I failed to sell a story this week. Like any writer, I collect rejections, but this one was particularly annoying.

Fortunately, the story “Wake Me Up in Los Angeles” was short. It was written for a call for stories about running out of a limited resource. Inspired by that stupid EV battery meme (You know the one, that was clearly written by a marketing intern at an oil company), I picked lithium as my resource.

The story was about people demonstrating that sodium-ion batteries work just as well for EVs. When I wrote the story, I’d just done a ton of research about the limitations and had gotten the clear message they weren’t ready for prime time.