Black Library Short Story Submission

What feels like a long time ago (March 2016, to be precise), I decided to try my luck at entering the Black Library Short Story Submission round. I got through the "pitch" stage very quickly -- Black Library readily got back to me with that information within 1 week. But then there's been a very long wait to reveal the news that I half-expected: my pitch is now not being carried forward. Readers might be interested in the wording of the email that I received. It is as follows:

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"Hi,

Thank you for your submission to Black Library, and for your patience so far in waiting for a response, it is very much appreciated.

This year we received many hundreds of submissions, and getting to the second stage of the assessment was a great achievement.

Unfortunately, this time we have decided that we will not be taking your pitch forward. We appreciate that you may want feedback, however due to the volume of applications we have received providing feedback to everyone is not possible.

Once again, we thank you for your submission and patience, and wish you all the best in your future writing endeavours.

Kind regards,

The Black Library Author Team"

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I will therefore take some solace from this. I think I certainly did well to reach the stage that I did, and I will re-focus for the next round whenever it occurs. Logically: just because you're rejected once doesn't mean you're doing badly. Heck, I might well have been in the proverbial noise, or just a very close runner up, given the time scales involved. Being downselected to this stage means I'm at least doing some things right!