Pictures, Two For Tuesday

T4T: Two Kids

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Yesterday I was helping someone with a crisis* and it left me too exhausted to do anything more than breathe. So, this week’s Tuesday blog is being posted on a Wednesday 🙂

I’m going to share two pictures of kids. I took these at a recent family get-together at my parent’s house. These are my youngest niece and nephew, Jayde and Dominick.

Click on the pictures to see them as they are intended. WordPress crops them however they need to in order to make them fit.

*It’s not my story to tell so I won’t, but things are looking up.

Poetry, Sale

Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing

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Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative WritingAbout a week ago I posted one of those vague tweets that drive everyone (including me) crazy. In my defense, I had just received some super awesome news but I didn’t have my contract in hand so I was scared of jinxing it. Now, however, it’s pretty official so I can share.

My poem, Obscured, is going to be reprinted in Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing.

Oh. My. God.

Do you see who I’m going to be sharing a table of contents with? Do you see? *gushes*

Best of all, maybe Danica will think I’m cool now that I’m sharing a table of contents with Kelley Armstrong, who is one of her favourite authors. Maybe.

🙂

Personal, Two For Tuesday

T4T: Two Falls

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Alone - Photograph by Rhonda ParrishI haz a sad.

I’m going to copy part of this straight out of my fitness blog. This describes what happened when I went on a run Friday night with Jo:

I was running, and then, as I said, suddenly I was very much not. The first thing I was aware of was the blinding pain in my right knee, then the sound of my ipod skittering across the pavement in the dark. Then it was like the whole world slowed down so I could feel my face impact with the ground and scrape along behind my ipod. When time sped up again I was one freaking hurting unit.

My right knee was quite badly banged up and has a lovely assortment of scrapes and cuts, my left ankle had been twisted and was not happy, and the palms of my hands and the right side of my face had left DNA samples on the road.

Jo ran over to me and asked “What did you hurt?”. My answer was a pathetic and tear-filled “Everything”. Eventually I recovered myself enough for him to help me off the ground and back onto my feet and we started back to my parents again. I was so angry at myself for falling and not finishing the run that once we came to a well-lit part of town I ran through the pain. Mostly I wanted to feel like I’d finished the run, but Jo later pointed out that it was probably good I ran again right away, despite how much it freaking hurt, because otherwise I’d blow it up in my brain and be afraid to go running again.

I took the weekend off from exercise so that I could heal up, and by yesterday I was doing pretty good. I did a stretching workout in the morning and felt up to running in the afternoon. I had a nice run with Jo and Danica, then we stopped and stretched in the park. I felt fantastic as we were walking home, and then suddenly, for no reason at all, I fell. Again.

This time I twisted my right ankle (which is already my bad one) quite badly. I’m doing the RICE thing with it and trying not to feel too sorry for myself (or be too hard on myself for being unable to walk without injuring myself) but it’s difficult. I won’t be able to workout like I have been for probably at least a week, which especially sucks since I’d been doing the Couch to 5k thing with Danica and started P90x yesterday. That’s all on hold for a little while now, while I heal up.

*sigh*

It’s funny, too, how an injury to one part of your body will effect your body as a whole. It’s my ankle that’s hurt, and only my ankle, but I’m freaking exhausted today and completely unable to focus on anything. Well, anything other than my ankle LOL

It sucks. I fully recommend not falling down if you can help it, and especially not twice in four days.

Take care of you.

NaNoWriMo, Thoughts

Struggling

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Alcatraz at Night - Photograph by Rhonda ParrishDear ________,

I’m struggling a bit this week. At first it felt like the beginnings of a slip into depression, but then I figured it out. I’m addicted to exercise.

Don’t get me wrong. I still don’t like exercise, but I’ve gotten to the point that if I don’t do it I’m groggy and unfocused and just plain bleh until I do. Unfortunately it took me until yesterday to figure that out so my week was not nearly as productive as it should have been, and the productivity I did manage to pull off was largely unrelated to my Camp NaNoWriMo project.

Sadly, I also have a lot of commitments this weekend that are going to keep me from being able to play catch up. In fact, they are pretty much guaranteed to make me fall further behind LOL

I’m not giving up though. I’m going to try to sneak some words in this morning before my sister comes over and I’ll steal time away to write whenever I can this weekend too. I expect by Monday I’ll still be significantly behind where I’m supposed to be for Camp NaNo but I’ll keep chugging along. Hey, if I have to I can ‘go to camp’ again in August to finish this up. Every word on the page is a victory, right? Just, ya know, a really small one 😉

And the week hasn’t been all bad by any means. I finished the first draft of a short story (if you call 8,000 words short, I’m tempted not to LOL) and had one of my zombie poems published. So, ya know, not all bad. Not all bad at all 🙂

Love,

Rhonda

Niteblade, Two For Tuesday

T4T: Two Stories

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Niteblade LogoToday I want to share two stories with you. They are two of my favourite stories from the March issue of Niteblade Magazine.

The Silver Quarter by KV Taylor – This story is about two children who are imprisoned by poverty and exploited because of it. In it they work together to try and escape to a better life. The Silver Quarter feels very much like a small part of a larger story, but not in a bad way. In fact, it’s in a very good way. The world feels well-developed and complete and the characters three dimensional. If you like your fantasy with a bit of grit this story is for you.

~*~

Forbidden Fruit by Nicky Vardon – Forbidden Fruit is a love story, but it’s told from the point of view of a cat who watches the events unfold. The writing is sensual but tasteful — you won’t be embarrassed to have this story show up in your internet history. The way it’s written reminded me of a poem and a fairy tale.

I chose stories from the March issue of Niteblade because the most recent issue (released this month) hasn’t reached it’s fundraising goal yet. Once it does we’ll release the online version so that it’s free to read for everyone and then I can spotlight some of the work within its pages without feeling bad for sending you to a teaser instead of the whole story LoL

If you like what you read when you peek at The Silver Quarter and Forbidden Fruit please consider picking up a .pdf copy of our latest issue, Carnivoyeur. Not only will you get to read more awesome fantasy and horror stories but your purchase will move us that much closer to sharing those stories with the world for free. (Though, lemme tell you, the .pdf version is gorgeous. If you’ve never seen it, you really should.)

/infomercial

 

Hollow, NaNoWriMo, Personal

Writing is a Battle…

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Haunted Hospital, a photograph by Rhonda ParrishDear ________,

I’ve enclosed a photo I wanted to share with you. I call this shot “Haunted Hospital” and when I took it several weeks ago I had no idea it was going to become a very important place in my novel. But lo and behold, that’s exactly what has happened. Not only is it where the story begins but I expect it to continue to be a very important locale throughout, sort of like the sun that the rest of the tale rotates around. Very cool, no?

I wasn’t sure what I was going to write to you about today. I don’t like writing too much about my stories while I’m working on them. I find if I share too much (via blogs, or conversation or anything) I lose the sense of urgency to write the story. It’s like, as soon as I’ve shared it with someone my brain is pretty sure that my job is done and it’s time to move on to the next story. That means in order to get the whole thing out of my brain and onto the page I need to keep it to myself for as long as possible. That meant talking about any Hollow Children specifics was out of the question, and who wants to read a dry list of daily word counts? Um, not me.

Then I snuck over to Alison Stone‘s cabin today to say hi before I started writing for the moment. She asked everyone who stopped by a question, “What motivates you?”

I have a post-it note stuck onto my laptop where I’ll see it everyday. It’s been stuck there for months and is starting to curl up on the edges and lose it’s glue. When it finally gives up and falls off completely I will copy the words from it onto another post-it note and stuck it on my laptop. In fact, I’m planning on getting them tattooed onto my arm. Eight words:

Writing is a battle with impatience and inertia.

I don’t know who to attribute that quote to. I think I picked it up from a textbook but I haven’t gone back through the one I think it might be to see if I’m correct.

That quote, that idea, that reality motivates me. It says yes, writing is hard work, but you know what? Anything worth doing is difficult. It says yes, Rhonda, you’re feeling bleh and you don’t want to do anything but lay in bed and sleep, but no one is going to write your words for you. It says holy crap, dude, you’re not in a race to reach the end of the story, slow down and let it unravel at its pace, not yours.

Writing is a battle, and it’s one I’m not willing to lose. Some days, some weeks, some months are harder than others but if you just keep fighting eventually you will be victorious.

That’s what motivates me.

Well, this month it’s that plus watching the little bars move up on my stats page for Camp NaNoWriMo… but ya know, whatever it takes to get words on the page, right?

Best,
Rhonda

p.s. I hear they are serving us sushi here tomorrow. *squee* Best. Camp. Evar.

Goals, NaNoWriMo, Two For Tuesday

T4T: Two Updates

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Dear _______,

I’m writing you from camp where I’m very busy writing the first draft of a novel tentatively called Hollow Children, but I thought I’d steal a quick moment away from working on it to bring you a fast Two for Tuesday. This Tuesday I’m going to share two quick updates.

Update #1: Work on Hollow Children is going better than I’d feared *knock wood*. I’m about 6,700 words in and I haven’t started writing yet today. There have been a couple interesting surprises to date in this draft.  The sexual orientation of two characters changed and another character swapped genders. Whee! 🙂

Update #2: May is over and Writo De Mayo with it. I didn’t do very well on staying on track. According to my website my WdM goals were:
– Do the 200 Sit Ups Challenge (beginning on Week Two in Column Two) without straining or otherwise injuring my neck in the process (How’d it go? I kept forgetting. Honestly. I see you rolling your eyes, but I did. However, I was plenty active during May just in general, plus my daughter and I started the Couch to 5k running program, so I’m not going to hate on myself for missing this one)
– Stay on track for W1S1 (How’d it go? I was successful. I finished up a few poems and submitted a bunch of stuff.)
-Write the first draft of at least one new short story (not a poem)(How’d it go? It failed pretty miserably. I have a couple short story ideas I’m working on but nothing near to a completed draft)
-Write the first draft of a query letter for Shadows and get feedback on it(How’d it go? Well, I’m halfway done this one. I got the query letter written, but I haven’t asked for feedback yet)
–Get back to the HTRYN course I’m using to revise Twixt (and that I’ve neglected all April)(How’d it go? Well, I did get back on it, which is good, but now it’s back to being neglected for June while I work on Camp NaNo and the Whittakers)
–If I’m not successful in finishing up all the prompts for the April Poem-A-Day Challenge finish up any I missed. (How’d it go? Done and done :))

Sincerely,

Rhonda

 

 

NaNoWriMo

Plans for June

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QT by Rhonda ParrishDear _______,

As I write this there is a clock counting down the hours until Camp NaNoWriMo begins. I’m quite nervous.

It’s a little bit silly. Since 2003 I’ve participated in 8 NaNoWriMos (6 times successfully) and for several years I ran NaNoLJers. NaNoWriMo is not a new thing for me, and Camp NaNoWriMo is really only that transplanted from November into June.

If anything I really ought to be excited about this because it will be all the things I loved about NaNoWriMo with fewer of the things that had begun to drive me nuts and contribute to my NaNo burn out. And  yet… and yet…

My worry isn’t completely unjustified, to be fair. I mean, I am going to be trying to write a novel based on some character ideas and a concept with no real idea what the plot is. I’ve been taking some of the advice I received in my Hollow Children call for help blog post, but I’m starting out late. While people’s suggestions have helped me firm up some of my ideas and start to get a vague idea about the shape of the story, I don’t really have enough time to firm it up too much.

And whose fault is that? Um. Mine. LOL

Also, did I mention that I signed up for The Whittakers again this year? I did.

The Whittaker Prize is a writing contest wherein you write a story, poem or both (depending on what you sign up for) every two weeks and submit it for scoring. Usually there are 9 rounds but this year it’s a shortened schedule with 6 rounds instead.

It’s sort of become a tradition for me. I never expect to win, but I love having the deadlines and getting feedback on the work I send in. It’s a fantastic way for me to write several short stories that I can then spend the rest of the year refining and sending out for submission. The only problem? They begin on June 8th. *facepalm* Yes. That’s right, while I’m participating in Camp NaNoWriMo and working on the first draft of a nebulous novel I will also have to write at least one, and closer to two, short stories.

So, in order to combat a situation that could easily result in creative burnout I’ve decided to really embrace the whole ‘camp’ theme for the month. Everything I do will be camp themed. My workouts will become ‘hikes’, some meals will be cooked over an open flame, blog entries will be letters home–hell, I might even set up the tent in the backyard and spend a Saturday night or two out there. Why not?

What’s more I’m going to cut myself a lot of slack on anything not directly related to writing Hollow Children and my Whittaker Submissions. That means I’ll likely be slower than usual replying to emails, and I may be on social media/visiting other people’s blogs/etc. a lot less. The internet connection at camp is spotty at best, doncha know?

I will continue my T4T posts and I’ll try to write you all a letter once a week, but I can’t promise anything.

I’ll be thinking of you though.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to sewing my name into all my underwear and maybe getting a little bit more brainstorming time in on this story.

Best,

Rhonda

Niteblade, Shades of Green, Sister Margaret, Two For Tuesday

T4T: Two Book Covers… Almost

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These pictures are going to be book covers when they grow up 🙂 Click them to see the full image, WordPress crops the thumbnails.

I’ve decided to put a few of my previously published works up on Kindle. Sister Margaret and Shades of Green seemed like the ideal stories to start with, so I commissioned some cover art from Marge Simon.

I can’t share actual cover design yet because Jo is usually my cover design guy and right now he’s up to his eyeballs in getting the June issue of Niteblade ready, so I’m practicing being patient. I will ask him to textify these for me in the not too distant future, though. I guess that means I better get back to trying to learn how to format books for Kindle 😉

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

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