We all have them. A story we wrote for an anthology last year that was rather specific (I’m looking at you, “Gay Bears in Sherwood”) that nevertheless failed to make the cut.
Or the story you wrote a decade ago, and just pulled out of the files to add iPhones and Facebook in a possibly misguided attempt to “freshen” the story.
Those orphans that you have a certain love for, but that don’t have an obvious potential home among the regular places you work with.
So what do you do with them?
You could try one of the various free gay and gay friendly journals pay you with a copy of the magazine.
You could self-publish the story as a free or .99 on Amazon or Smashwords or similar sites.
You could hold onto it for a forthcoming anthology to pad out some of the more popular stories.
Or you could put it back in that dusty file with the other orphans.
What do you do with stories that have fallen all the way down through the editorial pachinko machine?