E is for Evil, Published

E is for Evil

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E is for Evil is out today!

I love this anthology series, and this might be my favourite of them all so far. I mean, usually the newest book is my favourite, but I think this one would be my favourite even if it wasn’t the newest one? Maybe. It’s tough to say, I suppose. But other people have liked it too!

“E is for Evil is a fun, quirky, and thoroughly entertaining anthology which is sure to have something for every type of reader. It is absolutely worth the time for anyone who enjoys imaginative and thought-provoking literature.”

-Brad OH Inc.

“No two stories are the same. If you love horror… or you want to experience horror on a level that is beyond guts and gore (though it has some of that too) I highly recommend trying this anthology.”

-Melodie, Goodreads reviewer

 

Get your copy now!

Ebooks:

US — https://amzn.to/2Kc5nIP
Canada — https://amzn.to/2HWFqvT
UK — https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07B4QPDQ1

Paperback:

Amazon — https://amzn.to/2L1fmBf

Free on Kindle Unlimited

Prairie Starport, Sister Margaret

Prairie Starport

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Prairie Starport: Stories in Celebration of Candas Jane Dorsey

I wanted to to do something to honour Candas Jane Dorsey, because she has done so very much to help me and countless other people. And not just writers or editors or publishers. No. Though she does that as well, Candas doesn’t limit herself to working to benefit people in the publishing industry, she has dedicated her life to helping people. Period.

That deserves recognition.

In fact, it deserves more recognition than I have the power to give, but I wanted to contribute what I could. As did all the authors and artists who contributed to creating Prairie Starport. Though my name is on the cover as the person who put all these things together I could not have done anything without the support and contributions of tonnes of other people — including, of course, my fellow contributors.

This collection contains work by Timothy J. Anderson, Greg Bechtel, Eileen Bell, Gregg Chamberlain, Alexandrea Flynn and Annalise Glinker, Barb Galler-Smith, Anita Jenkins, Laina Kelly, Derryl Murphy, John Park, Rhonda Parrish, Ursula Pflug, Robert Runté, Diane L. Walton, BD Wilson and S.G. Wong.

My contribution is “Sister Margaret” which is a short story about a vampire hunter and a half-incubus swordsman trying to save prostitutes from a vampiric pimp. I wrote it a looong time ago but it still remains one of my favourites.

And because my goal with this anthology is to show appreciation for and celebrate Candas, not to turn a profit, I am giving the electronic version away for free.

 

Download it for free at:
BookFunnel
Kobo
Playster
Apple
More coming soon!

Also available at Amazon

Paperback available at Amazon:
.com
.co.uk

And add it to your shelves at Goodreads

All profits from this collection will be donated to the Bent Arrow Traditional Healing Society in Candas’ name.

 

(In case you’re curious, yes, I could have used the word contribute in its various forms more if I’d tried. I really could have :-p )

 

One of the stories was accompanied by art. Since the interior only allowed for black and white art, we also included the piece on the back cover so that it could be displayed in colour… albeit with a text overlay.

Magical Menageries

Magical Menageries Colouring Book

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The Magical Menageries Colouring Book is finally here! Yay!

Check it out:

The book comes in two formats — digital or physical.

If you’d like to pick up a physical copy that’s available at Amazon. I priced the physical version as low as they would let me ($4.99 in the US) because my goal isn’t to make money off these, but to get them into the hands of as many people as I can.

To that end, I’ve made the electronic version free.

You can download it here –> https://dl.bookfunnel.com/lb08c47c3s

I’d appreciate it if you’d consider subscribing to my mailing list when you download it, but it’s not required.

I strongly suggest downloading the .pdf version for easy printing. I only put the .ePub and .mobi versions up there to make BookFunnel happy. They will not be as easy to print as the .pdf

Thank you, and enjoy!

Cover Reveal, Editing

The Grandmother Paradox

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The Grandmother Paradox is the sequel to The Continuum. I’ve have the pleasure of editing both of these books and today I get to reveal the cover for the latest one 🙂

Voila!

When Dr. Wells, the head of the Place in Time Travel Agency, learns that someone’s trying to track down the ancestors of his star employee, there are few people he can turn to without revealing her secrets. But who better to jump down the timeline and rescue Elise from being snuffed out of existence generations before she’s born than the very person whose life she saved a hundred years in the future?

But Juliette Argent isn’t an easy woman to protect. The assistant to a traveling magician, she’s bold, fearless, and has a fascination with time travel, of all things. Can the former secret agent Chandler, with his knowledge of what’s to come, keep her safe from harm and keep his purpose there a secret? Or will his presence there only entangle the timeline more?

Though this book stands alone, it’s probably more fun if you’ve read The Continuum first. Both are super speedy reads that you’ll probably devour in one sitting. The first is available now, and The Grandmother Paradox is available for pre-order. Reserve your copy now and be among the first people to read it when it comes out in July 🙂

Pre-order now

Available now

Fire: Demons, Dragons and Djinn, Goals, Personal

My Most Favouritest Swag Evar

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If you follow me on social media you know I have been ridiculously excited about the swag I ordered to go along with Fire: Demons, Dragons and Djinn. I am so ridiculously excited about it, and now it’s here! I should probably keep it under wraps until pre-orders for Fire: Demons, Dragons and Djinn become available (because in the absence of that there’s no real ‘call to action’ in this post)… but I just can’t. I have to show them off.

I got the best swag ever to promote this book!! Check it out:

All. The. Dice!!

What are you looking at?

I got custom dice!!

So here is the short-term thing: the book is Demons, DRAGONS and Djinn so I was thinking about Dungeons and Dragons (which I play) and how could I tie that into promotion for the book and then I was like — dice!I love dice.

So, to make a long story short, I commissioned and ordered custom-made six-sided dice. They are red and black with gold pips and where the 6 would normally be is a dragon face and a teeny tiny little ‘RP’.

Sorry about the blurry cellphone photos... I tried really hard to focus but my phone just wasn't havin' it.

All the anthology’s contributors get one, and I’ll also be giving them away with pre-orders and stuff. It’s gonna be awesome! (Just as soon as I figure out the best way to mail them LOL)

Here is the long-term thing: I’ve long looked for some sort of swag that I could do for each of my books that people might actually want to collect (some people do trading cards, which is awesome, but not appropriate for me). Dice are going to be that thing. Moving forward I’ll be producing a die for each of my titles and slowly acquiring them for my backlist, too. Each will be a different colour/pip combination and have a different, appropriate, icon in the place of the highest number but each will also have the tiny little ‘RP’ in the corner. Just so you can tell they are part of the set and not just a really cool die.

And that is one of the reasons I’m so ridiculously stoked about this.

And boy am I stoked 🙂

If you want a die keep an eye on my blog, social media and/or mailing list as we move toward Fire‘s summer launch. I’ll definitely keep you looped in 🙂

Magical Menageries

Magical Menageries Colouring Contest Winners!

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I’ve said it before and I will say it again, the fact that my job is basically to make a whole bunch of decisions astounds me because sometimes I can be the least decisive person in the universe.

This is one of those times.

I could not pick a winner for the colouring contest. I tried. I really did. But I couldn’t do it.

Luckily for me books tend to have both a front AND a back cover.

So I picked two winners!

Congratulations to Treena who coloured this amazing scarecrow:

and Brandy who coloured this lovely flowery fae:

Thank you to everyone who entered!

The proofs of the book are done and just as soon as I get a chance to check out a physical copy (images are trickier than words to format, dudes) I will release them. Soon. Very soon…

Writing

Starry Night and Agency

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There was a story I wanted to tell. It was about a drug-addicted stripper in post-apocalyptic Edmonton and the dealer who wanted to save her and through her himself (or at least assuage his guilt). It’s not really a long story, or a complicated story but it took me a very long time and a lot of thought to figure out how to tell it.

I tried telling it from her point of view. I tried telling it from his point of view. I tried using an omniscient narrator. I tried 2nd person point of view (oh yes I did!). I tried starting before the apocalypse. I tried starting at the end and working backward…

You get the idea.

No matter what I did it was a struggle. And the biggest reason it was a struggle was because I was pretty sure at least part of this story needed to be told from the woman’s point of view but she didn’t really have any agency.

Agency, in case you’re unfamiliar is… well, I’ll steal this description which came from Patricia C. Wrede — “The best short definition I found was “Agency is an actor’s ability to make purposeful choices.” (“Actor” in this sense being “a person who takes action,” not “Robert Downey, Jr.”)” (Source: http://www.pcwrede.com/agency-in-fiction/).

Normally when I discover that one of my characters lacks agency I rewrite them to give them some… but (because reasons!) that’s not what I did in this case. Instead I made the story about her lack of agency in a ‘This character has no real agency… but can she find some by the end of the story?’ kind of way. And it worked! Or, at least it worked enough for me to get the story written.

And it worked for the judges of the In Places Between short story contest at When Words Collide last year, because they chose it as the winner.

If you’d like to see if it works for you, you can download a free copy here:

Free download — Click Here

…and don’t mind the obviously American road signs. The story really IS set in Edmonton, I promise 🙂

 

ETA: 12/4/19 I actually had a new cover made for this story, in part because I couldn’t abide the American road signs:

Cover Reveal, E is for Evil

E is for Evil Cover Reveal

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E is for Evil contains twenty-six individual stories which each shine a different light on the multi-faceted idea that is evil. Running the gamut from lyrical fantasy to gritty horror in these stories possessed toys, hellish bureaucrats, scientists with questionable morals, abusive partners and even lingerie sellers all take their turn in the spotlight.

Featuring fresh new stories from Michael Fosburg, Lynn Hardaker, Stephanie A. Cain, Andrew Bourelle, Suzanne J. Willis, Samantha Kymmell-Harvey, Hal J. Friesen, C.S. MacCath, Michael B. Tager, Jonathan C. Parrish, Amanda C. Davis, Lilah Wild, Sara Cleto, Alexandra Seidel, Mary Alexander Agner, Cory Cone, Jeanne Kramer-Smyth, Beth Cato, Laura VanArendonk Baugh, Megan Engelhardt, Danielle Davis, Brittany Warman, BD Wilson, L.S. Johnson, Pete Aldin and Michael M. Jones.

 

I wanted this cover to represent ‘evil’ without relying on any one specific religion or mythology (satan & pentagrams, for example), which was tricky. To further complicate things I also wanted it to be black and white and grey. That made it difficult not only to find the right image (we went with a play on ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil’) but also to get the contrast right. It took a lot of finessing but in the end I think Jo nailed it. I can’t wait to see this one on physical books 🙂

If you’re going to pick up a copy of this please consider pre-ordering your copy here:

 

E is for Evil on Amazon

(US) (CA) (UK)

 

Pre-ordering is an awesome way of supporting the book and I really appreciate it. Thank you!

Cover design by Jonathan C. Parrish

Cover Reveal, Prairie Starport

Prairie Starport Cover Reveal

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Usually I like to wait and do cover reveals when I have an official Table of Contents complete with signed contracts and back cover copy… but I’m making an exception for Prairie Starport. Why? Well, because on Facebook I promised that after the contribution deadline had passed I would share the cover, and I keep my promises.

And also because I really love this cover and can’t wait to show it off 🙂

Isn’t that lovely?

The contribution window for the anthology has passed (aka: submissions are closed) and I’m working on production and aiming for a May/June release. You can bet you’ll hear a lot more from me about this book between now and then but right this moment I’m just going to bask in how pretty it is 🙂

Cover Design by James, GoOnWrite.com 

Magical Menageries

Colouring Contest

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I’m having a colouring contest!

I’m putting together the Magical Menageries Colouring Book so I need something awesome to use as a cover and it occurred to me that the best cover art would be the coloured version of one of the interior pages. That’s where you come in 🙂

How to Enter:

1. Click on one (or more if you’re feeling ambitious) of the illustrations below. That will take you to a full-size version of the image that you can print.

Illustration by Carly Heath

 

by Leslie Brown

 

 

2. Colour the picture.

3. Send me a high-quality scan as a .png or .jpg attachment to rhonda.l.parrish@gmail.com using the subject line ‘Colouring Contest’.

4. Cross your fingers.

 

Each person can send me up to three entries — one of each image.

I will be accepting entries until midnight MST March 1, 2018.

The winner will be decided by me on or before my birthday — March 15th.

 

But wait? What does the winner get?

Well, in addition to having their coloured picture used as the cover of the colouring book they will receive 2 contributor copies and a $25 gift card from their choice of either Amazon or Kobo.

Plus, I think it’ll be fun.

Who’s in? Are you in? C’mon, you know you wanna… 😉

Editing, Just Stuff, Writing

Award Eligibility

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Time is crazy.

I thought I had lots of time to get around to making an award eligibility blog post… and then World Weaver Press tweeted yesterday to remind people about all the things they’d published that were eligible and I started flailing like, “OMG nominations are open!!”

So here is my rather brief and very belated list of works I did last year which would be eligible for award nomination this year:

Short Story
“Starry Night”, In Places Between short story contest, IFWA, August 2017

Non-fiction
Haunted Hospitals (co-written with Mark Leslie), Dundurn Press, August, 2017

Anthologies
D is for Dinosaur, Poise and Pen Publishing, February 21, 2017
Equus, World Weaver Press, July 18, 2017
Mrs. Claus: Not the Fairy Tale They Say, World Weaver Press, November 28, 2017

I am also eligible for short form editor for my work in the aforementioned anthologies, and for long form editor for my work on Dream Eater by K. Bird Lincoln.

If you are nominating for any major awards (and I count the Auroras among those) and would like to read any of my eligible works, just get in touch and we’ll make it happen.

Thank you.

I write, I edit and I take a lot of naps.

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