A to Z Challenge, Aphanasian Stories, Personal, See The Sky Again, Shades of Green, Shadows, Sister Margaret, Writing

Abbadon’s Curse

April 25, 2012 R. Parrish 9 Comments

This post is about video games. I was originally going to write about the video games I play these days, but then I had a better idea. Let me tell you about a fantastic video game that was never made.

Abbadon’s Curse.

Abbadon’s Curse is a game I wanted to create over ten years ago. I looked over the main game description document that I gave to the developers and it looks like it was created in early 2002 and I’d been working on stuff for the game long before I began that file.

Abbadon’s Curse was going to be fantastic. It was an MMORPG with all of the usual MMORPG-type things in it, but there were a lot of other cool things that I hadn’t seen done in games up until that point. Night and day, for example, with certain spells and abilities only being able to be used in one or the other. Capes which could be designed (like tabards are now in WoW) to have a unique look for each guild (or character). It was also going to be very story-centric, very lore-based.

The game was set in the world of Aphanasia. A place where, upon the death of her son in battle, she blessed that land so that any who died in battle would not remain dead but rise up once more to fight again. Unfortunately, despite the fact her intentions may have been good, in reality her blessing turned out to be more like a curse. Dun dun dun.

Moonberrys were also very important in that world, as was the magical tree they came from. They were especially important to a race of lizard-men called the UrbagdÃº or the Reptar who used them in every part of their society. The wise men used the berries for medicines, the mages for magic and the warriors used shed boughs from the trees for weapons. Moonberries were even the closest thing the society had to a currency.

In developing the game and it’s storyline we focused a lot on the reptar because they were going to be our first set of adversaries (you know, after everyone was done leveling off rats, and moving on to wolves, and then…) and we needed to give them depth and story. We had several other races in mind we were going to use as spice in our first release and make more important in the future. The Reptar were found mostly in and around the swamp, but the mountains were home to a race of shadow elves, and pirates tended to prowl the coastlines. And of course, what kind of RPGMMO would be complete without vampires? We had them too… In fact, one of our important, named NPCs was a vampiric pirate 😉

In addition to our races and plots and maps and game design documents, we also had a series of gods for the denizens of Aphanasia to worship (the icons for each are along the bottom there). Abbadon, Calamyr, Rakkir (named after a character I used to RP with), Xaphan and the Dragon Gods.

Alas the game fell apart. I totally blame myself. I was the lead on the game, the story was mine, the bulk of the world development was mine, and it was my work that filled the game design documents, but I can’t program. Not even a little. I wasn’t able to provide strong leadership to the programming team and I think it was largely because of my ignorance in programming. I couldn’t set reasonable timelines or expectations and I didn’t know how to crack the whip.

I’m still very sad this game never got to become a reality, but I was determined not to allow the insane amounts of work I’d put into the world development for it to go to waste. That’s why, if you’ve read any of my Aphanasian stories, a lot of this stuff will sound familiar to you.

The moonberry tree got a bit of a makeover, and I set my stories in a time after Abbadon’s curse has ceased to exist (so far anyway LoL). I tweaked my races and my world to suit the world of fiction better than that of video games, but the skeleton of that world definitely comes from what I developed for a video game.

~ Shadows ~ Sister Margaret ~ Lost and Found ~ Shades of Green ~ There’s Always a Catch ~ The Legend of the First Reptar ~

All the above stories are set in Aphanasia, and most of them can be read for free, if you’re interested. It looks like the e-zine that published The Legend of the First Reptar is no longer in existence, but the other stories are all still available (except Shadows which I just finished LOL)

So, yeah. While I’m terribly sad that Abbadon’s Curse will never be a game you can download and play (barring a minor miracle anyway LoL) I’m pretty pleased with myself that I managed to continue to use the world I’d created for it, making it even more lush, detailed and populated than I had for the game.

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter V for Video Game. Tomorrow my husband Jo will be doing a guest blog. He won’t even tell me what it’s going to be about except that it has something to do with chickens. I hope you’ll stop by, it ought to be entertaining 🙂

Sale, Writing

Sale: Crimes Against Humanity

April 25, 2012 R. Parrish 2 Comments

I’m incredibly pleased to announce that I’ve sold my short story “Crimes Against Humanity” to The WiFiles. “Crimes Against Humanity” is scheduled to be their very first story of 2013 and go live on January 6, 2013.

The Publishing Editor, Jay said of my submission, “I’m a sucker for a good zombie tale, especially when humanity is at the forefront of the tale (as opposed to schlock gore) so this could have been written for my personal taste.” which made me all happy-glowy. Yay!

Interestingly, three out of my four last sales were all zombie-related works. If I’m not careful I may end up typecast as a zombie writer LOL I love zombies, but they aren’t all I write about, honest 😉

A to Z Challenge, Shadows

Ugh…

April 24, 2012 R. Parrish 15 Comments

Ugh rather succinctly sums up how I’m feeling today, and so it’s my U word.

I feel like I’m coming down with something so I’m going to try and take it easy today, but my to-do list is pretty big so we’ll see how successful I am.

So, what’s a girl to do on an Ugh day when she still has to blog? Wordle!

My daughter, Danica, first introduced me to Wordle when she was using it for a school project but Peggy Eddleman reminded me about it in her blog post this morning. Wordle makes spiffy word clouds out of whatever words or URL you tell it to check out. Today I went and dumped the entire text of Shadows in to see what the results would look like. Voila:

In addition to being a lot of fun, I can see several practical uses for Wordle. For example, if you do like I did and dump your novel into it you’ll be given a glance of what your saying the most, which may help you identify themes or problems. If your story is about vampires, for example, but the word unicorn is the biggest one in the cloud, you may have a problem 🙂

You can also plug an rss feed url in and see the keywords for a blog. I did it with my blog and was quite surprised by the results:

It turns out I’m not blogging about what I thought I was. This is something I’ll have to look at again when this month is over and my ability to think coherently has returned. In the meantime, pretty!

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by Peggy Eddleman and the letter U. Tomorrow I’ll be blogging about video games. Or, that’s the plan at least.

A to Z Challenge, Twixt

Tagged!

April 23, 2012 R. Parrish 11 Comments

While I was struggling to figure out what I was going to write about for today (it’s T day on the Blogging from A to Z Challenge) I was saved by Kern Windwraith when she tagged me for the Lucky Seven meme. Tagged starts with T, so yay!

Unfortunately that means I have to share some uneditted first draft-y badness, which, ya know, isn’t my favourite, but it will get the job done. Actually, I’m kinda lucky because though the section of my WIP that is covered by this meme is slated for straight-up deletion it’s not terribad and it really shows the voice of my protagonist, Tannis.

So here’s how it works:

Go to page 7 or 77 of your current MS/WIP
Go to line 7
Copy down the next 7 lines, sentences or paragraphs and post them as they are written.
Tag 7 authors and let them know.

My first drafts are written by hand with lots of crossed out parts and notes to myself. Page 7 has no cross-y out-y bits, but there is a note to myself. I’m going to leave it in. Because I can. (Notes to myself are surrounded by *** which is a holdout from when I used to draft on the computer, the stars made the notes easy to find come revision time)

Also, my lines are very short because of the size of my notebook, so I’m writing until seven lines in the field I’m typing this blog post into are full.

So, without giving myself time to chicken out or list a bunch of excuses and explanation, here is a bit of the first draft of Twixt, starting on line 7 of page 7:

I can’t take this conversation much longer. It’s all blah, blah, freaking blah. Reminds me of how it used to feel when my two best friends back home, Cindy and Lauren, would start talking about World of Warcraft. They’d be all like “We’re gonna raid Mount Doom with our PVP and DPS” or whatever, and babble on for hours, completely oblivious to the fact my eyes had glazed over at the first sentence.

Thinking of theme made me sad, so I stood behind Kasey and started doing jumping jacks. Each time I jumped I could see over the top of her hair, but Richter was doing an admirable job of ignoring me. The bastard.

Finally, blessedly, Richter and Kasey wrapped up their conversation. ***Cut everything before this point. Let’s try to start this again in a way that reveals stuff slower***

Now the 7 writers I’m tagging are:

I made that list largely by going down my Twitter feed and picking the writers I didn’t think would hate me for chosing them. If you didn’t want to be tagged, I’m sorry, ignore me, if you did want to be tagged and I didn’t pick you, I’m sorry.

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by Kern Windwraith and the letter T. If you come by tomorrow I’ll be blogging about something that begins with U, but you’re guess is as good as mine what it will be LOL

A to Z Challenge, Books, Shades of Green

Shades of Green

April 21, 2012 R. Parrish 4 Comments

S was going to be all about the stories I’ve written that were set in Aphanasia and started with the letter S (Shades of Green, Sister Margaret and Shadows) but I’m tired. This month of blogging thing is a lot of work, and combining it with the other two challenges I did was a mistake. So, I’m going to be lazy today. Today S is all about Shades of Green.

Available at Sam’s Dot Bookstore

Shades of Green was a breakthrough for me. It was the first time anything I’d written was published in a physical form where I was the sole author. My work had been included in a few anthologys or collections, but it’s not quite the same as being the only name on the cover. The only person with words on the pages. It’s not a novel though, so while it checked a lot of boxes on my Bucket List, that one is still empty.

The process of publishing this book was an eye-opening one and while the sales weren’t especially exciting, the education was very, very worthwhile 🙂

My back cover text and the endorsement Marge Simon gave the novella are below. If you’re intrigued at all you can click the cover image above and it will take you to a page where you can read the first chapter for free.

Enjoy!

~*~

Z’thandra, the last swamp elf in Aphanasia, lives with the Reptar, a fierce race of lizard-people, most of whom resent her presence and want her gone from their village. When she discovers a human in the swamp and falls in love with him she must face the most difficult decision of her life. Will she pursue a life of happiness with the man she loves and in doing so condemn the Reptar to extinction, or will she chose to sacrifice her future to offer them hope? In the end the choice she makes will affect the Reptar for generations.

“Straight fantasy has to be really good to hold my interest. “Shades of Green” is absolutely excellent! Among the best fantasies I’ve read, a tale that unfolded smoothly and drew me in from the start. You’ll find yourself sincerely concerned for young Z’thandra and her plight. Parrish is one talented writer!”

-Marge Simon, Stoker winner, VECTORS: A Week in the Death of a Planet, 2008.

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter S. If you come by on Monday I’ll be talking about something that begins with the letter T… I have no idea what that will be, but it’ll be T-rific! :-p

Writing

Winding Path

April 20, 2012 R. Parrish 2 Comments

The first annual NaNoLJers anthology is done, and doesn’t it look pretty?

NaNoLJers is a livejournal community run by Amber Stults (as of December 2011) which I founded in 2005.I created it selfishly, so that I’d have a group of people I would feel accountable to in regard to my NaNoWriMo novel. On the unselfish side of my motivations, you have the fact I truly wanted to help other people achieve their NaNoWriMo goals too.

Since 2005 NaNoLJers has grown into a community of about 1,000 people but it’s really quiet. Like, really, really quiet, except in May, October and November. That’s because in May we run a writing challenge called Writo De Mayo. November is obviously all about NaNoWriMo and October is about pre-NaNo excitement LOL Still, there are writing prompts, exercises and the like posted on a regular basis (some of them by yours truly) and a great bunch of people are members. If you poke them just right they sometimes even come out to chat outside of the busy periods. Sometimes…

Anyway, before I stepped down as the community leader I started what I hope will become a NaNoLJers tradition — the annual anthology.

Putting together the guidelines was a little tricky and required a lot of tinkering. The thing about NaNoLJers (gawd, could I say that word anymore? LOL) is that we’ve got members at every stage of their writing careers. Some are professional writers and some are just starting out. I wanted to find a way to showcase everyone’s work no matter where they fit on the spectrum. I think we managed it here. Members of the community didn’t submit work for consideration, they submitted it for publication. That way there was no judgement. Less fear. Make no mistake, putting your work ‘out there’ for people to read for the first time (especially) is terrifying. I wanted to minimize that.

I decided to call this anthology Winding Path for three reasons:

The title fit with the cover image that we, as a writing community, had chosen to use as the cover.
One of the pieces sent in for inclusion was titled Winding Path
This anthology took a very winding path toward completion. First there was the endless tweaking of the guidelines for ‘submission’ and then deadlines kept getting pushed back, and finally I had some personal issues with focus and getting things done that pushed back it’s completion even further.

It’s done now, and looks pretty spiffy, even if I do say so myself. It was the first time I’d ever done the entire layout for a .pdf myself (Jo does that stuff for Niteblade) and I learned a crapload of things in the process. That should hopefully make things go smoother next time I do a layout. I tried to do the cover design but then the following conversation took place:

Me: *grumble, swear, grumble*
Jo: You okay?
Me: No. I’m not a graphics person. I don’t do graphics, I do words!
Jo: I do graphics. For a living, even. *gently takes my laptop away*

I think he did a gorgeous job, far better than I could have.

So, if you’re curious you can download a copy of the NaNoLJers Anthology (completely free) at our community page:

~ Winding Path ~

It contains stories by Clare Revell, Amber Stults, Debbie Gorsuch, Emi Bullard, Reb Kreyling, Jade Brooke and yours truly. I’m hoping that next year we’ll have even greater interest and a bigger collection to show for it at the end. If you think you’d like to be a part of that, just join the community and keep an eye open for the guidelines I’ll be putting up sometime around June. Or just read the anthology. It’s all good.

A to Z Challenge, Thoughts

Rejection Rebooted

April 20, 2012 R. Parrish 16 Comments

A couple years ago I wrote a post on Rejection that I thought was pretty good. Today I want to talk about rejection again, and because I’m lazy I am going to do that by rebooting my original post. So, if you’ve been reading my blog for a few years, some of this is going to sound eerily familiar, but some of it is brand new too 🙂

My acceptance ratio, according to Duotrope, for the past twelve months is about 10%. That means my submissions get rejected 90% of the time. 90%! That’s nine times out of ten. Crazy!

You need to develop a “thick skin” or find a way to deal with rejection if you’re going to keep plugging away in the face of that. As if that weren’t bad enough, I’m told by Duotrope that my acceptance ratio is higher than the average for people submitting to the same markets as me. That means I’m stinking lucky to be accepted 10% of the time.

Lucky.

Compounding the number of rejections we, as writers, have to deal with is the way we perceive those rejections. We give them so much more weight than they deserve. Truly.

As an example, a couple years ago NaNoLJers did a group poetry project where we wrote a poem together. Eventually we placed the piece to Sorcerous Signals. When that happened, Arnold Emmanuel, one of the people who worked on the poem blogged about it and said:

…Rhonda sent out submission requests and omg, lots of rejection letters. I thought to myself “Oh well, it won’t be published, that’s okay, least we tried,” and then one day all of a sudden I get an email that says something like “Remember that poem Alone we worked on,” and I’m thinking oh, and another rejection letter, but no, we got published!

How many rejection letters did we collect on the poem before selling it? How many ‘nos’ did we get before he figured ‘Oh well…’ and gave up on that poem being published?

Two.

And not two markets that are easy to place work with either. I’m talking about Lone Star Stories and Goblin Fruit. I’m not picking on Arnold, I’m not. I’m just using his words to show how subjective our perception of rejection is. We give it too much power.

I’ve another friend who wrote a story with the intention of submitting it to a specific market, sent it to that market and got turned down. His reaction is to trunk the story. I was shocked. Really? All that work and you’re going to say ‘Oh well…’ and give up on it after one submission? See? Again, giving a rejection notice too much power.

As an editor I can tell you, someone passing on your submission does not mean the submission is bad. It really doesn’t. Honest, honest, honest.

Rejection is a part of writing for publication and it sucks. It really does. It’s something we all need to deal with and the better our coping skills are the more likely we are to succeed because, when it comes down to it, perseverance is a HUGE ingredient in the recipe for success.

Sometimes I feel so worn down by all the rejection letters and the ‘close but…’ letters. I begin to feel like I’m never going to break into my dream markets, or find the perfect agent* and I begin to wonder if it’s worth it. Is it time to give up? To move on? But I grit my teeth and keep grinding away, and then when an acceptance does come it’s all worth it… for an hour or two. Then it’s back to the grind.

One way I’ve found to deal with rejection is to dwell on it as little as possible. When one market passes on a story or poem I don’t waste any time sending it off to another. I figure that way instead of dwelling on how disappointed I am in the first rejection I can focus on how hopeful I am that work will find a home with the new market I’ve sent it to. It’s a little thing, but it helps, and dude, lemme tell you, I’ll take all the help I can get.

How about you? How do you deal with rejection? What sort of tricks do you use to keep yourself going?

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter R. Check back tomorrow when I plan to be talking about some of my stories that begin with the letter S. Apparently I write a lot of them LOL Shades of Green, Shadows, Sister Margaret…

A to Z Challenge, Newsletter, Personal

Questions

April 19, 2012 R. Parrish 4 Comments

In doing this Blogging from A to Z challenge (which is more difficult than I’d expected) I was stuck for a topic to go with Q so I asked people to ask me questions I could answer. Thankfully people took pity on my pleading and asked me some questions. I answered the first couple on my “I” post (I Lied), and now I’m going to tackle a few more. I’m not going to answer them all though, because, um, well, I may need them for another post later this month LOL

Huushiita asked:

What are some of your WIP that you have? Do you even have any? lol

I have several. It’s actually kinda tricky to set a definite number because I have dozens of poem first drafts in notebooks that are resting before I revise, polish and submit them. If we don’t count them though, or the stuff I’ve started working on and then filed in my “In Progress” folder (likely) to be never seen again I have four novels in various states of done-ness, three short stories in desperate need of attention (two are unfinished and one is in need of serious revision) and two pieces that I don’t know how long they’re going to be when they are done. You could say that focus is not my strongest skill.

ETA: Apparently answering questions also isn’t my skill. I went to bed and then realised I hadn’t actually answered this question and worse, I knew I’d never sleep until I did.

So, to answer the question you asked (what are some of your WIPs) rather than the one I read (How many WIPs do you have?):

I’m working on Twixt which is a YA novel about a girl who is trapped in the land between this life and whatever comes after. I’m also working on a genie novel currently titled Consequence and I’ve got parts of my brain chewing away on another novel set around Krakatau right before it blows. That story doesn’t have a working title yet, but it does have a lot of awesome. I mean, a monster volcano and ~~shapeshifters~~ erm, that is, secret awesomeness.

On the short story front I’m struggling to work on a rather classically-styled ghost story, an Antikythera machine-inspired piece, and a couple stories about some sexy demons. I don’t know yet how long those last two are going to turn out to be… I’ll have to find time to start working on them some more to start figuring that out. I’m also working on a graphic novel with Danica that has a lot of fun (a lot of challenges too, as you can imagine) which really deserves more of my time than its getting.

This blogging challenge and the poem a day challenge are consuming all my writing time right now, but thankfully the subconcious keeps chewing away on things when I can’t devote all my attention to them LOL Come May my priorities are going to be Twixt and whatever else looks shiny when the time comes 🙂

Do you write with music on? If so, what is your go-to song/band/album? What music do you prefer?

It depends. When I’m writing poetry I prefer to have the radio on low and in the next room, it provides some background noise without actually being influenced by it. When I’m working on fiction, however, it’s anyone’s guess LOL Sometimes I need the low radio (I positively cannot work in silence) and sometimes I like having identifiable music playing. For example, when I wrote the last draft of Shadows my playlist was mostly Taylor Swift, but I also wrote a novel while listening exclusively to King Diamond.

Do you ever get cravings for ice cream from out of nowhere? What’s your flavour of choice?

Nah, not really. Ice cream isn’t my foodie weakness. Right now I’m all about stuffed jalapenos. Om nom nom. I did talk about ice cream in my previous question post though. You can check it out here, iffin yer curious.

Why must you be so damn bloody awesome? <3

I wasn’t sure if I should post this question or not LOL I don’t feel particularly awesome, but saying that feels like fishing for compliments, which I most assuredly am not. If I truly were awesome, I’d have had a super funny response to make to this question, but I don’t, I only have thanks, for making me smile 🙂

Ness asked:

what happened to your newsletter?

It fell victim to a combination of a bit of impostor complex (Who am I to have a newsletter? Does anyone even read this thing?) and a particularly bad depression that forced me to seriously cut back on the number of things I was doing. I’m feeling a lot better these days so perhaps it’s time I considered sending it out again. After all, there are still subscribers there… Hmm… We’ll see, we’ll see…

have you had ‘the talk’ with dani yet?

I honestly thought about making this it’s own blog post, I could talk about it quite extensively. However, I decided that I’d take the lazy way out and just address it here instead, in short form 🙂

Personally, I don’t believe in ‘the talk’. I believe in a dialogue, a continuous dialogue that takes place over many years. Jo and I have always spoken openly with Danica about sex, keeping our answers age-appropriate, of course. She knows she can come to us with any questions she may have (and she does) and receive non-judgemental, correct information in response.

In all honestly, the more difficult questions to answer are not about the biological / physcial things about sex. Much, much harder are the questions about relationships (romantic and otherwise). Emotions are so much trickier than mechanics LOL We try to answer those as openly as we can, giving Danica information, advice or sharing our own similar situations, but then leaving her to make her own decisions and act on them.

you’ve written a lot of things set in aphanasia. do you have more? how many more do you think you’ll write?

I do have more. A lot more LOL And I will write them, someday. Right now, however, I really feel like I need to take a little break from Aphanasia to work on a couple of the other stories that are tossing about in my brain. That being said, even now, when I’m trying to devote all my attention to revising Twixt I’m still occasionally struck with an idea for See The Sky Again, which is another Aphanasian novel I started working on a while back and plan on finishing someday (oh, and I didn’t include that in my count of WIPs. Sorry Huushii, I guess that makes it five novels).

Thank you guys for your questions 🙂 I’m going to tackle a few more in the near-ish future 🙂

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter Q. If you come by tomorrow I’ll be talking about Rejection. In the meantime, don’t forget about Niteblade’s fundraiser. I know I’ve said it before, but we really, truly need your help.

A to Z Challenge, NovPad, Poetry

Poetry

April 18, 2012 R. Parrish 6 Comments

My definition of poetry, if I were pressed to provide one, would be deliberately vague. Actually, I don’t know if I could give one even if I tried. I consider song lyrics to be poems, and often as I’m composing a photograph (or editing it afterward) I think of it as a poem. Those pictures up there, for example, are a few I picked out of my photostream over at Flickr that seemed poetic to me.

I write a lot of poems, and I have made much more money selling poems than I have selling fiction. Even so, I always feel almost, halfway embarrassed about my poetry. I think because it doesn’t feel “intellectual” enough. That’s probably not the right word, and I’m worried now that I’ve insulted someone somewhere, but… it’s the best word I can think of for now.

My poems are accessible. No one has ever read one of my poems (that I know of LOL) and said ‘I don’t get it’. On one hand I feel like that’s a good thing, but on the other I’m always worried someone is going to be like “Dude, that’s not a poem, it’s not nearly obscure enough!” or jump out of the proverbial bushes and point at me and be like “You call that thing you wrote a poem? It doesn’t even have any *insert something here* in it!”

It’s stupid, really. I know it is, but that doesn’t make it go away. Alas.

Now I’ve written and deleted the last bit of this post four times in the last hour. I need to get this blog entry finished and scheduled, but by choosing ‘Poetry’ as my topic I’ve picked something too broad and I’m having a hell of a time keeping this post focused. Therefore, in order to avoid rambling off onto a million other topics I’m going to share three poems I’ve written over the years. I’ve covered the spectrum here from super cheesy to (hopefully) less so LOL I hope you enjoy at least one of them 🙂

The Sepultress
(first published by NewMyths.com in December 2007)

Her silken song of wind and wave
Called unto those beyond the grave
“Awake!” she cried, “And come to play!”
“I’ve only ‘till the break of day.”

And to the shore the dead did come,
In groups of two and one by one
Once there they danced upon the sand
Whilst wicked waves served as the band.

A thousand corpses bobbed and swayed—
Cold bones ratt’ling a serenade
“Dance my children,” I heard her shriek
And terror made my knees go weak

From the shadows I watched their throes
While a foul stench assailed my nose.
With my shirt up over my face,
I loosed my guts, to my disgrace

Above the bluffs, I spent the night
Afraid I might just die of fright
And when the dawn at last did break
All of the dead began to quake.

The power drained from empty eyes
As sunlight reached across the skies
Touched, she writhed upon the beach
Yet further still the beams did reach.

They swept across her gory crew
Who fell; puppets with strings cut through
I stood, transfixed as the tide rose
And shivered in my filthy clothes.

I watched the corpses float to sea
And knew no one would believe me
If I to them, did run and tell
About the night I spent in hell.

Because the water swept away
All evidence of their soiree
I lack the courage to be bold –
This pen’s the only soul I’ve told.

Lovers
(first published by Star*Line Fall 2008)

Where river meets bank
We linger, yet again, with
Your fin in my paw

Fluffy
(first published by Daikaijuzine June 2010)

A lame name, perhaps, but I wasn’t feeling creative
that day when I found her, hiding under the porch
at MacPherson’s old place. The same deck I ducked under
when I saw the shuffling mob coming down the street.
I’d seen her, a shadow within the shadows, her eyes
so wide open her iris was the thinnest band of gold;
like the ring Jo had given me, before this all started,
the one I lost trying to pull away from the shambler
the week before. She hissed, and arched her back,
not at me, but at the dirty feet, some shoeless, some
stumps, that marched past us out there.
I reached, with fingers shaking like the last leaf clinging
to the trees, and ran my hand down her back,
praying it would hush her, and not make her louder.
She pressed against me, rubbing my palm with her greasy fur,
a low rumble, like gargled gravel, emanating from her throat.
Purring.
It had been so long since I’d heard it, or any sound
reminiscent of joy. For it to be now, while the battered
battalion of undead dragged themselves by, made tears
creep into my eyes. Silent tears, thank God.
Now, as the snow blankets the ground, she rests
spread across my lap, vibrating gently, warming
my legs and my heart. The only other thing,
within hundreds of miles, perhaps,
with a heartbeat.

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter P. Tomorrow I’ll be answering some of the questions people asked me last month 🙂

A to Z Challenge, Personal, Thoughts

Other Writers

April 17, 2012 R. Parrish 10 Comments

I feel like I’ve been talking about myself an awful lot this month, and you’re probably more than ready for a little break from all the ‘Me, me, me’ stuff So…

See that photo? I took it while I was at a retreat for writers a while back. I flatter myself that it could be considered inspiring, which is what makes it the perfect image to go with this blog. You see, I’m going to talk about other writers. Writers I find inspiring.

In trying to decide who to include on this list I found that really it wasn’t all about what these people wrote, or even how they wrote it (though they are all super freaking talented and often inspire sparks of envy in me). The main reason I picked these people to share as the writers who inspire me was because they are good people. They inspire me to want to be a better person, not just a better writer.

In no particular order, let me share introduce you to some of the people who inspire me.

Beth Cato: She’s probably going to blush when she reads this, and that’s part of why I love her so much, she doesn’t seem to know how awesome she is. One of the things I like the most about Beth is that she sets goals and then she reaches them. It sounds so simple, until you think about it. It doesn’t matter what distractions, what obstacles, what things come up to try and make her stray from her path she doesn’t. She’s human, so I’m sure she’s missed deadlines on occasion, but it’s not for lack of trying.

I really got to know Beth after I published her story The Pacifier (which is freaking awesome, and you need to read it. Now. Go ahead, I’ll wait) and she’s become one of my dearest friends even though we’ve never met in person. Yet. I really can’t emphasize enough how inspiring and motivating it is to watch her pursuing her goals and accomplishing them, one by one.

Carrie Jones: Carrie is nice. No, she’s not nice in that that sugar-coated fake way that so many people are, she is honestly and sincerely nice. Carrie is the kind of person who will (and does) go out of her way to help a stranger. She’s got one of the biggest hearts of anyone I’ve ever *met* and also has an ability to really evoke emotion in her readers without slipping into the realm of melodrama — I suspect the two are related. She’s goofy, and fun, and, did I mention nice? One day I’m going to meet her in like, three dimensions, and that will be a good day. A very good day.

Jim Hines: Jim. What can I say about Jim? He makes me laugh and he makes me think — often both at the same time. I respect his no-nonsense straight talk about controversial issues, his ability to listen to other people’s opinions and respond thoughtfully, and his willingness to pose like women off book covers. He donates his time to charity auctions (and know from experience his critiques are incredibly valuable) and when Danica (a few years ago) sent him a piece of fan art for one of his goblin books, it made her month that he took time to send a personal reply. In my opinion he is made of win.

Kyle Kassidy: I know Kyle more for his photography than his fiction writing, but there is no question in my mind that he belongs on this list. I was introduced to Kyle through his blog on Livejournal, which is a complete adventure in itself. What I love the most about Kyle is how completely non-judgemental he is of people and the positive attitude he always seems to have. Also, he seems so. freaking. unselfish. It’s amazing. When I read his blogs or look at his pictures it almost always picks me up. When I grow up I want to be more like him. Truly. He once wrote ‘Make something beautiful’ and those words have stuck with me ever since. It’s how I’d like to live, making everyday into something special, and Kyle gave me that image, that ideal.

There are a great many other people I could have included, though, but this is only one blog post and I had to stop at some point. Maybe I’ll continue to expand on this list over the coming months as time allows.

Who would you have included that I missed? Why? Do they have a blog, or a book out, I’d like to get to know them if I don’t already 🙂

~*~

This blog post is part of the Blogging from A to Z challenge over the month of April and was brought to you by the letter O. If you come back tomorrow I’ll be talking a bit about Poetry. Also, don’t forget to check out Niteblade’s Fundraiser. We really do need your help, and we want to give you goodies for offering it 🙂