The year was 1977. Mike Resnick had plenty of writing experience and writing success. 200 novels. 30 short stories. Not to mention thousands of articles, plus editing half a dozen magazines. But he was still unknown to the editors of the pro paying speculative fictions markets, who treated him like a rookie. Judging from the turnaround time, he knew they were sending him form rejections without reading the story. So he submitted, “The Last Dog” to Hunting Dog magazine. The speculative fiction magazines were paying 3 cents a word. Hunting Dog was paying 25 cents. The story won the Dog Writers Association award for short fiction. The next year, he sold “Blue” to the same market and won the same award. The secretary of the association asked him if would continue writing dog stories. He replied that as long as they continued passing out the award, he would write at least one dog story per year. They canceled the award a week later and he hasn’t written another dog story since. (Although he has written about other animals. “Barnaby in Exile,” “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” etc.) “The Last Dog” has since sold to 15 other markets and “Blue” has since sold to 7 other markets, including the speculative fiction markets that originally rejected it. I listened to “Blue” on Drabblecast. It’s flawless. Like a story you’d be assigned in a literature class.
