Today I fielded a couple of calls from persons claiming to be calling from Nigeria in connection with Lone Star Stories. Needless to say, I was surprised and a bit confused. I was surprised because all Lone Star Stories contact is specifically limited to e-mail. The callers followed my attorney links to obtain my work number. (Needless to say, I no longer have links to my law firm on Lone Star Stories or any of my personal sites.) The confusion arose because the connection was so poor that I could not understand more than a word or two out of ten. I eventually told the callers to e-mail me and refused further calls. I then received the following e-mail:

Dear Mr Marin,
i must say i m really dissapointed and speechless over the unfair treatment meted out to me by you;Eric could you please explain in detail what you meant by indefinite post-ponement;i have been very patient these past months ;i have had sleepless nights in wait;i wrote poems upon poem spending every waking moment of my life and time to pen these poems and pieces ;a breach of contract has been commited;and let this not surprise you-i wrote these poems with the mind of settling most of my financial impediments;in all its entirety,every waking and patient moment is torture and prolongs the pain of waiting.In business ,there is a conscience that rules the scope of contracts,and yours is not an exception.i will love it if you can reach me and my friend [name redacted],on this number-[redacted] so you can explain in detail what i did wrong;i hope you are able to reason with me on this level -ok?
call soon!i m waiting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
an angry
[name redacted]

I responded as follows:

Dear [name redacted],

I am sorry to hear that you are disappointed and angry over the fact that I have not accepted any of your work for Lone Star Stories. Unfortunately, this is how the publishing process works. You can submit your work to a particular market and never receive an acceptance. I have sent many stories and poems to markets that have rejected each and every one. A writing career is a hard road; rejection is a constant hazard.

In the case of Lone Star Stories, I never promised you that I would accept your work or entered into a contract to that effect with you. I simply encouraged you to grow as a writer and let you know as best I could what I tend to look for in work that I do accept for Lone Star Stories. If I had accepted any of your work, a contract for publication would have been offered. That did not occur in your case because I did not accept your work.

Your e-mail of today has led me to the following decision: I will no longer consider your work for publication. If you submit any work to me, it will be deleted unread.

Again, I am sorry that you feel the way that you do, and I wish you the best of luck in your writing career.

Sincerely,

Eric T. Marin

P.S. I will not speak with you or anyone else regarding this matter by telephone. If you wish to contact me, you may correspond with me by e-mail or postal mail.

The author then responded soon after with this email:

dear Mr.Marin
i m so sorry about the email you got;i nowrealise it was thework of cranks or hackers.i veworking hard at school and didnt write you any such email.my call to you was to let you know this.pls,forgive
my countrymen's antics-gimme a chance to prove myself ok/
[name redacted]

i m using this email from now on!ok/thank you so sorry about what you
got.

I chose not to respond.

If nothing else, this makes for a good story.