My First Publication in Miracle E-zine

Today is a great day for me. My poem The Great Mansion is published in fifth issue of Miracle E-zine. This is my first international foot print. Wohooo! This has made my work known globally. 

Link to read the issue: Miracle E-zine: Issue Five, April 2013. This magazine is currently for sale. Click 'Preview' and turn to Page 5, you will see my name listed under Poetry. Click here to go to Miracle e-zine

Here is how it all started. Two months ago, Melissa Fry Beasley, editor at Churn Magazine, contacted me when she visited my blog. She is already a published poet. Her first words of encouragement were:

Your poems are good enough to get them published in poetry magazines 

and gave me a long list of websites, which are essentially online magazines/journals looking for poetry submissions in their upcoming issues. And I also wanted a greater audience for my work to be showcased. Her words drove me to start looking into the sites right away. So I am indebted to her forever. I would have never known about this publishing world (apart from my blog) if she hadn't contacted me.

Most of the online magazines (e-zines) don't accept previously published work. So I searched hard for magazines which considers them. I read submission guidelines of each of the sites that showed up in search results. And then there was this Miracle E-zine. It accepted previously published work. So I wasted no time is submitting four of my poems. I wasn't too hopeful about my poems getting accepted but it was worth a shot. I got a reply from the editor a week later saying:

Thank you for sending your work to our magazine. I was really pleased to read your work and "The Great Mansion" has been put up on the short list for the magazine's fifth issue which will come in April

I was overwhelmed by this reply. I kept my fingers crossed. On 31st March, I got another reply congratulating me that my poem has made it to the final list and is selected to be published in the fifth issue of the magazine. I screamed with great joy! I called up my family and friends to share this news. And now that its finally out, I thank you so much for your support and inspiration in keeping me going in delivering better.