Querying?

Posted by: @writhmic

I have a piece under consideration at Cast of Wonders and it's been more than 90 days. In their guidelines, they say to query if it's been more than 3 months. The queue hasn't shortened for a few months now, so it's likely they forgot about this submission window amidst their other ones.

Should I email asking them about the status of the submission window/my piece or just query anyways? Does anyone have experience querying to them or just other places in general? I'm not entirely sure what to include in the email and what not to (I've never queried before ?). Also, when "hypothetically" querying, do I withdraw my submission first or keep it in the queue?

Sorry for all the questions.

I've queried venues before about overdue submissions. I usually send an email and put something like: Story Submission Query — [NAME OF STORY] in the Subject line. In the body of the email, I just let them know the date I submitted the story, remind them how long it's been pending in their queue, and verify 1) that they received it, and 2) whether they are still reviewing it. I don't recommend withdrawing the submission until you've heard back from them. It has happened before that they just never received it, in which case they've asked me to resubmit. Other times, they've responded that it's still being considered, or it's been passed up to the editor for review, etc.

I usually say something along the lines of:

Hi, back on dd/mm/yyyy I submitted [my brilliant story]. Could you please give me an update on it's status?

Simple as that. I usually get a polite reply to tell me they lost it, it was so bad they printed it out and set fire to it or it was so good they can't get the editor to put it down. Either way they'll let me know when they've put the flames out or prised it out of his hands.

Thank you so much @morgan-broadhead and @pdblake! This helps a ton.