean the house: the result is ususally one of these three: 1/ still can find no appearance of my accepted/scheduled poems online; 2/ get no anwser from the accepting editors (even after makingn repeated queries in some cases); worst of all 3/ the magazine has stopped operation before publishing my work. in fact, i can never be sure about the fate of every accepted piece of my work.
indeed, my submitting experience has been very bad in that some editors are extremely rude, mean, unfriendly, or unprofessional as they do not show even minmum politeness by giving a formal or simple reply to repeated queries about my accepted work.
3. feb 2020 ranked the fourth most pageviews of our Poetry Pacific since its outset in 2012, and more than any other month period since the spring issue (may) of 2017. makes me feel a bit curious.
4. march will be a busy month for me, as i am to serve as a semifinal judge for 2020 contest of all canadian highschool students poetry recitations. have to mark 60 recordings. first such experience.
5. have to give up and forget the much the anticipated book projects for gt group. they are simply too mean and too hypercritic: their proclaimed mission is to promote love, kindness, spiritual cultivation, but they are so greedy in making money and so 'shrewd' about saving money, and do not have enough decency to communicate with people in a polite way.
6. one of my poetry collections was accepted by austin maucaley publishers several days ago, but after doing some online investigation, i realize the press is acutally a vanity operation. interestingly, the contract they offer makes it clear that they will pay me $50 upon signing it, and that the copyright remains mine all the time. this is something against the definition of a 'vanity' press: the author has to pay/'contribute' (to all the costs envolved), and loses their copyright. at first, i wanted to reject their offer immediately after getting to know it as a vanity press, but since i never have to pay for this book to be published, and even can get a few dollars back as a souvenir, i have become hesitatant...
for so many reasons, i am afraid of people, humans, homo sapiens... whenver i can, i prefer to deal with words instead.
