Niteblade

Niteblade: Some Past Favourites

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Niteblade is nearing our 5th anniversary, so we’re celebrating with a little blog train. Yesterday our illustrator, Marge Simon, did a blog about her love affair with Niteblade, and tomorrow our poetry editor, Alexandra Seidel will be blogging about… something. LOL I’m sure it will be awesome 🙂 Today is not my scheduled day to blog, but the train had to be detoured so I’m filling in. Alas, that means I need to post a blog pretty quickly with no time to think up a great and profound subject to blog about. Okay, maybe I could think of one, but I’m unlikely to be able to write it in the fifteen or so minutes I have to get this posted.

So instead I’m going to share some of my favourite pieces from the first ten issues of Niteblade. The first ten web issues, that is. I feel like the back issues sometimes get forgotten and since there is so much fabulous work within them that seems a shame. I’m going to pick one favourite from each past issue. These are going to be the stories that are my favourite right now. At this exact moment in time. Favourites, for me, are things that change depending on my mood, and the day, so what stories I pick now are probably not the same ones I’d pick tomorrow or next week, but if you check them out, I bet you’ll like them.

September 2007 – Shine On by J.A. Tyler Dude, there are images from this story that still stick with me today, several years later. It’s dark and creepy and I love it.

December 2007 – Servant of the Gods by A. J. Kenning Gods, demons and brutal punishments. This story is pretty long, but well worth the read. “I think that. Sometimes. I screamed.”

March 2008 – Philosopher Quinn by Jenns Rushing I think this is the funniest story Niteblade has ever had the pleasure of publishing. It’s fantastic and lines from it get quoted within our family on a regular basis — just like you might quote a favourite movie or television show.

June 2008 – Women of Straw by Kyle Hemmings This story is simply-written, but beautiful and exotic. It’s the kind of tale I see layers of depth and meaning in and I’ve read it several times over the past few years.

December 2008 – Oh, Christmas Tree by S. Alan Fox Another funny story, though far shorter than Philosopher Quinn. I think this is a fun little Christmas tale.

March 2009 – The Pacifier by Beth Cato This is an end of the world story that will linger in your memory, I promise. I also love Following Rabbits by Gregg Winkler which is a retelling of a familiar tale. I couldn’t choose between these two, they are both favourites 🙂

June 2009 – Dream Spinner by Robert E. Keller This is a great example of a twist ending done well. I was engaged in this story from the moment I started reading it, and now, many, many readings later, I still love it.

September 2009 – Prison Dreams by Fred Warren What would you do if your dreams were taken away?

March 2010 – Happy Halloween, It’s a Bloody Puppet Show by Bill Ratner There are so many fantastic stories in the March 2010 issue that I honestly cannot pick one favourite, so I’ve chosen this story by Bill Ratner because it’s pretty unique among Niteblade stories — it’s radio play and comes complete with an audio version you can listen to. Once you’ve done that, be sure and check out the rest of the fiction for this issue. Truly.

June 2010 – Survivalist by Kevin Brown This story is a reprint and I still picked it as my favourite, that’s how you know that it’s fantastic. Read it. It’s a story about a unique soldier and you’re going to love it.

And there you have it. Ten of my favourite short stories from the older issues of Niteblade. If you want to check out all our archives you can do that right here –> Niteblade Archives. Maybe someday in the future I’ll pick some favourites from the poetry we’ve published over the past few years, if you’re interested.

Do you have a favourite Niteblade story? What makes it your favourite? I’d really like to know.

Lawl! I was just about to post this and discovered that the blog train didn’t need to be detoured any longer… but I’ve got this all written up, so I’m going to share it anyway. Enjoy!

Poetry, Published

Published: Lizabeth

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The Glass CoinMy poem, Lizabeth, was published on The Glass Coin yesterday. You can check it out and leave a comment on their webpage:

Lizabeth by Rhonda Parrish

The acceptance letter for this one said “I don’t usually like rhyming poetry but…” I hear that a lot 😉 Also, contrary to the whole theme and point of this poem, I freaking love magpies. Love, love, love them.

This poem began as a warm-up piece. Sometimes when I sit down to write a poem I either have no ideas at all or I have a particular rhythm/rhyme scheme stuck in my brain that I need to purge before I can write. In those cases I just write whatever comes to mind until inspiration strikes or I find a rhythm I like. On occasion the poems I come up with during that process seem good enough to revise and find homes for. This was one of those times.

Thoughts, Writing

And then the magic happened…

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The Gloaming - Photograph by Rhonda ParrishI really wanted to submit something to the Masked Mosaics anthology. I first learned about the anthology from my friend Beth. She writes a fair bit of superhero stuff, but I’d never written a superhero story in my life. It sounded like a fun challenge so I got to work.

By ‘got to work’ I mean I went through all my story idea notes, post-its and such to see if there was anything there I could put a superhero spin on. There wasn’t. So I started brainstorming. Eventually I came up with an idea and wrote a first draft. A very ugly first draft. I let it sit a while, then revised it. Something was wrong but I couldn’t figure out what. So I sent it to Beth to critique. She helped me identify what (at least a few) of the problems were and I started revising again.

The deadline for submissions was getting closer and closer, and my progress on the revisions was getting slower and slower.

Usually when a story fights me as much as that one was I take it as a sign I need to let it rest a while longer and come back to it with a fresh mindset, but I couldn’t do that, I had a deadline!

To cut a long story into a shorter one, three days before the deadline I decided to let the story I’d been working on rest and to write something new for the anthology. Something that would fight me less. Something short.

While taking a walk with Jo I was sorting through ideas, trying to come up with something that would be a good story, and short enough I could get it done in just a few days. He asked what I was thinking so hard about and we started talking. We brainstormed ideas back and forth until we settled on a concept and plot I thought would really work. There was just one problem. Jo had contributed just as much as I had to the idea’s development. It would feel wrong if I took all the credit for it.

So I suggested that we write it together and share a byline.

And then the magic happened.Jo - Photograph by Rhonda Parrish

In less than a day and a half we went from rough concept and story idea, to a polished short story that I’m super proud of. I’m a fairly good writer, and Jo is an awesome one (You can read his short story The Sickening Thud at the End of it All by clicking that pretty link right there. Go ahead. I’ll wait. You won’t be sorry) but when we worked together we created a story that is, I think, better than anything either of us could have written on our own.

Working with Jo brought out the best in me. I wanted to make each word perfect and wonderful because I wanted to show off for him. And the parts of the storytelling where I’m the weakest? Well, those are areas he’s strong in so he was able to carry me a little. And, I’d like to think, the opposite is true as well. We complement one another well, in writing as in life. How awesome is that?

The story, sadly, though fantastic (even if I do say so myself), earned us a (very awesome, personal) rejection letter from editors and , but I’ve since sent it off elsewhere and I’m optimistic it will find a good home in time.

In the meantime, Jo and I are planning on working with one another more in the future and I am using what I learned working on that story to make all my future solo work better. And someday I’ll even go back to the original superhero story I’d been working on and figure out what’s wrong with it and how to fix it.

Have you ever worked in a collaboration like this and had lightning strike, or magic happen? I’ve done quite a few collabs in the past (I love them.) but never anything quite as fulfilling as this one. I’m curious to see how rare it is in other people’s experiences.

I’ve also had some disasterous collaborations LOL but that’s a subject for another day, eh?

Just Stuff, W1S1

Round Up and Fanstory

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I forgot to post a W1S1 update for June. In my defense July (which is when I would have posted it) was pretty crazy around here. We had two house guests (one of which was a toddler) in our very small house, someone I love was in crisis and we had a family vacation. All in all, a pretty stress-tastic month and I’m pretty pleased everyone involved made it through still upright and breathing 🙂 So, in the grand scheme of things, not such a big deal that I missed a check-in, right?

The good news is that my check-in would have said that I was still on track for my W1S1 goals. I’d written stuff, I’d subbed stuff, hell, in June I even managed to sell two poems and see a third get published. It was a good month.

As it turns out, July was also a good month 🙂 I sold five poems and saw a sixth get published in Imaginarium 2012: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. When it comes specifically to W1S1 goals I managed to meet those too. I wrote a couple short stories for this year’s Whittaker competition and submitted a few things to publishers.

I feel like I’m building momentum and it feels good 🙂

My Whittaker scores have been less than impressive so far. Each round’s score is out of 100 and so far I’ve earned a 72, 64, and a 71. To be fair to my poor little stories because of the nature of the competition and my uber procrastination skillz they have all be completely unrevised first drafts so far.

It’s a slobby segue, but that brings us to another thing I wanted to talk about, something that came up just this week. Last year when I was doing the Whittaker competition I wanted to have some feedback on my stories and to revise them before I sent them in for judging, so I signed up at Fanstory.com.

Fanstory is one of those online communities where you critique people’s work in order to earn karma/points/dollars that you use to get your own work critiqued. There are loads of problems with sites like these and I was very aware of them going in, but I thought I could just shut my eyes to the ridiculous bits and get a couple critiques of my work from strangers (aka people who have no reason to be nice to me LOL).

I only posted my first drafts, no finished works, and I disabled them from public view once I’d received feedback on them. I hung around there for a couple months, until I couldn’t turn a blind eye to the problems with the community anymore, and then I left (I was too busy to keep posting critiques there anyway, to be honest).

Last week I submitted one of the poems I’d posted at Fanstory to Every Day Poets. It was declined within hours because it was previously published.

O_o

That was what my face looked like. Previously published? But… um… no. I hadn’t published it anywhere yet. What the?

It turns out the poem was still visible online at the mobile version of Fanstory. That despite the fact I had ‘disabled’ it (which was supposed to make it invisible to anyone but me) and I had actually closed my account.

I was not happy.

I re-activated my account and sent an email to the admins asking them what was going on and why my stuff was visible when it shouldn’t be. I was told “That was strange because it was our mobile version. So we didn’t have that set to be private. We updated it. So it is now. That is true for all your work.” At that point I didn’t trust their settings so I actually deleted all my work from the website, which seems to have fixed the problem. The admin also tells me that there was a check box I could have clicked when I posted my work for critique that would have kept it from being visible to anyone who wasn’t logged into their own Fanstory account.

I should have clicked that box.

I am not blaming Fanstory for what happened. It sounds like there was a bit of a bug with the mobile site, but it’s still my fault. I should have been more careful. I should have clicked the check box that would mean the general public couldn’t see my work, and when I left Fanstory I should have deleted all my work, not just disabled it.

I screwed up.

Learn from my mistake.

Also, if any editors from Every Day Poets happens to see this? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to send you something that was online elsewhere. It won’t happen again.

**Insert Clever Segue Here**

One last, completely unrelated thing? I’ve decided to discontinue my Two for Tuesday posts. Not because I’m suddenly uber with consistency but because they allow me to be lazy. I don’t want this blog to turn into weekly posts of two photographs I’ve taken. It’s not that I don’t want to show off my pictures, I do, but this is supposed to be primarily about my writing. If I give myself permission to post pictures and have them count toward my one blog a week goal, well, that’s all I’ll do. Because I’m lazy. So buh-bye T4T. Buh-bye…

 

Goals, Hollow, Shadows, Twixt

Shadows Gets Shelved

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Tombstone - Photograph by Rhonda ParrishOur vacation is over.

Well, actually, I’m “officially” back to work tomorrow, but because I expect to be completely swamped with Niteblade stuff and some pressing writing deadlines I have, so I’m blogging today.

One of my goals for this year was:

Figure out what to do with Shadows…and get to work on doing it. This can mean looking for an agent, a publisher or any number of other things. I can’t be specific until I’ve made a decision.

Well, the good news is, I’ve made a decision. It was very difficult because I’ve spent so much time working on it (years) that I’m really close to it, too close, to make a clear and rational decision. Unfortunately, most of my critique partners are also too close to it to give me unbiased advice. Happily, there are people who make a living out of giving clear, unbiased advice about these sorts of things LoL

I hired Kate and Taryn from Teen Eyes Editorial to take a look at the current version of Shadows and tell me what they thought. Their feedback was insightful, in-depth and incredibly helpful. It helped me see that it’s time to put Shadows on a shelf.

Their comments were very positive and encouraging overall but they definitely showed me that Shadows still needs a lot of work before it is ready to go out in the world. And the thing is, I’m kinda tired of it. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the story but I really need some time away from it.

Dudes, I’ve been working on this story off and on for several years. Honestly, I don’t even know what version this draft is. I have learned a ridiculous amount of things about character development, plotting, revision, pacing, dialog (and more!) while I’ve been working on Shadows, but it’s time to move on to something else.

I have a finite amount of time I can spend writing and several other projects demanding my attention. So, at this point I’m going to file Shadows under ‘Learning Experience’ and let it sit in my Dropbox gathering virtual dust. Someday a few years from now I might decide to come back to it, but I rather doubt it.

For now, I’m looking forward to seeing how awesome I can make Twixt and Hollow Children 🙂

 

Poetry, Published

Published: Obscured

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Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative WritingIf I may quote the Imaginarium webpage from the ChiZine Publications website:

“Imaginarium 2012: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing is a reprint anthology to be co-published annually by ChiZine Publications and Tightrope Books, collecting speculative short fiction and poetry (science fiction, fantasy, horror, magic realism, etc.) that represents the best work produced by Canadian writers.”

I am so, so honored to have one of my poems included in this collection. It feels kind of surreal, actually, but in a very good way. Once I get home from vacation I’ll definitely be placing an order to ive away as gifts. You can pick up a copy now too, if you’d like. Imaginarium is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Chapters/Indigo etc. etc. etc. but if you pick it up directly from ChiZine you’ll save 30% off the cover price. I dunno about you but that’s where I’ll be shopping from.

~ Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing ~

April PAD, Sale

Sale: Three Poems

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Yay! Three of my poems will be included in future issues of the awesome twitterzine Seven by Twenty. My poems Lost Miners, Lovers and Change is Good will all be published on their twitter feed over the next few months.

Lovers and Change is Good are reprints, but Lost Miners is a new poem I wrote as part of my April Poem-a-Day challenge. I’ll be sure and share the news as each one is featured.

Uncategorized

Vacation

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Hi!

I’m on vacation for the next eleven days or so. I’m decompressing, destressing and recharging my emotional and creative batteries. I’ll be back after the 21st (ish LoL) all renewed, invigorated and ready to go.

See you then!

<3

Rhonda

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

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