Category Archives: NovPad

NovPad, Poetry

Help Me Choose My NovPAD Theme

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ETA: Voting has closed and that’s the winner right there ^ Chancer’s Inn. Thank you to everyone who helped me pick the theme for this year’s poetry challenge. Now I better get my butt in gear and write the poems 🙂

The original post is below for archivey/context purposes 😉

 

***

 

Whaaat? Two blog posts in one day?!

Yeup.

I have a bit of a problem… it’s an affection for pre-made book covers. I love them. The problem is, I buy the cover and then I have to find the time and inspiration to write the stories to go with them, and sometimes that’s a pretty big challenge.

Several weeks ago I held a flash editing sale on social media. The idea was that if enough people bought in for me to pay for the pre-made covers I had my eye on I would buy them and write the stories to go with them. Well, lots of people supported my sale, more than enough to pay for the covers, but when I went to buy them they’d already been sold! *sad face*

Since I couldn’t get those covers I said I would pick a selection of other pre-mades and let Twitter and Facebook decide which one of them I would buy and write something for.

But then there was this sale and I spontaneously bought premade covers for a trilogy. And added those to the other trilogy I haven’t written yet but have covers for. I was forced to admit that I had a bit of a problem. A wee bit of a backlog. I still wanted to let Twitter and Facebook vote on a cover for me to write for but it was pretty obvious that I could not commit to a full-length novel for that.

And then today my November Poem-A-Day partner in crime, Beth Cato, sent me a message and said, “Are you doing NovPAD this year?” and I was like, “Yes. But I wonder what my theme is going to be.”

And then EUREKA! It struck me.

I could let you vote on a pre-made cover and use that cover to determine my NovPAD 2018 theme. And then, eventually, use that cover to publish the resulting poems. Perfect.

Except that NovPad begins tomorrow, so there’s a huge time crunch on this. >_<

Here are the covers:

Two things to remember while looking at these:

  • That is dummy text. It’s just there to show off the typography and will be replaced with my name, title, etc. when the time comes. In other words, those titles are not staying 😉
  • My interpretation of the theme based on the cover may not match the text at all. (ie: Just because it says ‘Horror novella’ doesn’t mean my poems will be horror-themed). It also may not match your interpretation or expectations.  

🙂

To vote, drop me a line however you prefer (Tweet, Facebook comment, Blog post comment, email, whatever) and tell me the dummy title for the cover you want me to use (ie: ‘The Road of Lost Souls’ or ‘Frozen’ or whatever).

I will total up all the votes that are in when it’s time for me to start working on my poem for tomorrow (probably around noon Mountain time), purchase the winning cover, announce it here and on social media and then get to work.

Thank you for taking the time to help me decide on my NovPAD theme. I look forward to discovering what it will be!

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.

Books, NovPad, Published, White Noise

White Noise

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White Noise -- Art and cover design by Jonathan Parrish

Just in time for zOctober (because, ya know, I didn’t have enough apocalyptic awesomeness to celebrate with A is for Apocalypse and Waste Not) I’ve released my zombie poetry collection:

White Noise

Poems of the Zombie Apocalypse

Yay!

I’ve been meaning to put this collection together for honest-to-gawd years but things never seemed to work out, until now. That’s why, though I’d normally wait, set a launch date and try to build up some excitement and publicity before officially launching a title, I’m not doing that with this one. It’s ready to go, and so I’m going to set it loose upon the world before something else goes wrong to delay its release LOL

White Noise contains 20 of my zombie apocalypse poems, some of them are reprints (including the one which was included in Imaginarium: Best Canadian Speculative Writing [2012] and the one which was nominated for a Dwarf Star award) and some are being published for the very first time.

Excerpt:

Obscured

Ghosts of the city
peer out of the gloom
around him
As a child he’d loved it
when the ‘clouds fell down’
and cloaked his world
in mysteries
Now, though,
it was just one more thing
to hide the shamblers.
One more obstacle to
his survival.
One more enemy.

Available At:

Amazon (paperback)
Amazon (kindle)
Smashwords

White Noise is $5.99 for physical copies and $0.99 for electronic ones.

Exceptions to this are if you buy a paperback copy (a great way to fill your cart when you need $5.99 more for free shipping, amirite?) you’ll get the Kindle version free and also, if you were subscribed to my newsletter yesterday you received an electronic copy for free.

White Noise on Goodreads

Praise for White Noise

“A collection of vivid scenes laid out in sharp and articulate verse, that when assembled, construct a grim narrative filled with tension, stark imagery, and unusual beauty. WHITE NOISE reaches in and evokes a visceral response— not always the one you’d expect.”

—Tim Deal, Shroud Quarterly

“In this collection of poems, Rhonda Parrish manages to capture all the emotions of life during an apocalypse: From fear and desperation to pain and sorrow. She even shows us love and hope. Some serious but most tinged with humor. This is a great collection of poems about the zombie apocalypse.”

—Carol Hightshoe – author of the Chaos Reigns Saga and Editor of Zombiefied I, II and III

“As soon as I read the first poem I was hooked! It was macabre but it wasn’t too far. Poetry puts our insides on our outsides and when it comes to zombies, well, that could get pretty gross in a hurry.

These poems were really good! They were passionate and made me think about zombies from new angles than I had thought about them in the past. There was a dash of the metaphysical put in and a lot of real living, non-zombie feelings as well. I’m going to go back for a second read, because they deserve it.”

—Virginia Carraway Stark, Starklight Press

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.

Goals, Hollow, NaNoWriMo, NovPad

NaNoWriMo 2013 – Take Nine

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2013-Participant-Facebook-Cover

This month I am participating in my ninth NaNoWriMo challenge (Username: Midnyte If you’re participating feel free to add me. Drop me a line & I’ll return the favour). I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo yearly since 2003 (though I skipped one year because I just wasn’t feeling it). This year I’m going to write a new first draft of a story you’ve been listening to me talk about writing since July of 2011 — Hollow Children. For November I’ve taken all my previous abortive drafts, scenes and papers and stuck them in a drawer and I’m going to leave them there until this draft is done. I’ll peek at them again when it comes time to revise but I don’t want to get hung up on comparing drafts and such until I’ve got all the words on the page.

My biggest obstacle as a writer is myself, getting out of my own way and putting words on the page. That’s where NaNoWriMo comes in handy because for me the most difficult part of writing (even 1,667 words a day) is sitting my ass down and doing it. During November and NaNoWriMo I feel extra accountable and that helps me get my butt in the chair. So I’ll be doing 50,000 words on this draft in November and then hopefully continuing on until the entire draft is done. I’m hoping for somewhere around 80-90k altogether.

In addition, because sanity is overrated, I’m also going to be doing the November Poem A Day Challenge. The PAD challenges at Writer’s Digest (in November and April) have also become sort of a tradition for me and are the source of most of the poetry I write in a year. One of my favourite parts is that I know my friend Beth will be doing them too, and even though we don’t compare notes every day or whatever, as the month goes on we do check in with each other to see how it’s going, and it’s nice to feel like you’re not alone. This year I’m working on a sekkrit collaborative project with someone (not Beth) and I’ll be using the theme of that as my theme for NovPAD. It should be super efficient (which my vulture brain loves) and fun. Win/win.

Oh, and did I mention the renovations? We’re having our yard dug up and weeping tile installed starting the middle of the month… so that’ll be… fun.

I’ve also decided to drop out of the ‘Not the Whittakers‘ challenge I was participating in. Historically speaking the Whittakers have provided me with the incentive and momentum to write some great short story first drafts but this year I’m not really feeling it and am seriously time-challenged. Still, I should be kept plenty busy and challenged even in their absence 😉

Between NaNoWriMo, NovPad 2013, reading for Fae, promoting Metastasis, readying the December issue of Niteblade and just, ya know, having a life, I think I’ll be kept pretty busy, but not quite as crazy as last month.

NovPad, Poetry, Sale

Sale: Patchwork Quilt

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jotartanRecognize this picture? It’s of the patchwork quilt my mother made me when I was very young. I blogged about it a while back, talking about how much I loved it, how old it was getting and the remarkable coincidence that Jo’s family tartan appears in it. At the time I blogged about it I thought that, no matter how much I loved it, it was time to throw it away. I was wrong. Since then I have actually started taking the quilt apart, stitch by stitch to save it and turn it into something else. Since the passing of my mother, especially, it has been made clear to me that I definitely made the right decision.

I also wrote a poem about this quilt entitled (creatively enough) Patchwork Quilt. Patchwork quilt has just been accepted for inclusion in the summer issue of Westward Quarterly.

Long live the quilt! 😉

April PAD, NovPad, Poetry, Sale

Sale: New Arrival & Mary Lee

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Every Day Poets LogoHave I mentioned that Every Day Poets has become one of my favourite markets? One of the many reasons for that is it doesn’t require me to classify my poetry according to genre and since more and more I’m writing pieces that aren’t speculative, that is a lifesaver.

Last week I received notification that two more of my poems have been accepted for future publication at Every Day Poets (One speculative and one not). New Arrival and Mary Lee will be coming soon to EDP. You can be sure I’ll keep you updated on that 😉

A to Z Challenge, April PAD, Books, Editing, Goals, NaNoWriMo, Niteblade, NovPad, W1S1, Writing

Goals for 2013

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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.