Tag Archives: Poetry

Poetry FTW!

In the midst of all my novella title angsty I totally forgot to mention that I sold a zombie poem to Illumen yesterday. “Prank Call?” is going to be in their Spring 2011 issue. Yay!

Also, a while back a group of us from NaNoLJers worked together on a group poetry project. The result is the poem “Alone“, which we sold to Sorcerous Signals. That poem went live at the beginning of the month. For anyone who reads Niteblade the style of the artwork accompanying our poem may look familliar — it was done by Marge Simon. I love her work so it was an honor to have her illustrate mine (again 🙂 ).

One of the best parts about writing “Alone” and getting it published is that it is the first paid publishing credit of a couple of my fellow poets. It made me happy to be involved in their first publication. Very happy.

If you write what was your first publication?

Mine was a short poem, a rictameter, in a little magazine called ‘The Storyteller’. They didn’t pay anything, in fact the publication cost me money because my ego demanded I buy a copy of the magazine*. The poem was called ‘Snowflakes’ and was sweet little piece about walking in the snow. The thing is it wasn’t until after it was published that I realised the syllable count on the poem was wrong. Oops.

*Note to self: This is a good topic for a blog entry in the future.

Zombie Rawr!

This Halloween Danica was an ‘infected’ which is sort of like a proto-vampire. It was an idea that came from a book she loved, Skulduggery Pleasant . This is a picture of her. I’m using it because it’s the closest think I’ve got to a zombie picture, and I wanted a zombie picture because I placed two more of my zombie poems from the poem-a-day challenge from November. Yay!

“Attachment” and “Last Thoughts” will appear in a future issue of Star*Line. Yay!

The biggest problem I’m finding with some of these individual poems is that while they stand alone alright for the most part, some of them lose a great deal of their horror if they are read outside of the ‘zombie apocalypse’ context. That is easy to maintain when you’ve got a whole collection, but less so when it’s just one piece. That wasn’t a problem for “Attachment” or “Last Thoughts” though, so yay!

Welcome 2010

So, it’s a whole new year. That’s what the calendar says anyway.

I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions. There’s no clever reason for it, I just don’t. Perhaps it’s just to be contrary. In fact, when we quit smoking several years back my husband and I made a point of doing it on December 30th rather than waiting a day or two because we didn’t want people to mistakenly think it was a New Year’s thing. Yeup. We really are that ornery 🙂

Still, this year is looking like it might be better than its predecessor. I feel like I’m beginning to crawl out of the grip of the depression I’d been fighting with over recent months. That’s a good thing for so many reasons, the least of which is not that it means writing is easier for me, it’s less of a struggle to focus and things might actually get done. Might.

Also, I have some upcoming publications I’m excited about. Shades of Green is obviously near the top of that list, but there’s also the six word memoir book from Harper’s Perrenial and a lot of poetry. I love the work I did for the November poem-a-month challenge and while I’m still working on placing most of it, I’m ridiculously excited to share it with you all. Soon, I hope. Soon.

What about you? What are you excited about for this coming year?

So…

So, for the second year in a row I have stopped trying to write See the Sky Again as a NaNo novel. This time for different reasons.

Last year when I started writing See the Sky Again there were still a lot of blank spots in my mind. I knew the setting, one of the characters and the ending. That was pretty much it. When I stopped writing it as a NaNo novel it was because I thought I should fan away a bit more of the fog and solidify some plot points in my brain before I worked on the project in earnest. Then I got distracted with other projects and See the Sky Again got put on the back burner for a while.

Well, when I dusted it off to work on again I had a good idea of where it was going and how it was going to get there. Or, if not good, at least I had an idea, which was more than last year. Unfortunately, as I was writing on it for NaNo I just wasn’t feeling it. I love the story, and I’m excited to tell it, but I don’t think it’s destined to be written in this way. Which is too bad because I’d like to get the first draft done sometime soon LOL

However, like I said above, I’ve pushed it to the side again for a while (shorter term than last time I hope LOL). Now I’m working on the re-write of Shadows as my NaNoWriMo project.

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What?

I couldn’t help it. Shadows won’t leave me alone. It’s always on the edges of my brain, demanding my attention. After the critiques I got from Jim C. Hines and Deena Fisher I had some really great ideas on how to improve it – trying to make it wait its turn until after I got the first draft of See the Sky Again done was, apparently, a very bad idea. I couldn’t focus on StSA because I really wanted to be re-writing Shadows.

Now that’s what I’m working on for NaNo (Note to any rules lawyers out there: I know that’s technically against the rules and um…I don’t care) and it’s going well. I’m enthusiastic about writing again and I really feel like the story is being filled out more this time. (One of my goals was to add more description and fill out the middle which I felt was lacking.) Yay! I’m hoping to complete the ‘new first draft’ via NaNoWriMo and then, just to be novel, NOT workshop it to death.

My nano word count is 6,652 so far, and I haven’t written yet today. Soon, I hope.

I’m also still working on the Poem-A-Day challenge and still loving it. Wheee! I’ve got 4 zombie poems (that I Love) and 2 more mainstream ones. I haven’t even looked at today’s prompt yet, but I’m looking forward to it. I’ll be sure and share at least one of the zombie pieces in my newsletter this month.

So far, November is being good to me. I hope you can say the same thing 🙂

News :)

Blue JayI am very addicted to Tim Horton’s coffee. Almost as addicted as I am to World of Warcraft. I always said I should take a camera with me on the walk to Tims (which I make at least once a day). There are three Tim’s within walking distance from my house, but my favorite is on 118th Avenue. It’s not that long a walk, about 20 minutes each way, but it takes me through the playground of the school I volunteer in, near the abandoned hospital that intrigues me (and is where Deadmonton starts) and through a small wooded park. I always see something interesting on my travels, but never have the camera to record any of it. Until this time.

I took the camera with me the other day, and managed to get a picture of this blue jay. I got a few other great pictures, including one of a squirrel who really didn’t want me near his tree and a magpie that was sitting at the very top of a giant pine tree, looking quite majestic.

This story, by the way, has nothing to do with the news I wanted to share today, but I wanted an excuse to post the picture, so there you go 🙂

So right, news. I’ve got some 🙂

Firstly, my poem, Fae, is in this month’s issue of Lorelei Signal. I love the illustration that Holly Eddy did for it. It’s very nice 🙂

Also, there has been a new review of Sister Margaret that I’m very excited about 🙂 Anna, of Genre Reviews said:

Is it possible for a story to be simultaneously grim and fun? Because this one pretty much is. In the spirit of urban fantasy, there’s equal parts intrigue and action, the battle against an evil vampire, and a plethora of folks living in a gritty reality. I loved Bayne, who isn’t really a sidekick but fills the quirky content nicely, and the plot twist at the end is a great one, unexpected but logical.

She said more too, of course 🙂 You can see the whole review here –> Sister Margaret by Rhonda Parrish

My last bit of news for today is that I’m going on vacation to San Francisco. Yay! We are leaving on Sunday and will be gone for a week. While I’m away I will be completely offline, I’m not even taking my laptop in order to force myself to not work, at least for a little while. I will see you when I get back though 🙂

I’ll leave you with a picture of Danica finishing up her ice cap from the aforementioned trip to Tims. Why? Because I think she’s awesome.

Danica and an Ice Cap

Scattered Verses, Moonlit Curses

A couple months ago I was asked by Monsters Next Door editor, LB Goddard if I would care to contribute something to an upcoming poetry anthology. Would I? I was so flattered to be invited to submit that I practically turned myself inside out in my haste to say ‘Yes, yes I would!’. Then, of course, I had to think of something to write. Easier said than done.

I put a ridiculous amount of pressure on myself to come up with something -good-. Something scary but with depth, haunting and evocative. You know what I found out? You can’t force that and it wasn’t going to happen LOL So I went with cheesy. I love cheesy horror, and apparently LB doesn’t mind it either because everything I submitted got in 🙂

The first piece of mine is called “Zonnet” and is, as the name sort of implies, a zombie-themed sonnet. I don’t actually like sonnets because I dislike iambic pentameter (the extra foot makes it awkward, I prefer iambic tetrameter, but we’ll get to that later). Still, I do enjoy taking a traditional/pretentious format like the sonnet and writing it about something as irreverent as zombies. This specific poem was directly influenced by S.G. Browne’s zom-rom-com Breathers.

My second poem is “Lycanthroku” which is a series of three shapeshifter-themed haiku, followed by “Lycanthrick” which is a werewolf limrick Jo and I composed while I was using him to bounce poem ideas off. I’m a fan of “Lycanthrick” all by itself, but it’s got an extra special spot in my heart because it’s the first time Jo and I have shared a byline. Awww /gush

I rounded out my submission with “The Sepultress” which is a reprinted poem I wrote in iambic tetrameter, because I like it far more than pentameter. Just sayin’ 😉

The book, Scattered Verses, Moonlit Curses, also features the work of Alexis Child, Charlotte Gledson, Natalie Sin, Julie “Cannibal Rose” Thielen, LB Goddard, Shells Walter, Richard Fay, Benjamin Bussey and Brian Beemer. I’ve not read it all yet, but I have looked through enough to suspect that cheesy horror wasn’t the style of choice for most people, happily, I don’t mind being different. I hope to read it sooner rather than later and share my impressions, but I haven’t had a chance yet. In my defense, the book just came out yesterday LOL

Scattered Verses, Moonlit Curses

When the editor of ‘The Monsters Next Door’ invited me to submit something to her upcoming poetry anthology I was blown away. I’ve never been personally invited to submit to an anthology before! You can bet your butt I was going to take advantage of the offer 🙂

It was tough though. I put all sorts of pressure on myself to come up with some new poems that would fit her theme (dark, scary and not haiku LoL). In the end I submitted four poems, one of which was a repeat; The Sepultress, Zonnet (a zombie sonnet), Lycantrick (which I co-wrote with Jo) and a set of three werewolf haiku.

She accepted them all. Yay! I think the book is due to be released in May, so hopefully everyone else will like them too once that happens LoL

Exciting News

I have some pretty exciting news, but I’ve decided to wait and share it first on my newsletter (which comes out on the 15th). Does that make me bratty? I don’t mind if it does, I just thought I’d check 🙂 So if you haven’t signed up yet and you’re intrigued the url is here >> Rhonda’s Newsletter <<. Don’t forget that this month I’m giving away an Amazon gift certificate to one random subscriber.

In other news, that I’m willing to share today, I had a short prose poem published on Outshine today, which is a Twitter zine. Twitter is a very cool thing that I fail at remembering to update or read…but I think having a Twitter-based magazine is a very cool idea. I’m not sure how to link directly to my poem but Outshine’s twitter page is here.

As for the poem. I think under most circumstances I would have written it as a three line poem, but on Outshine you can’t have line breaks and they only publish prose poems. So does having it there and minus line breaks make it a prose poem? I don’ t know, you tell me.

Eep!

Eep! Dude, it’s like the 14th already. How did that happen?

I’m working on my newsletter and I think I may pull it off on time this month (yay!). There’s still time to sign up if you haven’t already –> Newsletter <– . It’s pretty fun. I include one piece that hasn’t been published before, snippets of my works-in-progress and a poem as well as just updates and such. C’mon, all the cool kids are subscribed 😉

In other news, on the 11th my poem, Ballerina, was published on Every Day Poets. I’ve been published by their fiction site too and I have to say I really enjoy the format. I love the fact readers can comment and rate pieces — feedback from strangers is good. Good I say! 🙂

Right, I need to stop procrastinating and work on the newsletter or I won’t have anything to mail out tomorrow.

World Fantasy Open Mic Reading

I’m freshly returned from World Fantasy and though I keep trying to settle down enough to write about how amazing an experience it was for me, I keep failing. There is so much to say and I don’t know all the words. Suffice to say it was mind-blowing.

One part of the conference which was particularly amazing for me was the open mic poetry reading Carolyn Clink put together. Yes, the same one I was just talking about a week ago and admitting how I was too big a wuss to participate.

The week-ago me was wrong.

I went to the reading and I participated! I read a very short piece, a haiku in fact, titled “Lovers” that was originally published in Star*Line. I was -so- nervous. I could barely breathe and I’m not sure exactly how my knees held me up, but I did it. I did it because I figured it would be easier to suck up my nerves and fear and do it than it would be to live with my self-condemnation for years and years to come for being too scared to do it. So basically, because it was easier in the long run.

I’m so glad I did, though even now my fingers get a bit shaky when I think about it. I honestly don’t know how big the audience is because I seriously had tunnel vision the whole time, but I heard someone say ‘This is a bigger audience than I would have expected at a poetry event.’ so that’s good.

Best of all, after I read no one booed, in fact, there were a few chuckles, so I guess I enunciated my words okay.

That was one heck of a way to get my poetry-reading cherry popped though. The people reading were:

  • Joe Haldeman
  • David Lunde
  • Colleen Anderson
  • Rhea Rose
  • Eileen Kernaghan
  • Rhonda Parrish
  • Carolyn Clink

Yes! That really is my name on the same list as all those amazing poets! *swoon*. So I’ve done it. I don’t know if I’ll ever manage to find the courage to do it again, but…ah hell, who am I kidding? I’d totally do it again, and again, and again…and hopefully better each time. Just…not any time too soon. 🙂

Whimper

My sexy poem, Whimper, is the featured piece at Oysters and Chocolate today. This poem is very suggestive and is not meant to be read by anyone under eighteen or who is easily offended. However, if you don’t fall into either of those categories I hope you’ll pop by and take a look.

It’s a short poem, a rictameter (I loves me some rictameters) but I think it’s packed full of goodness. I hope you agree 🙂

I’ve also got a set of four poems published at The Monsters Next Door where I am in the awesome position of sharing a table of contents with several poets and authors I’ve had the honor of publishing in Niteblade. I’m in good company there and after you check out my poems it would be well worth your time to check out some of the other great work there. For real 🙂