Category Archives: A to Z Challenge

A to Z Challenge, Pictures

D is for Danica

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DThis year I’m participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge again. I thought it might be fun to share some of my photography instead of always my words. They say a picture is worth–well, you know what they say 😉

I will try to keep these blog posts short and sweet, while still offering a little bit of insight into each photograph, just for fun.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Blogging from A to Z Challenge you can check out these links:

~ What Is The Blogging from A to Z Challenge? ~ Participants ~ My Blogging from A to Z Challenge (2013): All About Niteblade ~ My Blogging from A to Z Challenge (2012): Unthemed ~

D is for Danica. Because of course it is 🙂

Dani modeled for me out in the snow one warm wintery afternoon. This shot was both of our favourites from the day:

All rights reserved by Rhonda Parrish

The conversation preceding this photograph went like this:

Me: Dani, I like the light in your room right now, how about you roll over so I can take your picture.
Dani: *rolls over*
Me: *takes picture* Thank you
Dani: You’re welcome. I’m going to go back to half-sleeping now.

All rights reserved by Rhonda Parrish

Finally, I snapped this one in a parking lot when we were on vacation in Nova Scotia in 2012. It turned out to be one of my favourite shots from the whole trip:

All rights reserved by Rhonda Parrish

(I let Dani choose which pictures I was going to share here, so she wouldn’t be too embarrassed 😉 )

A to Z Challenge, Pictures

C is for Chai Latte

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CThis year I’m participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge again. I thought it might be fun to share some of my photography instead of always my words. They say a picture is worth–well, you know what they say 😉

I will try to keep these blog posts short and sweet, while still offering a little bit of insight into each photograph, just for fun.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Blogging from A to Z Challenge you can check out these links:

~ What Is The Blogging from A to Z Challenge? ~ Participants ~ My Blogging from A to Z Challenge (2013): All About Niteblade ~ My Blogging from A to Z Challenge (2012): Unthemed ~

C is for Chai Latte, like this one I had with Jo after we took a very long walk to get to our favourite coffee place. It might also be for cookie:

All rights reserved by Rhonda Parrish

C is also for cloud… like this one which I love because apparently, at my heart, I’m still 12:

All rights reserved by Rhonda Parrish

It’s also for Camerabag, which is the program I use these days to do 99% of my photo editing. Like in this picture:

All rights reserved by Rhonda Parrish

A to Z Challenge, Pictures

B is for Birds

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BThis year I’m participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge again. I thought it might be fun to share some of my photography instead of always my words. They say a picture is worth–well, you know what they say 😉

I will try to keep these blog posts short and sweet, while still offering a little bit of insight into each photograph, just for fun.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Blogging from A to Z Challenge you can check out these links:

~ What Is The Blogging from A to Z Challenge? ~ Participants ~ My Blogging from A to Z Challenge (2013): All About Niteblade ~ My Blogging from A to Z Challenge (2012): Unthemed ~

B is for Birds:

I love birds. All birds. Whether it’s the sparrows in my front yard,

All rights reserved by Rhonda Parrish

raptors from the Birds of Prey center in southern Alberta,

All rights reserved

or even at the zoo.

Owl All rights reserved by Rhonda Parrish

Ducks are a definite favourite,

All rights reserved by Rhonda Parrish

and I also love pictures with reflections in them 🙂

All rights reserved by Rhonda Parrish

Yay birds!

 

A to Z Challenge, Pictures

A is for Atreyu

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A is for...This year I’m participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge again. I thought it might be fun to share some of my photography instead of always my words. They say a picture is worth–well, you know what they say 😉

I will try to keep these blog posts short and sweet, while still offering a little bit of insight into each photograph, just for fun.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Blogging from A to Z Challenge you can check out these links:

~ What Is The Blogging from A to Z Challenge? ~ Participants ~ My Blogging from A to Z Challenge (2013): All About Niteblade ~ My Blogging from A to Z Challenge (2012): Unthemed ~

A is for Atreyu:

Atreyu. Photograph by Rhonda Parrish. All Rights Reserved

I used to smoke about a pack a day. Quitting was possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life and getting a dog was my reward for that. Tre is that dog.

Photograph by Rhonda Parrish. All rights reserved.

A is also for Absinthe:

Absinthe by Rhonda Parrish. All rights reserved

She doesn’t like posing for photographs as much as Tre does, so I have fewer of them.

 

A to Z Challenge

Blogging from A to Z – Theme Reveal

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A-to-Z-Challenge-theme-reveal

Dudes. It’s a blog hop within a blog hop. It’s so meta I *had* to play along 🙂

This year I’m participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge again. The Blogging from A to Z Challenge is where in the month of April you blog everyday except Sundays, and each blog is meant to have a topic based on a different letter of the alphabet (Kinda like the series of anthologies I’m editing which begins with A is for Apocalypse… and the stories within those anthologies… except, ya know, with blog posts instead of stories…).

Anyway, I digress…

There is a separate little hop which is for people to reveal what their theme for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge is going to be. And that is what this is. Because you’re dying to know what I’m going to be blogging about for all of April, I just know you are :-p

*insert a drum roll here*

This April I’m going to share some of my photographs. Each day I’ll post one or more of my pictures that goes with that day’s letter. I’ll try to be selective (and let’s face it, on some days it’s going to be impossible not to be LoL) but I thought it might be fun to share some pictures instead of words for a little bit. I hope you agree 🙂

If you’re curious to find out what other people’s themes are going to be, you can check out a list of people who are revealing their themes at the Theme Reveal Blogfest.

A is for Apocalypse, A Month of Letters, A to Z Challenge, Books, Editing, Fae, Goals, Hollow, Metastasis, Niteblade, Poetry

Goals for 2014

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Each year, like so many other people, I see the changing of the calendar as the perfect time to look back over the past twelve months and set goals for the next ones. It’s super helpful to me and I look back at my goals over and over during the year, whenever I feel myself going off course… They help keep me focused on the things I want to do, motivated when depression decides to rear its ugly head, and give me things to celebrate when I achieve them. Also? Posting them publicly helps make me feel accountable to someone (that would be you lol) and serves as motivation for the thing that is my motivation. Whee!

Because these goals are so integral to my life, I set them in a lot of categories, not just writing. It seems like a lot, but it works for me.

Health

  • No drinking pop. Period.
  • Lose 20 lbs
  • Lower blood pressure (bonus points if I get to reduce my medication)
  • Run 5k

School

  • This degree is taking a ridonkulously long time. I need to finish another course toward completing it this year. Bonus points if I manage two, but it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that this is honestly more of a hobby than anything and it must not negatively effect my work.

Editing / Publishing

  • Complete Fae and promote the hell out of it.
  • Pursue other anthology ideas
    • I am really, really, really enjoying editing anthologies right now and I’d like to have at least one more under contract with a publisher by the end of 2014.
  • Increase promotion efforts for Metastasis
    • I need to come up with a way to set actual concrete goals for promotion. Not only for Fae and Metastasis, but everything I edit and/or publish. Oh hey!
  • Figure out a way to set concrete goals for promotion. Set concrete goals for promotion.
  • Hold a successful fundraiser for Niteblade
  • Produce a NaNoLJers anthology if interest exists
  • Publish and promote A is for Apocalypse
  • Solicit writers for B is for (haha not telling yet!) and begin that process
  • Continue to edit and publish Niteblade, keeping it something I can be very proud of.
  • Complete the edits on Grammy’s book

Writing

2014 is the year of the novel. It is because I say it is, damn it!

  • Complete the novel currently known as ‘Hollow’
    • By ‘complete’ I mean have that sucker ready to start querying agents about
  • Complete the first draft of at least two other novels
    • One of these may be one of my pen name projects
  • Self-publish the zombie poetry book and complete my other plans for it
  • Write 350 words a day, five days a week. So 1,750 words a week.
    • Yes. A week. It’s not huge, but I’ve got a lot of other stuff on this list, damn it! :-p
  • Bundle up and self-publish more of my reprints
  • Complete sekkrit collaborative project
  • Participate in NovPAD and/or April PAD
  • Anything with the word ‘NaNo’ in the title is optional
    • …except NaNoLJers. Set up prompts for odd-numbered Mondays

Reading

  • Read at least 50 books.
    • Have 25% be non-fiction

Misc

  • Create a publishing website (company name, etc. but only to publish my own projects.)
  • Participate in A Month of Letters
  • Do the Blogging from A to Z Challenge
  • Blog at least once a week
  • Shoot at least one roll of analog film per month
  • Finish the ship cross stitch I started *mumble* years ago
  • Complete the top of the quilt I’m doing in memory of my mother and post it on JoFigure
  • Attend at least two writing conventions

Looking forward, with these goals to help me define the trail, I am really looking forward to 2014. I hope it builds on the momentum that developed in 2013 and just keeps getting better.

ETA: Some goals under Misc.

A is for Apocalypse, A Month of Letters, A to Z Challenge, Aphanasian Stories, April PAD, Books, Fae, Goals, Hollow, Metastasis, NaNoWriMo, Niteblade, NovPad, Personal, W1S1

Looking Back at 2013

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Rearview -- Photo by Rhonda ParrishWhat a year. To say it’s been exponentially better than last year would be a huge understatement, but at the same time, it’s been far from perfect. It’s that time again when I look over my goals, see how well I did, celebrate the good things and figure out how to fail better at the others next year.

I’ll list my goals for 2013 below, bolding the ones I figure I accomplished and addressing each briefly. I don’t want to turn this into a novel-length blog post 😉

Health

  • Lose 25lbs
  • Successfully complete the P90x program (I’m giving myself permission to swap Cardio X workouts in for Plyometric ones because I worry about my ankle and also, I’m a bit of a wussy)
  • No energy drinks
  • Significantly cut the amount of sugar in my diet. I have a complicated set of rules for this for myself, but I don’t want to bore everyone with sharing them.

Right. So I totally fell down on pretty much all my health goals (though I mostly managed to avoid Red Bull).  I’m not even sure what happened to tell the truth, I just never managed to get back into the habit of working out and watching what I ate. This needs to be my primary focus for next year though because if I’m unhealthy everything else falls apart too. I may need help remembering that over the coming months though, so I’ll have to figure out a way to address that when I set my goals for 2014.

School

  • Begin another course (or two) toward my degree no later than April 1st and complete it/them successfully.

I took Psychology 304 – Research Methods in Psychology (which is required for my degree) and passed it with a B+. A very irritating B+. I was point five percent away from an A. >_<

Editing/Publishing

  • Sell my cancer anthology idea to a publisher.*
  • Edit the cancer anthology, making sure the end result is something I am proud of.
  • Promote the hell out of the anthology, ensuring that there actually are royalties to donate to charity.
  • Continue to pursue my sekkrit projeckt with CJD
  • Increase Niteblade’s readership and distribution
  • Begin offering Niteblade in more file formats
  • Hold a successful fundraiser for Niteblade
  • Produce a NaNoLJers anthology if sufficient interest exists

Metastasis Cover FinalI sold the Metastasis anthology idea to Wolfsinger Publications and edited the hell out of that thing. I am *SO* freaking proud of this book. So proud, and my mother (who I dedicated my efforts to) would be as well. We’re still in the process of ‘promoting the hell out of it’ and our first statements haven’t come out so I’m not sure how sales are going yet. Fingers crossed though… and if they aren’t where we want them to be, well, I guess I’ll just have to put some more time in.

This year I did increase Niteblade’s readership, distribution and the number of file formats it is available in. We also held a super successful fundraiser (raising $604!) and even adopted a chimpanzee.

While I did check to see if there was interest in a NaNoLJers anthology, there didn’t seem to be. Maybe next year… And my sekkrit projekt kind of got left behind a bit this year, but maybe that’s something I can look to a little closer in 2014 as well because I sure wasn’t slacking when it came to editing projects this year.

In addition to Metastasis and Niteblade, I’m also working on an anthology with World Weaver Press. You may have heard of it, it’s this little thing I like to call Fae. And I also broke ground on the first of what is going to be a huge series of anthologies, A is for Apocalypse.

Writing

  • Participate in The Whittaker Prize
  • Successfully complete the weekly version of Write 1 Sub 1. For the ‘Write’ portion of this challenge I will count completed short stories or poems as well as individual scenes from longer works. By allowing myself to count individual scenes I will be able to work on longer works and still participate in W1S1
  • Participate in Writo De Mayo
  • NaNoWriMo and both camp NaNoWriMos are all optional
  • Finish writing poems for all the 2012 NovPad prompts
  • Actually successfully complete the AprilPad or NovPad properly, without having to make up prompts after the month has passed
  • Self-publish “Aphanasian Stories”
  • Look into the practicality of bundling and re-releasing some of my previously published short stories as ebooks
  • Follow through on my 2012 plans for my zombie poetry

Tesseracts 17Well, you win some you lose some, right?

For example, I participated in The Whittaker Prize (well, this year’s incarnation was the Not-Whittaker Prize) but when it carried over into November, when I was trying to do All.The.Things including NaNoWriMo I decided to drop out for my own sanity. I was successful with NaNoWriMo however… but then I totally haven’t written another word on my novel (which needs about 30,000 more of them) since then. >_<

I did participate in Writo De Mayo where my primary goal was to transcribe a family history my grandmother had written and format it as a book to give to her. I did, and she loved it very much making the month’s worth of work well, well, worth the effort. (Alas, now she has edited the proof copy so guess what I’m doing in May 2014? LOL).

I also self-published Aphanasian Stories. Sales have been pretty lame (read: nearly non-existent) but I’m glad those stories are out there and available to an audience who might want them, if not today, perhaps tomorrow. Plus, the reviewers seem to like them, so that’s good for my ego 🙂

I’m looking at bundling some of my other previously published short stories to re-sell as ebooks but right now I don’t have enough which aren’t under contract that have common themes, so that’s something I’ll have to look at again next year.

As for the zombie poetry collection? It’s a work in progress. Hopefully I’ll have something to show for it before the end of the year, but I don’t want to rush through and create an inferior product. Because.

Under the writing umbrella for 2013 I’ve had a fantastic year. I’ve produced some stories I’m really, super proud of, and many of them have found homes with dream publishers. Highlights definitely include being published by Tesseracts 17: Speculating Canada from Coast to Coast, work forthcoming in Kzine, Mythic Delirium and the Trafficking in Magick anthology, poetry publications with Every Day Poets and especially the story I co-wrote with Jo for Masked Mosaic: Canadian Super Stories.

Reading

  • Read at least 30 books

As of today I’ve read 47 published books. I’ve also been privileged enough to read one soon-to-be published book as a critiquer and a couple anthologies I may have mentioned above. I also read a crapload of short stories as submissions to Niteblade and those anthologies, so overall I think I crushed this goal 😉

A Month of LettersMisc

  • Participate in A Month of Letters
  • Do the Blogging from A to Z Challenge (bonus points if I come up with a theme this year)
  • Blog at least once a week
  • Take a social media retreat for one week a month all year
  • Attend WorldCon 2012 in Texas
  • Post writing prompts/exercises in NaNoLJers on odd numbered Mondays
  • Run and participate in the writing bingo in NaNoLJers
  • Don’t forget that life is for living, not leveling

I did well on these ones 🙂 Sadly I didn’t make it to WorldCon, we had some unexpected expenses that needed to be dealt with (stoopid money) and I kinda sucked at putting prompts up for NaNoLJers but other than that I rocked the goals in this area. My month of letters was a lot of fun and I still write to several of the people I met that month (in addition to the friends I’ve always written to — I’ve fallen behind on that, but working on catching up. Let’s blame a crazy autumn, okay?), I did the Blogging from A to Z Challenge with a theme (Niteblade), ran the writing bingo at NaNoLJers and significantly cut back on the amount of time I spend playing World of Warcraft.

My social media retreats have gone very well, except for during the times when I’m in the midst of a promotion or such and need to pop on at least once a day because of that. I think next year I’m going to set a daily time limit for social media stuff rather than trying to avoid it completely for one week of the month. I think it will be better for consistency and also my sanity. Taking a break has definitely been good for my productivity though, and my state of mind. It’s really easy to get caught in a loop when every time something happens you think ‘I need to tweet this!’ Stepping away regularly definitely helped me shift my perspective and live a more balanced life. And that’s what it’s all about, right?

In the next little while I’ll look at my goals for 2014 and share those here, but in the meantime I think I’m going to bask a little bit in the glow of a year which, while it wasn’t perfect, was pretty damn good.

A to Z Challenge, Niteblade

Z: Zee End

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Well this is it. The end of the challenge. Thank gawd. I really took on too much this month and I will be very happy to see it come to an end. It was fun but… yeah… sanity will be nice too 🙂

The Niteblade fundraiser has been a success. As of the time of my writing this we’ve passed our goal of $500 and are pretty close to achieving the stretch goals I set for the $600 mark. I learned a lot about running a fundraiser (which builds on what I learned last year) and I’m looking forward to putting it into effect in 2014 (#1 lesson being two months is too long LOL).

I started a giveaway back on letter D and the winners are David and Teresa. I will contact you shortly to get the address to send your copy of our poetry issue to. I hope you’ll enjoy it 🙂

Thank you everyone for coming on this alphabetic journey with me and for your support of Niteblade. You’re awesome.

A to Z Challenge, Niteblade

Y: Yergen, Amy: Handspun

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HandspunI love fairy tales, and Handspun by Amy Yergen definitely has that fairy tale flavour. In addition to being a fantastic short story it made me want to learn how to spin my own wool for crocheting LOL

~*~

A2Z-2013-BADGE-001Small_zps669396f9This post has been written as a part of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. My theme this year is ‘Niteblade‘, which is the magazine I publish. I chose this theme to help draw attention to the magazine during this, it’s 2nd annual fundraiser.

My first post in this series was about choosing stories and poems to nominate for awards and I’ve gone through a similar process in deciding what to write about for these posts. Not only did I have to choose stories and poems I loved, but they also had to fit with the A-Z theme. Tricky!

 

A to Z Challenge, Niteblade

X: Issue #10

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Lost InnocenceOver the years Niteblade has published three print issues. I’d love to do more but they are expensive. Sadly, it’s not even really the printing part that’s expensive, it’s the shipping part. Sending a copy of a print anthology to each contributor can cost $20. Multiply that by 15 or 20 contributors and we begin to reach numbers that I just can’t afford. It adds up quickly.

That’s not to say we won’t do more in the past. I love print issues so anything is possible, especially if our fundraiser continues to be awesome but, well, they are tricky.

Our first print issue was the one you see to the left there, Lost Innocence. That was issue #5. Issue #10, as you can tell by the subject of this blog post, was also a print issue. We called that one Nothing to Dread and it had a Christmas flavour to it. Lastly, our special poetry issue. That was my first attempt at using a printer who wasn’t POD and it was less expensive for me, but did result in a box of books in my closet.

I’m giving away copies of the poetry issue, you can see all about it here. As for the other two, well, I recently decreased their base price over at Lulu and added a 20% discount on top of that. That means you can pick up a copy of either for $7.99. If you combine that with one of Lulu’s frequent discounts you may manage to save even more.

And now, just so this blog doesn’t feel like one giant advertisement and because they are awesome, a duck!

Duck - photograph by Rhonda Parrish

~*~

A2Z-2013-BADGE-001Small_zps669396f9This post has been written as a part of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. My theme this year is ‘Niteblade‘, which is the magazine I publish. I chose this theme to help draw attention to the magazine during this, it’s 2nd annual fundraiser.

My first post in this series was about choosing stories and poems to nominate for awards and I’ve gone through a similar process in deciding what to write about for these posts. Not only did I have to choose stories and poems I loved, but they also had to fit with the A-Z theme. Tricky!