I’ve kind of noticed what you said about getting curated in bigger publications right away — I got my first ever curated story earlier this month in Publishous. I found out about it almost immediately. The other stories I’ve written had the “hang tight” message for a while then changed to the one that says the curators didn’t select your story but it is still published. Whatever, as long as I can keep myself out of curation jail I’ll be happy. Of course, I’m still trying to get curated again too….