Without TV I have time to do things like review my story submissions. Each time I've done this over the last year I've come across my submission to Orchid's short fiction contest in 2006. No reply. And no reply to my email inquiry. Their website says that winners will be announced in July. That's July of 2007. Still no news here in 2008.

What gets to me about this is not the idea that I might have won this contest if only they hadn't decided to suspend communication with the outside world. What bugs me is that on the same page is an invitation to submit to their 2007 contest. There's a fee for this contest. Surely, two-year's worth of contest participants would like to know if the magazine has folded or suffered some other fate. Meanwhile, the only evidence I could find that they were still in existence was a rejection letter published at Literary Rejections on Display.

I feel for these small magazines. It's got to be a largely thankless job. But I find this irresponsible as well as annoyingly mysterious.