Most of this post will have nothing to do with the image above. It’s the likely final cover for the next Yamada book, due out in September. I saw a working image much sooner, but since the publisher (Prime Books) has officially put it up on their website, I’m showing it here for the first time.  I am working furiously to make sure the book happens on schedule, but taking a few minutes to surface here because I feel bad about missing my post yesterday. I try to keep the posts themselves on schedule too, but you’re always doing battle with the day, and sometimes you don’t win. Yesterday I made my word quota on the book but the rest of the day was spent on an errand to New Hartford and a new air compressor for the next phase of trim work in the house. Soon: back to painting. The fun never stops on the quirky castle on the hill.

All that aside, a day or two ago I sold a reprint story to a new anthology(details TBA). Writers love reprints for a couple of obvious reasons. 1) It’s money for work we’ve already done and 2) Every appearance helps raise the profile and name recognition just a tad, non-trivial if you’re trying to build a readership, and what writer isn’t? Yet again, the post isn’t about that as such, nice though it is, but an event it triggered.

I have to provide a bio.

Yep, I’m here to fuss about bios again. Probably the one thing none of us should complain about is having to provide brief author biographies for whoever is publishing you. When I was just starting out I’d be thrilled at the idea, and struggle to keep the thing within the 100-200 words you’re generally allowed. Now if I can manage more than a couple of sentences it’s only a victory of the will. I went through a phase of just making stuff up, because that’s what I do anyway, but bios are supposed to be non-fiction, at least in theory. I finally judged it inappropriate to claim I had a side career teaching T’ai-Chi to polar bears, though stressed as the poor things are now, they can probably use it. So I generally end up writing something like this:

“Richard Parks’ work has appeared in Asimov’s SF, Realms of Fantasy, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and several “Year’s Best” anthologies and has been nominated for both the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature. The fourth book in the Yamada Monogatari series, The Emperor in Shadow, is due out from Prime Books in September 2016. He blogs at “Den of Ego and Iniquity Annex #3”, also known as: www.richard-parks.com”

Seriously, can you get any more boring than that? Possibly, but you’d really have to work at it. And they’re all variations on this one. Believe me, I take comfort in the knowledge that a lot of readers don’t even bother with them, and why should they? It’s the story that counts. The paradox is that I hope publishers keep asking me for them for a long, long time to come.