Category Archives: Books

Update #1: We have a title

The response to the upcoming cancer anthology has been overwhelmingly positive and wonderful. Thank you all so very much.

I have news. Big news. Exciting news. We have a name! Yay!

The anthology is going to be titled Metastasis

Because we chose a name that was not one of the ones suggested on the Wolfsinger Publications facebook page, Carol is going to hold a draw and award a free copy of the book to a random person who suggested a title for us to chose from. We really do appreciate your suggestions and efforts to help us name this anthology. Good luck to everyone whose name is going in that draw 🙂

Right after we put out the call for submissions emails began arriving in my inbox. Some were submissions but many were from people who just wanted to share their story. To connect. I received emails from cancer survivors and from friends and family members of cancer survivors. I also heard stories about those who had lost the battle, people and pets, who were now gone. Cancer has touched almost everyone in one way or another and it seems to help in the healing process, in understanding and accepting, to share our stories.

I’ve edited Niteblade for a few years now, and this feels quite different from that. Each submission feels like it is coming from a very personal place and most are based on a loss or struggle that is very real and painful for the writer. As the editor of this anthology it’s going to be my job to say no to a lot of submissions, but I promise to give them all the respect and attention they deserve. Also? I will never use a single form letter in responding to you.

It is my intention to read and respond to submissions in small batches as they come in rather than waiting until the submission deadline has passed. It is more efficient for me and it means that if you send us something early on that isn’t quite right you still have time to re-submit if inspiration strikes again. I responded to the first batch yesterday, so if you submitted prior to January 21, 2013 you ought to have heard back from me. If you didn’t, please re-submit.

One thing I noticed while reading through the first batch of submissions is that while the quality of the writing was generally quite high, the majority of the stories and poems submitted were not speculative in nature. Not even a little. Some of those pieces were fantastic and if this were simply a cancer-themed anthology I would have taken them without question, but it’s not. Please make sure that your submissions are speculative in nature. Science fiction / fantasy. I define both genres very widely and welcome all their sub-genres. The important thing is if your story could take place in the world we live in today, and no one would blink an eye or think it odd, it’s not right for this anthology.*

If you have questions, please ask. I won’t bite. Honest.

*With the possible exception of a specifically solicited story or two.

Goals for 2013

W1S1 Year 3 GraphicEach year I like to set myself some concrete goals and share them publicly on my blog. Not only does this give me some sort of vision of what I want to accomplish over the year, it adds a feeling of accountability to help keep me motivated and on track. My goals for 2013 are:

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.

School

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

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

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

Reading

  • Read at least 30 books

Misc

  • 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

Phew! I’m kinda exhausted even just looking at that list, exhausted and excited. I’ve set up some real challenges for myself, but if I manage to pull them off imagine how fantastic a year that will be!

*I know I’ve already accomplished this goal, but I hadn’t when I started mentally composing this list and since I achieved this goal in 2013 I’m still putting it on the list. This is not me putting things on here just so I can cross them off.

 

Call for Submissions: Metastasis

Wolfsinger PublicationsI am incredibly excited to announce that I will be editing a cancer-themed anthology to be published by Wolfsinger Publications 🙂 It will be titled Metastasis.

Call for Submissions

Cancer scares us. It scares us and it intrigues us. There is so much we don’t know about it, but it’s out there, waiting to strike when we least expect it. Cancer is not all-powerful and many people beat it, but to those who don’t cancer is cruel. It doesn’t show them the kindness of a quick death but draws things out, taking their life away in slices.

Metastasis will be a fantasy/sci-fi anthology all about cancer. The stories and poetry included could feature a character with cancer, be written from the point of view of cancer, or even be by someone with cancer. That being said, those which go a step further and dig deeper will be even better.

What if cancer isn’t a disease but an attack on the human race by aliens/demons/monsters/terrorists?

What if it’s sentient?

What if people wanted to get cancer?

What if…?

Cancer is the body turning on itself. It’s uncontrolled growth. It is invisible and indiscriminate. Submissions to this anthology are encouraged to explore metaphorical approaches to this theme as well as literal ones.

Due to the nature of cancer this collection will tend toward the darker side of the speculative fiction spectrum but we don’t want the entire anthology to be gloomy and depressing so the absolute best submissions will find a way to end on a high note, find something to be optimistic about, or evoke an emotion other than (or in addition to) sadness or dread.

A portion of the proceeds from this anthology will be donated to the American Cancer Society.**

The editor for this anthology is Rhonda Parrish.

How to Submit:

Continue reading Call for Submissions: Metastasis

Pre-Order The Best of Vine Leaves Literary Journal 2012

The Best of Vine Leaves Literary Journal 2012 is now available for pre-orders and I think if you pre-order you get your copy at a discount.

From the Emergent Publishing page:

In late 2011, Jessica Bell and Dawn Ius founded Vine Leaves Literary Journal to offer the vignette, a forgotten literary form, the exposure and credit it deserves.

The vignette is a snapshot in words, and differs from flash fiction or a short story in that its aim doesn’t lie within the traditional realms of structure or plot, instead it focuses on one element, mood, character, setting or object.

The journal, published quarterly online, is a lush synergy of atmospheric prose, poetry, photography and illustrations, put together with an eye for aesthetics as well as literary merit. The annual print anthology showcases the very best pieces from across the year.

My piece, “Memories” is included in this collection and I am very much looking forward to reading my copy (which I pre-ordered :-p) as soon as it arrives 🙂

The actual release date in the 10th of December so it’s coming up quickly.

Clicky Clicky for Pre-ordery goodness 🙂

Shades of Green

S was going to be all about the stories I’ve written that were set in Aphanasia and started with the letter S (Shades of Green, Sister Margaret and Shadows) but I’m tired. This month of blogging thing is a lot of work, and combining it with the other two challenges I did was a mistake. So, I’m going to be lazy today. Today S is all about Shades of Green.


Available at Sam’s Dot Bookstore

Shades of Green was a breakthrough for me. It was the first time anything I’d written was published in a physical form where I was the sole author. My work had been included in a few anthologys or collections, but it’s not quite the same as being the only name on the cover. The only person with words on the pages. It’s not a novel though, so while it checked a lot of boxes on my Bucket List, that one is still empty.

The process of publishing this book was an eye-opening one and while the sales weren’t especially exciting, the education was very, very worthwhile 🙂

My back cover text and the endorsement Marge Simon gave the novella are below. If you’re intrigued at all you can click the cover image above and it will take you to a page where you can read the first chapter for free.

Enjoy!

~*~

Z’thandra, the last swamp elf in Aphanasia, lives with the Reptar, a fierce race of lizard-people, most of whom resent her presence and want her gone from their village. When she discovers a human in the swamp and falls in love with him she must face the most difficult decision of her life. Will she pursue a life of happiness with the man she loves and in doing so condemn the Reptar to extinction, or will she chose to sacrifice her future to offer them hope? In the end the choice she makes will affect the Reptar for generations.

“Straight fantasy has to be really good to hold my interest. “Shades of Green” is absolutely excellent! Among the best fantasies I’ve read, a tale that unfolded smoothly and drew me in from the start. You’ll find yourself sincerely concerned for young Z’thandra and her plight. Parrish is one talented writer!”

-Marge Simon, Stoker winner, VECTORS: A Week in the Death of a Planet, 2008.

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter S. If you come by on Monday I’ll be talking about something that begins with the letter T… I have no idea what that will be, but it’ll be T-rific! :-p

Goodreads

Okay, I admit it, the link between the topic of this post and this picture is pretty weak, but it’s the best I could do without actually taking a photo specific for this, and because of procrastinating I just didn’t have time for that. Whee! So, this blog post is going to be about Goodreads which is about books and that’s a picture of a replica of an 1885 Canadian schoolroom. School / Books. It’s the best I could do.

Well, I could have put a Goodreads widget there, but I couldn’t get the formatting to look right. I tried. Honest.

So, about Goodreads. I really like it. I think the main reason for my affection for this particular website is that it makes reading cool. You get to share what you’re reading, what you’ve read, and also your thoughts on each book. You get to use cool little widgets on your website to show off your library or challenge yourself to read a certain number of books every year.

When I first signed up for Goodreads I actually tried to add all the books that I owned to it. I don’t think I made it through more than one bookshelf (we have ten… ish. I can’t remember off-hand and I’m too lazy to get up and count) before I came to my senses. Now I just add books as I’m reading them. I love that Goodreads will share them on my Twitter feed for me, and I usually remember to update my status for #Fridayreads (though I never remember to tag it LOL).

What’s more, Goodreads hosts giveaways. I ran two giveaways of Shades of Green there when we released it, and I’ve also entered to win a great many books. So far I’ve only won four, and unfortunately I didn’t like three of them LOL But still, it’s better to find that out without having to spend any money, right? And happily the people who won Shades of Green (and reviewed it) seemed to like it, so yay!

If you’re not using Goodreads you ought to take a peek and consider it, and if you are, I hope we’re friends there. I don’t usually post on forums, join groups or send out messages, but I do often decide what books I’m going to read based on what my friends are reading and what they’ve enjoyed.

~ My Goodreads Profile ~ Goodreads Giveaways ~ Goodreads Reading Challenge ~

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter G. I’m taking tomorrow off, but if you come by on Monday I’ll be talking about Hobbies.

 

 

Guest Blogger: Jon Pinnock

Are you kidding me? Take a look at that cover right there. How freaking amazing is that? I love it. Seriously. And I know, I know, you can’t judge a book by its cover, but dude! Also, I know Jon and happen to think he’s a pretty awesome guy and a skilled writer, so, ya know, that helps…

Right. I should start at the beginning, I suppose, instead of just sort of gushing randomly.

There’s this guy, right? Named Jonathan Pinnock and he submitted a story to Niteblade. It was a great story and I happily accepted it. I enjoyed working with him and followed him on Twitter. I have since gotten to know him better and consider him a friend.

His novel, Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens was recently released and though I haven’t yet read it (It’s sold out on Amazon.ca at the moment) I am seriously looking forward to it.

When I learned he was doing a blog tour, I invited him to make a stop here. I think Jonathan is my first ever guest blogger on this blog, and what did he chose for his topic? Um, in part, me. O_o

Give it a read and then please check out the links at the bottom, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

 

~*~

Hello everyone. I’m supposed to be here to say a bit to publicise something I’ve written, but I really think I ought to say a bit about Rhonda instead. Because Rhonda is one of a very special bunch of people that keep writers like me going: small press editors.

In case you don’t know, Rhonda edits a Horror and Fantasy magazine called Niteblade. It’s a reasonably challenging publication to get into: according to Duotrope, only 7.5% of submissions get accepted (and you can bet the real figure is considerably lower than that). So for an aspiring writer, to get accepted by Rhonda is pretty encouraging.

Back in 2008, when I was struggling to make my mark on the world, I had stuff published in a number of small press magazines, including Niteblade (with a rather odd bodyswap story called “An Unsuitable Replacement” if I remember correctly). I think a clocked up somewhere between 30 and 40 hits that year, and each publication felt like another step along the very long and twisting road towards becoming a writer.

The editors of magazines like Niteblade aren’t in it for the money. It really is a labour of love. Again, according to Duotrope, rejections are sent out an average of 18.5 days after receipt and acceptances an average of 23.5 days. If you stop to consider the amount of consistent effort required to keep up that quality of turnaround (and also imagine what some of the rejected pieces must actually be like), you realise why so many of these magazines fold. But some of them, like Niteblade, keep going, publishing stuff from the likes of you and me.

So here I am, with my first novel in the shops. It’s called “Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens”, it’s a comic sci-fi sequel to “Pride and Prejudice” and it’s very funny if I say so myself (but I’m kind of biased, I suppose). If you want to read more about how it came to be written and published (by Proxima, an imprint of the extremely respectable Salt Publishing), please do take a look at some of the other posts on this blog tour (check out www.jonathanpinnock.com for more details). For now, I’d just like to salute the heroes of the small presses and thank all the folk out there like Rhonda who keep on doing it for the love. I wouldn’t have got to this point without you guys.

Important stuff about the book: the website for it is at www.mrsdarcyvsthealiens.com and it’s available in all the usual online places (including, amazingly, the Jane Austen Centre Online Giftshop, where they have some signed copies). If you’re in the UK, it’s still on promotion in WHSmith, so you can actually buy it in a high street store. How about that?

~*~

Thank you so much for stopping by Jonathan, and best of luck with Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens and all your future projects 🙂

 

Something Beautiful

A couple years ago Kyle Cassidy paired people up on his blog to work together on something creative. After everyone was partnered up Kyle said ‘Now go and make beautiful things!’. Being the brat that I am, I immediately knew I wanted to do a project titled ‘Something Beautiful’. Luckily for me my partner, Sarah, is also a bit of a brat -and- is into photography.

Things clicked into place for us well at the beginning, but then life stepped in and what was meant to be a 30 day project actually took us more like two years. However, it’s my pleasure to announce that Something Beautiful is finished and ready for release. Whoot!

What is Something Beautiful? I’m so glad you asked 🙂

Sarah sent me a bunch of portraits and I used them to inspire micro-fiction stories. She added my words to her portraits, using the image as a canvas for the words (clever, eh? That was her idea, not mine). We ran into some technical problems though, which meant that only a few of the images have the stories on them — most have them ‘on the side’ (like gravy. Gravy makes good things better, right?). The point is, you get her portraiture photography which is meant to show the beauty in people regardless of size or shape, combined with my, rather dark, micro-fiction. Yay!

Sarah and I agreed that we didn’t want to make any money off this project, but wanted to use it to help others. That means all proceeds from book sales will be donated to the National Eating Disorder Information Centre (http://www.nedic.ca) which works to educate people about eating disorders, body-issues and self-esteem. Helping people see the beauty in themselves and those around them.

You can pick up a copy of Something Beautiful below:

Something Beautiful in downloadable .pdf – $3.50
Something Beautiful in paperback – $14.99

But wait! There’s more!

Sarah and I have discounted the books, 10% off the base cost which means right now you can pick them up for $3.14 and $13.49. What’s more, if you use the coupon code JULYBOOKS11 you should get another 20% off, up to $25. There are savings all around, with all the profits going to a good cause.

Lastly, I would like to thank Kyle for starting the ball rolling on this probject. I never would have met Sarah if it hadn’t been for his blog, and certainly never would have created this book. It was an adventure and I learned a lot over the course of this project’s completion.

Kyle also started the 2xCreative community on Livejournal which is dedicated to collaborative projects. It’s been pretty quiet over there for the last little while, but I’ve participated in a couple pairings there in the past and really enjoyed them. Perhaps, now that Something Beautiful has been released out into the wild, it’s time for me to drop by and stir things up a bit. I hope to see you there.

Giftmas Bookstravaganza!

My family celebrates a secular version of Christmas I’ve taken to calling Giftmas. This year’s Giftmas was very book-centric.

I got:

  • The Hunger Games trilogy
  • Hitchhikers Guide to the Galxay trilogy (I know I should have read it before now, but I haven’t. Don’t judge :-p)
  • Entice by Carrie Jones
  • Dragon Bone by Patricia Briggs
  • Red Hood’s Revenge by Jim C. Hines

Whoot!

I can’t wait to get reading them, though I don’t know where to start. A dear friend of mine, Amber, sent me a crapload of books just before Christmas, and I want to read them too. I need a few more hours in the day, please. That would be fabulous. It’s also fabulous to have so many books I can’t wait to dive into 🙂

In related-to-my-book news I have a new review of Lost and Found to share. Clayton Bye, of The Deepening, reviewed it and he liked it. I liked his review, in fact it made my day yesterday.  Why? Well, in part because he said this:

Parrish represents a fresh and powerful voice in fantasy

*happy dance* How cool is that?

As you may have guessed he mostly liked the story with one notable criticism. The review is right here if you want to read it in its entirety, but be warned, it’s pretty spoilerific. If you don’t like spoilers you may want to wait until you’ve finished the story before popping over.

Speaking of the story, the next chapter will be going up on Monday 😉