Category Archives: Just Stuff

Just my babbling, website related stuff — or whatever doesn’t fit in the other categories ;)

A is for Apocalypse, Fae, Just Stuff, Niteblade, Poetry, Published, Recognition, Writing

Award Eligibility Schtuff

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Vanity - Photograph by Rhonda Parrish

It’s that time of year. Where we share the work we did in the previous year which is eligible for awards. This is, for me, an awkward process that always feels a little vain, but I recognise that it is my job and it’s important, so I do it anyway 🙂

Besides, who knows, right?

I published a fair number of things last year, and I am happy to provide copies of it all to anyone who is eligible to nominate or vote for any of the major awards (including, because I am Canadian, the Prix Aurora Awards). If you’re interested in that email me at rhonda@jofigure.com 🙂

Being human, however, I do have a few favourites I would especially like to bring to your attention, and pieces with an asterisk are my favourite, favourite. I’m allowed to have those because I said :-p

Short Story


Seedpaper (3,400 words)*

Published by Mythic Delirium in April 2014 and then again in the Mythic Delirium anthology which earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly this story was described as being fairy tale-esque, which made me happy.

…when you got down to the marrow of it, she was a storyteller. She created her own paper, beautiful stuff that was strung through with coloured fibers and peppered with seeds and blossoms. She wrote on it, her hand as elaborate as the paper and reminiscent of medieval scribes. She would often sew the pages together, creating books that she lined up, spines out, along her mantle. Sometimes though, she’d bury them by moonlight in her garden—

The Other Side of the Door (2,700 words)
Published by Kzine in January 2014. This is a ghost story I wrote while on vacation in Nova Scotia and it has been described as being haunting and heartbreaking. Two awesome things for a ghost story to be, right?

The boat was carried in on the back of the fog.
Growing up on the bay, Aric had seen boats slip through fog plenty of times, he’d even been on a few of them. They were nothing new or unusual for him, and yet—there was something about the shape in the mist, about this particular vessel. He leaned closer and pressed his forehead against the glass…

 

 

Poetry


Matches (13 lines)*

Published by Ruminate Magazine in August 2014. This poem isn’t speculative, which is problematic for me since most of the poetry awards I know are speculative, but it is my favourite poem, maybe ever.

She liked their straight lines, / bright red tips. / The sulfur taste / on her tongue…

Hereditary Delusions (32 lines)
Published by Every Day Poets in February 2014. The speculative angle is subtle, but it’s there if you look for it 😉

I thought he’d come / from light years away, / that the dust was residue / from the Big Dipper…

 

 

Editing (Anthologies / Related Work)


Fae (17 short stories about fairies)
Published by World Weaver Press in July 2014

“The Fae prove treacherous allies and noble foes in this wide-ranging anthology from Rhonda Parrish that stretches boundaries of folk tale and legend. These fairy stories are fully enmeshed in the struggles of today, with dangerous beings from under the hills taking stances against the exploitation of children and the oppression of women, yet offering bargains in exchange for their aid that those in desperate need had best think twice about accepting. There’s no Disney-esque flutter and glitter to be found here — but there are chills and thrills aplenty.” — Mike Allen, author of Unseaming and editor of Clockwork Phoenix

A is for Apocalypse (26 short stories about the apocalypse)
Published by Poise and Pen Publishing (me) in August 2014

“In A is for Apocalypse, the world ends in both fire and ice–and by asteroid, flood, virus, symphony, immortality, the hands of our vampire overlords, and crowdfunding. A stellar group of authors explores over two dozen of the bangs and whispers that might someday take us all out. Often bleak, sometimes hopeful, always thoughtful, if A is for Apocalypse is as prescient as it is entertaining, we’re in for quite a ride.” – Amanda C. Davis, author of The Lair of the Twelve Princesses

 

 

Editing (Fan Publication)


Niteblade Magazine
We published four issues last year (in March, June, September and December) all filled with fantasy and horror short stories, poems and art.

“The haunted, wonderful stories and poems published by Niteblade are often unsettling and strange but always utterly fantastic. I look forward to every new issue and I am honored that my work has been a part of it.” – Brittany Warman

(I won’t pick a favourite favourite from my edited works)

 

This year I can nominate and vote only for the Prix Aurora Awards, World Fantasy and Dwarf Star awards (I think). I will be keeping my eyes out for blog posts like this one, listing peoples eligible work, but if you’re afraid I might miss something you’d like me to consider, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or drop me a line.

Goals, Just Stuff, Thoughts

2014 Year in Blogging

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Jetpack, one of the add-ons I use on my blog, compiled a ‘Year in Blogging’ thingy for me. I could have shared the whole thing here but meh, there was a lot of stuff on there no one but me would care about. There was, however, some bits I thought might be interesting to you as well.

Like this:

Posting Patterns

Actually, that may be a bad example LOL Could be I’m actually the person most likely to think this is cool… but c’mon, this is cool! It shows the days I posted blogs last year (the darker green dots are where I had more than one post that day). In 2014 I made 179 new posts. A pretty high percentage of them were guest blogs (more this year than in any year before) but still… that’s a lot of blogging for someone who is always complain/bragging about how busy she is LOL

This is where my visitors have come from:

From Where

102 countries! Holy freaking hell. That is so awesome 🙂 It looks like for most of those countries I only had one visitor*, but you know what? I’ll take it LOL

This is the thing I thought was pretty interesting. For two reasons. The first is because it’s fun to see which posts people want to read (looks like calls for submissions mostly… which I guess means most of my visitors are writers. No surprise there ;)). The other reason it’s interesting is because of what it says about comments.

Take a look:

MostViewed

#1 on that list, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was a sorta review of Neil Gaiman’s book of the same name. When I tweeted a link to it, he retweeted it (*squee* Neil-freaking-Gaiman retweeted me!) so it’s not exactly a surprise that would be the most visited link on my blog last year. What did surprise me, was the fact no one commented. That got me thinking. I don’t get many comments on my posts just in general. At least, not *on* the blog itself LOL I get responses on Twitter and Facebook so I know people are reading and reacting to what I share but comments on the blogs are really rare with the exception of my B is for Brainstorming post, which has 50 comments on it (half of them are mine, I think LoL but still…).

I think the thing is I don’t tend to end my posts with anything that deliberately and specifically calls for replies from my readers. I plan to work on that for 2015.

I’m also going to try to be better about reciprocating visits to my blog. I’m not super awesome at that. No excuses. I’m just not. That is also on my ‘Work on that!’ list for 2015.

I’ll be making a ‘Goals for 2015’ post in the near future (next week, I think), so I’m pondering these sorts of things a lot this year. Have you already made your goals for next year? What are they? I have some ideas of what I want to set as goals for next year, but perhaps yours will help spark something in my brain.

Also, do you have a ‘Year in Blogging’ or even a ‘Year in Review’ blog post? Link me, I’d love to see it 🙂 For real. These are the kinds of numbers I like LOL

*And I happen to know the visitor from one of those countries got blocked on account of they were trying to hack my blog LOL But ya know… everything counts, right? LOL

Just Stuff, Writing

Advent Ghosts 2014 – A Million Pieces

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Bowl of Ornaments

A Million Pieces

They say it’s the things which drove you crazy that you miss the most. I never much believed it myself. Not until I lost you.

It’s been a year now. And what a year. A year of rehab and therapy, lawyers and courtrooms. A year of firsts.

My first surgery. First steps without my walker. First birthday without you. First day back in our apartment, alone. First night—

So many things you could have counted. So. Many.

It used to frustrate me so much, your counting, but my love was deeper than my irritation so I stayed. Stayed though you counted every Cheerio in your bowl. All the bowls in the cupboard. Every spoon.

I loved you enough to stay though you counted your pills six times a day. And when you stopped taking them? I stayed then too.

I spent our last Valentine’s Day dressed up, crying and watching you crawl across the floor in your suit picking up each Q-tip from the Costco-sized box I’d spilled and counting, counting, counting.

I stayed through all that, yet you let a drunk driver tear you from me. One. One car. One driver. One crash.

Christmas was always your favourite holiday, and I’m celebrating in style in honour and remembrance of you. I’ve baskets full of Christmas balls scattered throughout the house, festive decorations, and the tree is up and decorated. I think you’d approve. The lights twinkling on it are reflected in the glass globes which adorn it and nearby the fireplace snaps and pops. Outside, snow is falling, piling up in the corners of our windows, and my want for you is so intense it’s nearly a physical thing.

I stare out at the city. From this high all I see is a sea of lights piecing the darkness. Like stars.

I look up, then, expecting to be disappointed; star-watching and snowfall so rarely go together, but through a clearing in the clouds, just to the left of the moon, one star gleams. It’s super bright and though I don’t know its name or if it’s a part of a constellation, I’d bet it’s one sailors use to navigate. To find their way back home.

I close my eyes.

I make a wish.

When I open them, something has changed. Not outside. The moon and star are still there, snow still falls and below steams of red taillights still move alongside the blue-white of halogen headlights.

I shift my focus from beyond the window, to its glass. The change is in here. With us. The window reflects the room back at me. Tree, fireplace, me…and you.

Your reflection is as solid as mine. Distorted ever so slightly by the flaws in the glass, but distinctly you. Your shaggy hair. Your hipster glasses. Your mouth which moves, your voice I hear.

“I missed you—” You reach for me. You reach for me and I panic and grab the basket of Christmas balls from the window ledge beside me. The wicker is hard against my fingers, unforgiving. I turn it upside down, pour out the balls which tumble over one another, and onto the floor.

You stop. Your graze drops to the floor, then back up to mine, reflected in the window.

“I—” you begin, then stop and chew on the corner of your pinky finger’s nail. My chest clenches at the sight, so familiar.

Your indecision is a vacuum sucking all the air from the room, slowing the tick-tock of the clock on the mantle until each sound is a long, drawn-out scream. I can’t move. Can’t breathe. My eyes burn, but I cannot cry.

“One,” you say, kneeling down and disappearing from my sight. “Two—”

I exhale. The grip on my chest loosens and the clock resumes its natural rhythm.

“Three, four…”

How many balls were there? A dozen? More?

Too few. Too few.

I step back and white heat rips through my heel as the ball crunches beneath it.

Blood stains the milky glass shards, drips from my foot to the hardwood. You reach for a piece, a shard, “Five, six, seven…”

A sob catches in my throat and I snatch a ball from the tree. It’s blue and glittery, the surface rough against my palm. I remember picking it out with you in the antique store we stopped at on our way home from the local theatre’s production of A Christmas Carol three years ago. You’d grinned at me then, so big I could see the gap between your bottom teeth, and your eyes shone with love. It was a perfect moment in a perfect day.

How many more of those days could we have had?

“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty—”

How many were stolen from me?

“Twenty-four, twenty-five—”

…from us?

“Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine—”

I hurl it with all my strength so it shatters. I rip the next from the fir’s branches and smash it too. And the next, and the next.

I scream out my anger. I sob out my sorrow. My blood mixes with the fragments of memory spreading across the floor and woven through it all, your voice. Implacable. Counting.

“Three thousand four hundred and two, three thousand four hundred and three—”

 

**

Last year I participated in Loren Eaton’s Advent Ghosts event where authors write spooky tales and share them and enjoyed the challenge enough I decided to make it a holiday tradition.

We’re actually supposed to write 100 word stories, but last year my story was just over 600 words and this year it’s just under 900 so apparently I suck at that part LOL Still, I hope you enjoyed it.

Loren will be linking to a lot of people’s Advent Ghost stories tomorrow from his blog and you should pop over and read some of the work by people who know how to follow the rules. I had to post this early because the 19th (when we were supposed to post) is a Fae-tastic Friday and I try not to have more than one blog entry per day.

TL;DR — Check out Loren Eaton’s Advent Ghosts

Just Stuff, Personal, Thoughts

Dear Santa (2014)

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Santa

It has become a Giftmas tradition on my blog for me to write a wishlist of gifts I’d like Santa to bring me. To be super clear, I’m not asking any of you to buy these things for me… well, with the possible exception of Jo LoL I just like making wishlists 🙂

Dear Santa,

I have worked really hard this year and been (pretty) good on top of that. I feel confident I ought to be on your Nice list, anyway. So with that in mind, this year for Giftmas I would like:

  • A white board. Not a huge one, I just want something to keep better track of anthology deadlines (ones I want to submit to and ones I’m editing LOL) and have it easily visible. Originally I wanted a chalkboard but Jo was like ‘Gah! Dust!’ so… white board?
  • As you probably know, I drink a lot of tea. I do not, however, wash a lot of dishes. I’d like the “Art Harder Mother Fucker” mug from Chuck Wendig for when my favourite mugs arLise Watiere dirty. It probably goes without saying that I’d like the larger size, but just in case…
  • I’m not following WWE as closely as I was last year, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still like their swag. I really love Dolph’s new shirt,  AJ’s shirt, and pretty much all of Dean Ambrose and Roman Reigns’ clothes (except the women’s tee shirts because they always rip right away).
  • Lise Watier’s winter collection this year is amazing. I’d be especially grateful to see the Teal Iridescent eyeshadow in my stocking. Though really, anything from that collection aside from the lip colours (bleh) would find a very good home with me 🙂
  • I’m nearly out of the notebooks I prefer to write my first drafts in, if you’d be willing to help me restock that would be awesome. My preferred type are the ‘Journals’ with the fake leather covers from Winnable.com because awesome.
  • I’m always open to new books, more music and Dragon Age: Inquisition looks like a lot of fun (even though I still haven’t played DA: 2. But whatever.)
  • This year my favourite charity thing (because Niteblade is regularly donating to Save the Chimps and Fauna Foundation) is the Girls’ Take Home Rations from Plan. Awesome idea.
  • Oh, and Santa, you know how three years ago I said, “I could also really use some baseboards and riser thingers for my bathroom and kitchen. If we don’t finish them up soon they are just going to blend into the background and we’ll never get them done.” Well… we have some of the riser thingers (one is even installed!) but as for those baseboards… can ye help me out, dude?

Love,

Rhonda

 

And now, because it has also become a tradition, Tim Minchin everyone:

 

A is for Apocalypse, Just Stuff

G is for Giftmas

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It’s the season of giving, so I’m marking down A is for Apocalypse (because books make good gifts, yo!)

A is for Apocalypse edited by Rhonda Parrish, cover design by Jonathan Parrish

“In A is for Apocalypse, the world ends in both fire and ice-and by asteroid, flood, virus, symphony, immortality, the hands of our vampire overlords, and crowdfunding. A stellar group of authors explores over two dozen of the bangs and whispers that might someday take us all out. Often bleak, sometimes hopeful, always thoughtful, if A is for Apocalypse is as prescient as it is entertaining, we’re in for quite a ride.”

– Amanda C. Davis, author of The Lair of the Twelve Princesses

On sale now at:

CreateSpace (paperback) –> $17.99 $14.99
[Use promo code TY6D2CWD for a further 10% off]

Smashwords (electronic copies) –> $6.99
[Use promo code FC62Z to take $2 off]

Amazon (paperback) –> $17.99 $14.99

Kobo (electronic copies) –> $4.99
[on sale until January 4th]

Amazon and Kobo are being a little slow in updating, so if they aren’t showing the sale price refresh the page. If they still aren’t showing it, I apologize. They should soon.

Goals, Hollow, Just Stuff, NaNoWriMo, NovPad

To-Do List (Sorta)

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Like most people I know, the past couple months have been pretty much a total blur for me. A blur of mostly good things, but still a blur. Not only does time move faster the closer and closer I get to my 40th birthday, but the amount of projects on my plate this autumn/winter was (frankly) obscene. Also mostly good, but an obscene number of them. One of the side effects of that was that I wasn’t writing. I was reading, editing, transcribing, formatting, organizing, shortlisting, etc. etc. but not writing.

Which, since I like to call and think of myself as a writer, was kind of a problem.

So last week I made a spontaneous decision to take this week off all of that and write. I even announced it on Facebook to make it all official-like. As you do.

That means this week I’m not reading Corvidae submissions, not editing stories for A is for Apocalypse, not looking at proofs for the December issue of Niteblade (though I’ll send them out to contributors when they come in LoL), not whatever-ing. I’m just writing.

But, me being me, I needed concrete goals or I’d spend the week meandering from thing to thing and not actually getting anything done.

Ta-da!

To Do

My primary goal for the week is actually the 10,000 words I need to write to be successful with my MicroWriMo goals but the To Do list is which projects, specifically, those words are going to come from*.

The ‘To Do’ section of this list is made up of the projects which have been in-progress for the longest time or, for whatever reason, are feeling like they are high-priority to me right now. The bonus/rewards are the more fun and/or less urgent things I’ve got on my radar. The way this system is going to work, each time I finish something on my “To Do” list I can either do another project on the To Do list (if I’m feeling uber productive) or I can choose something from the Bonus/Rewards section.

I am not crazy. I don’t expect to get this list done. I don’t expect to get even a quarter of this list done. I would really like to cross three things off the ‘To Do’ part. We’ll see if I can pull that off, but mostly it’s the 10k words that matters. And writing.

Anyway, at the end of the week I’ll post an update and we’ll see how I’ve done. Hopefully this public accountability will help keep me on track a bit 🙂

*Somewhat randomly, when I’m writing poetry while simultaneously dealing with a word count goal I count each poem I write as a minimum of 100 words because I find picking precisely the right words for a poem takes a lot more time and effort than the quantity of those words accounts for.

Guest Blogger, Just Stuff, Personal, Thoughts

Holiday Traditions

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December is creeping ever nearer and I thought it might be fun to spend it sharing holiday traditions on my blog.

To that end I’m asking my friends and readers (that means you) to write a guest blog about your holiday traditions and email it to me at rhonda@jofigure.com by December 1st. What I’m hoping is that I’ll get a really nice selection of posts talking about New Year’s (Chinese and otherwise), Christmas, Giftmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Solstice and especially anything I missed.

Other than that the posts/stories you share be true and be about the winter holidays the door is pretty much wide open on these blog posts.

Want to give away a book or use them to pimp one of your ongoing projects? Please do.

Rather share a holiday story from your childhood? Yes please!

Feel like telling us all what you’re doing this year? Sounds awesome.

If you have any questions or concerns about details drop me a line (Here, there, anywhere we connect) and please consider contributing.

As my youngest niece (quoting a big purple dinosaur) has been known to say, “Sharing is caring.” so let’s do a little of both, and have some fun along with it.

C’mon… you know you wanna!

😉

ETA: Okay, we’re going to relax the ‘The story you share needs to be true’ rule with one exception — if you’re a writer you can also choose to share a story about one of your character’s winter holidays. Because why not? 🙂

 

iStock_000008026115Large

B is for Broken, Just Stuff

Wanted: Artist for B is for Broken

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There’s probably a much better way of doing this, but I don’t know, because I’ve never done it before :-p

I need art for B is for Broken.

Usually when I need art for a project I either buy it from a stock photography website, shoot a message to one of my artist friends or I surf art websites until I find a style I like then contact the artist to ask about commissions. None of those strategies will work in this case. They won’t work because I have no freaking idea what to put on the cover (or in the interior) of B is for Broken. I’ve had a few ideas, broken glass, broken dolls, broken dolls as seen through broken glass that sort of thing, but nothing has solidified in my mind as being precisely what I’m looking for.

If you’re an artist, that’s where you come in.

I’m looking for proposals for the artwork for B is for Broken. If you’re interested in the job, I need to know four things:

  1. If I were to hire you what would you do for the cover?
  2. What about the interior art?
  3. How much would you charge for that?
  4. How long would it take you to produce?

Also? If you send me a proposal please include a link to your online portfolio or somewhere I can see samples of your work.

Things You Need To Know:

  • The cover for B is for Broken will follow a similar design as A is for Apocalypse, meaning it will have an overlay with all the contributor’s names and the letter will be added in much the same way as was done on A is for Apocalypse (though we can obviously make it darker rather than lighter if we need).
  • The art will be edge to edge as in A is for Apocalypse (not put in a frame or anything like that), so there needs to be a suitable location for the title to be placed.
  • Cover art is full-color
  • Interior art is black and white, and will be placed inside letters to create title images for each story (examples below) so it needs to be readable even when cropped into odd shapes.
  • I would like for the color scheme for the cover art to be different than what we used for A is for Apocalypse.
  • My email address is rhonda@jofigure.com and I’ll be accepting proposals until September 30th.
    • Please use a subject line that clearly identifies why you are contacting me or your letter could get lost in my jungle-like inbox.
  • I don’t need exclusive access to your art, you’ll be welcome to sell it elsewhere also.
  • Just because we used a digitally altered photograph for A doesn’t mean that’s the only medium I’ll consider for B. In fact, I’m pretty sure that C’s cover art is going to be a scanned multi-media mosaic so don’t feel limited.

If you have any questions or concerns please let me know and I’ll address them as best I can.

 

 

ETA: I was asked about file size and resolution. Our final cover needs to be 6″ x 9″ at 300 DPI.

Just Stuff, Random Fact

Post-con Email

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One of the crazy things about going on vacation or to a convention is seeing my inboxes when I return. It never fails to shock and impress me. I just got back from When Words Collide (oh my gawd! Several blog posts will be coming about that! So much yay!) and though I’d checked my mail a little bit, the hotel’s wireless was less than awesome and the laptop I took meant I had to use Webmail (which I hate) so I came home to–

Jofigure account: 834 new messages
Niteblade account: 383 new messages
*mumble* account: 152 new messages
WWP account: 9 new messages

I bet other people had even crazier numbers but I thought it might be fun to share mine… and also keep a record so I can compare it with my World Fantasy numbers 😉

Just Stuff, Thoughts

Three Things I Write & Three Things I Don’t

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I didn’t know what picture to put in this blog, so I went with this dude. These are photographs I took a few weeks ago of a ghost magpie. They aren’t great but in my defense the magpie didn’t stick around long enough for me to get any awesome angles LoL Though these leucistic magpies have been spotted all over, Edmonton seems to have the largest concentration of them, and some people call it the “capital of the world” for ghost magpies. I love them. I love corvids of all types, of course, but these imperfect albino magpies are so beautiful… Also, because they are much more rare than their ‘normal’ brethren, it always, always, always makes me incredibly happy to see one. You feel… privileged. It’s almost like rarity adds value or something 😉

Anyway, I love them so much that I’ve been stalking them with my camera for a couple years now (and only have these two photographs to show for it so far — they seem a bit camera shy), and I even wrote one into the YA horror novel I’m working on, Hollow. And *that* is the connection between these photographs and this blog post, because this blog post is about three things I write and three things I don’t 🙂

Cory Cone tagged me in this blog hop and promised to be patient if I took a wee bit longer than I should to participate. Since Cory made his post back in May and I’m just doing mine now, I would say he’s been more than patient! I met Cory through Niteblade, when he sent me one of my favourite zombie stories ever, Compassion, During and After the Fall. Cory is also contributing to both A is for Apocalypse and B is for Broken and his work has been published in plenty of other places too. Because he’s awesome.

Anyway, Cory tagged me in this hop so I’m supposed to talk about three things I do write, and three things I don’t.

Three Things I Don’t Write:

I’m struggling with this one. I really am. I write a lot of things across all sorts of genres and styles… I was going to say ‘I don’t write mysteries’ but I do, I just wrap them up in a fantasy setting first. Or ‘I don’t write MG’ but I used to… and still do on occasion to give as gifts to nieces and nephews… Tricky!

I don’t write… oh my gawd. This is really *hard*!

I was going to say I don’t write 2nd person point of view, but then I remembered the website I made on Geocities way back when that was a choose your own adventure page “You find yourself in a giant library…” and so I couldn’t go with that. Then I was going to talk about how I don’t write the kind of fiction my daughter likes to read but even though it wasn’t meant to, that just sounded all self-pitying… so… what don’t I write?

Uh… I’m going to come back to this.

Three Things I Write:

I write poetry.

I write a fair amount of poetry, actually. And I’ve been paid more for and received far more recognition for my poetry than I have my prose, and yet I still don’t have the confidence to call myself a poet or to talk about my poetry in the same way as I do my prose. It’s because poetry is intimidating, dudes (I wrote a guest column about that a couple years ago). It’s scary. Scary in a way prose just isn’t. I don’t write super deep poems, and maybe that’s part of it, and (don’t tell anyone but) sometimes when I read poetry that other people love, it totally goes over my head. So maybe that’s the thing, it’s so much more subjective than prose? I don’t know…

And that has turned into a bit of a ramble, but the point is, I write poems. I’ve had a lot of them published (I think my zombie poems might be the most popular ones) and even had two nominated for awards. So there’s that.

I’ll even share one here. I submitted this one to one market and they said they’d publish it… except that they were closing their doors >_< Sadly, I haven’t been able to find another suitable place to send it, so I’ll post it here instead 🙂

Eowyn
She enjoys her petty power
clings to it tooth and claw,
terrified of what she’d be without it.

A wall of pride protects
her soft heart, deep insecurities,
camouflages her unique flavour of crazy.

My cat. Myself.

Ghost Magpie - Photograph by Rhonda ParrishI Write Fantasy (Mostly Dark)

This covers the bulk of what I write. Even most of my poems fall into the fantasy genre. Usually my work is on the dark side of the spectrum, but still fantasy. It’s tough, sometimes, to figure out where the line between dark fantasy and horror is and I suspect some of my stuff straddles that line while other stories stomp on it. I seem to especially love giving sentience to things that usually lack it. Fun!

I Write Horror (Including Zombies)

I don’t seem to write the sort of straight-up horror I grew up on (I wrote a book report on Stephen King’s book Christine when I was in grade three. Have I mentioned that my mother never censored what I read? LOL) but as I said above, a lot of my work falls on the dark side of the speculative spectrum (heh, spec spec) and some slips over the line between fantasy and horror. It’s not goretastic horror though. I enjoy reading that from time to time, but I don’t seem to write it much. Even when I’m dealing with zombies there isn’t very many entrails spilling from guts like slippery eels or blood spurting fountain-like from severed limbs. Sometimes… but not much.

Which, I suppose, I ought to have put under

 

Three Things I Don’t Write:

I Don’t Write A Lot Of Gore

Now, I may have to re-read my shelved zombie novel, Deadmonton (set, you guessed it, in Edmonton. Because I’m just that clever :-p) to be sure I’m not lying here… but I don’t write a whole lot of gore. I’m not averse to reading or watching it but it’s not something that makes its way into my work very often. It’s not a conscious decision, it’s just kind of how things have worked out.

I Don’t Write Science Fiction

I often feel like this is a bit of a waste, really. After all, I’m married to a freaking scientist, but I don’t write science fiction. What’s up with that? Somewhat like the poetry thing, I think I find writing science fiction intimidating. The details are SO important, and if you’re going to use real science there’s no real room for error. It’s kinda scary… So that’s probably the biggest reason I don’t write it… though I also doing think I have many sci-fi ideas, really. If I did have a fantastic story to tell that could best be told as science fiction I’d like to think I’d be brave enough to give it a shot, but so far that situation hasn’t come up.

I Don’t Write Book Reviews

I know, this one is a bit of a cop-out, but I’m going with it anyway. I don’t write book reviews. Not really. I’ve tried in the past and it’s just not a skill I have. On the surface it’s like, “C’mon, how hard can it be? You say what the book is about and then what you thought of it.” but really it’s much more complex than that. I’m not very good at it. So though on Goodreads I will occasionally give my opinion of a book I’ve just finished, I wouldn’t ever really call myself a book reviewer. Because I’m not.

 

Yay! I found three things I don’t write and I managed to refrain from posting more than three things that I do. I’m going to call that a victory 🙂

Now, to end this blog hop I get to tag some more people to participate. All my tagees (which should totally be a word) volunteered for this when I put a call out on Twitter 🙂

First up is Doug Blakeslee who wasn’t sure exactly what he was getting himself into, but was a good enough sport to volunteer anyway 😉

The lovely Ms. Alexis A. Hunter also said she’d participate. I met Alexis through Niteblade as well, when she sent us a great apocalyptic story. Later she came on staff as a slush reader (and a great one at that!) and we became friends through that and social media.

I met Warren C. Bennett on Twitter, where he has shown himself to be clever, friendly and a huge fan of tacos. What more could you possibly want?

Last, but certainly not least (and possibly ironically since she was the first to volunteer), Stephanie Faris has offered to participate in this blog hop. I met Stephanie during this years Blogging From A to Z Challenge and found her to be one of the most amazing people and bloggers. She’s the kind of blogger who even though she gets dozens of comments on every one of her posts still finds time to visit her commenter’s blogs and leave intelligent, insightful comments. My hat’s off…

Do be sure to check out their blogs over the coming weeks as they’ll each be writing about Three Things They Write and Three Things They Don’t. (Why did I capitalize those words? And perhaps more importantly, why am I writing this out rather than just going back and un-capitalizing them? #ThingsThatMakeYouGoHmm )