If Strange Horizons ends up rejecting "Grind" I'm going to submit it to The New Yorker again.

I sent it to them about a year ago and they took the full 3 months to reject it, which I think is a sign they seriously considered it. When in April I got ready to send it out again, I realized the version I had submitted to The New Yorker was the one without the beheading. I made that spectacularly unhorrifying revision for some complicated reason i no longer remember. So before its next submission, I put the beheading back in. Let's face it, it's a better story with the beheading.

"Grind" is such a New York story, about how the city needs all the people who can no longer afford to live here. The New Yorker seems like its natural home. So if Strange Horizons takes a pass, back to The New Yorker it goes.

With the beheading.

By the way, The New Yorker is a Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Qualifying Short Fiction Venue.

As well it should be. I'm sure they do still publish "realistic fiction", or whatever that thing that's not science fiction or fantasy is called, but those are probably the stories that lose me.