Tag Archives: Haunted Hospitals

Editing, Just Stuff, Writing

Award Eligibility

Leave a comment

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.

Haunted Hospitals, Published, Reviews

Haunted Hospitals

Leave a comment

Haunted Hospitals is officially out this weekend and the timing really could not be any better. You see, When Words Collide is next weekend and really, that’s where this all started.

A couple years ago I met my co-author, Mark Leslie, at WWC. I was sitting with him and a handful of other people at a table after the autograph session had concluded and I said, “You know, I live near a haunted hospital.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

We had several discussions via email and an in-person meeting at the next year’s WWC and slowly the plan for a book about haunted hospitals began to take shape.

And tomorrow that book is officially going out into the world!

I keep saying ‘officially’ it comes out tomorrow because last weekend I actually spotted a copy of it out in the wild — on the shelves at a local Chapters. Of course I squeed (like a total professional) and snapped some pictures.

I did leave it as I’d found it, spine out, on the shelf. So give me some points for that, anyway 🙂

This was my first foray into book length non-fiction and though it was incredibly challenging it was equally rewarding. I owe my co-author, Mark, a huge debt for showing me the ropes and demonstrating incredible patience as he answered question after newbie question. It’s been a huge adventure.

An adventure that continues even now.

The first review of Haunted Hospitals came out in the Sudbury Star and was then picked up by the National Post.

“If paranormal phenomena are going to occur, what better place than in a hospital?” noted Parrish in the book’s introduction. “Day after day, the most extreme of human experiences play out within the walls of hospitals. The most intense emotions are experienced again and again. Birth. Death. Trauma. Suffering. If paranormal activity is tied to energy or emotions, hospitals are the perfect petri dishes in which to culture it.

“Furthermore, if human spirits are trapped on this earth by trauma, disturbance or unfinished business, again, what better location than a hospital to forge the chains that hold them here?”

Read the full review here.

And yesterday I was a guest on J’lyn Nye’s show on 630 CHED here in Edmonton. That was my first ever radio appearance and I was super nervous. People have said nice things though, so I guess I hid it reasonably well. I thought I talked too much and stammered but you can judge for yourself if you’re so inclined. For the next week the show will be archived here at the 630 CHED Audio Vault. For the show I was on you’ll want August 3rd at 3pm 🙂

Mark and I will be at When Words Collide next weekend (August 11 – 13 at Delta Calgary South) to talk about Haunted Hospitals and how it all came together. There will be copies available there and we’ll be happy to sign them, however tickets are sold out. But fear not! Even if you can’t attend this year’s WWC you can still get a copy of Haunted Hospitals.

It should be available at your favourite local bookstore and/or library (and if it’s not you can usually ask them to order it in) or you can totally pick it up online!

Haunted Hospitals Online:

Direct from the Publisher

Amazon

Kobo

Barnes and Noble

(Note: Some of these links might be pre-order links until the book officially comes out)

Check it out and let me know what you think! And, if you have a scary, spooky or eerie hospital story of your own I’d love to hear it. Share it in the comments or drop me an email 🙂

Books, Cover Reveal, Haunted Hospitals

Haunted Hospitals Cover

Leave a comment

I wasn’t going to share this just yet because my bio on the Amazon page is wrong (I haven’t lived in Calgary for 36 years) but I can’t resist 🙂

Check. This. Out.

Haunted Hospitals

The cover for Mark and my book, Haunted Hospitals has been decided upon. What’s more, it’s all online and has a release date and everything! Exciting!

Making this move into non-fiction was definitely not easy but, thus far, it’s been a very positive and rewarding experience 🙂

 

p.s. I’m glad this is the cover which got used in the end. I liked the hospital beds option, thought it did a fantastic job of capturing the lonely, institutional feeling of a great many of these stories and the hospitals they are set in, but “Mary” captured my heart from the beginning. I love the colours, the imagery of an empty hallway (who knows where it leads?) and I think when it’s sized down to a thumbnail it will be much more legible than the beds.

p.p.s. I named this apparition Mary (and Mark was lovely enough to go along with it) because, as I frequently bemoaned on social media while I was researching this book, a disproportionately high number of female ghosts are named Mary. It makes me happy to see us continuing with that tradition 😉

Uncategorized

Haunted Hospitals Cover Options

1 Comment

We have cover options for Haunted Hospitals!! *bounces* Check these out:

Options

Which one do you like better?

Also, while I have you here and I’m talking about this book I just want to clear up a couple things. First, I didn’t edit this, I wrote it alongside Mark. It’s an easy mistake to make, I do a ridiculous amount of editing, but for this one I get to share an author credit. Secondly, this is paranormal non-fiction. Mark and I didn’t make up any of the stories we’ve collected for this book. Not a single one.

Now that’s all sorted, tell me again, which one do you like better? I have a favourite but I’m not gonna tell you which it is 😉

Editing, Goals

Goals for 2016

6 Comments

Looking Ahead -- My goals for 2016Each year I set goals for the year to come and share them on my blog here. At the end of each year I assess how well I did in accomplishing my goals and set new ones. It’s an important thing for me, this setting and sharing of goals. Setting them and having them written down in concrete language really helps me regain my focus when I lose it (which is often), evaluate progress, get things done and also, look back over time and see a bigger picture of things I’ve accomplished. Sharing them on my blog here with you is equally important because it provides a sense of accountability which can be a huge motivation at times when I need it most.

Over the past couple years my goal lists have grown and grown becoming quite long and complicated. So, too, has my career when you count in the things I don’t talk about here (such as freelance work and ghostwriting). It was kind of beginning to feel overwhelming, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what I’m going for so I think it’s time to simplify a wee bit. Thus…

My Goals for 2016

  • Speed up my blog/website
  • Write the Haunted Hospitals book with Mark Leslie.
    • I’ve begun working on this in February. My goal is to have the first draft of my contribution done by the end of April. I’ve never written anything like this before though, so I’m unsure how reasonable this goal is.
  • Announce D is for… anthology and prepare it for an early 2017 release
  • Release C is for Chimera on April 19th
    • Promote it sufficiently to break the sales numbers for A is for Apocalypse (based on the first three months after release)
  • Release Sirens (July?)
    • Promote it sufficiently to break the earn out its advance within the first year. Bonus points if it’s in the first six months.
  • Attend the ‘Despite Excuses’ writing retreat in California this July
  • Take August off. With the exception of attending When Words Collide… which is work but also isn’t :-p
  • Write the first draft of Deadmonton (My Winterknight Towers book), beginning in November and using NaNoWriMo as a springboard to get started
  • Hire an editor for Shadows and prep it for release
  • Host a December blog tour to celebrate the holidays and benefit the food bank.

I’ve also got several projects that are pending or in limbo right now including a brand new anthology series (Keep your fingers crossed for this one, especially!), three stand-alone anthologies I’d be co-editing (with three different people) and two collaborative poetry projects. I’ve deliberately built some empty spaces into my project calendar for the year to address these projects. Also, you just never know when I’m going to be distracted by something shiny and need to take a little detour for a while 😉

Uncategorized

Haunted Hospitals

2 Comments

Haunted Hospital, a photograph by Rhonda ParrishI live near a haunted hospital.

No. For realz.

Or, at least I’m told that it’s haunted.

What I know for sure is that I live near an abandoned hospital and I find it completely fascinating. It keeps creeping into my fiction and ever since we’ve moved here I’ve had ‘Write a book about the haunted hospital’ on the little dream project list at the back of my mind. So when I met Mark Leslie at When Words Collide a couple years and learned he wrote ghost story books (Tomes of Terror, Haunted Hamilton, Spooky Sudbury) I couldn’t resist saying, “Ya know… I live near a haunted hospital.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

Mark and I are writing a book about haunted hospitals and if you have a spooky hospital story to share with us, we’d love to hear about it. You can contact me directly (however you prefer — comment, email, social media) or check out our handy dandy form –> Right Here.

We’d love to hear from you 🙂