Author Archives: ogresan

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About ogresan

Richard Parks' stories have have appeared in Asimov's SF, Realms of Fantasy, Fantasy Magazine, Weird Tales, and numerous anthologies, including several Year's Bests. His first story collection, THE OGRE'S WIFE, was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. He is the author of the Yamada Monogatari series from Prime Books.

Updates–Because Things Happen

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YMBreaktheGate_5.5 x 8.5_V01

You’re looking at what is probably the final cover for the Prime Books edition of  Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate, barring any last minute tweaks. The original–and still official–publication date is December 3rd, but there’s a chance that will be moved up to mid- November. I’ll let everyone know once I know. I still have some hope that the PS limited edition will be out before then, but right now it’s anybody’s guess.  The third Yamada book, The War God’s Son is scheduled for mid 2015. I expect at least one more Yamada novel after that, though of course to some degree that depends on the next two.

Power’s Shadow continues to progress. I crossed the 40k threshold last week, so it’s officially a novel by SFWA standards. The story should wrap up at 60-65k words, maybe 70k at the outside. As of now I have no plans to discontinue the serial, so as long as I can stay ahead on the installments, I’ll keep posting them until the book is done. If I finish ahead of the installments, though, I’ll likely put the ebook edition out rather than waiting to catch up. That’s just theoretical, and probably far too optimistic. As with life itself, we’ll see what happens next.

Too Much Stuff in My Stuff

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WRITING 02

When you’ve been writing and publishing for a while, and especially if you started in the Stone Age, back before Cloud storage and more reliable backups were invented, you tended to accumulate paper: Plain rough drafts, marked up rough drafts, galleys, proof pages, the occasional hand-written manuscript (which technically is the only real manuscript there is) , contracts, copies of preliminary illustrations, you name it. I was no different. I think at that time I had some vague idea of shipping it off some day to some equally vague university collection that wanted that kind of thing. I even used to sign and date first drafts of stories before I filed them away, if you can believe that. Yes, it was that bad. Continue reading →

Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter – Audible Update

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Step4-YamadaAudible.com has already cast the voice actor who is going to be doing the narration for Demon Hunter, and possibly To Break the Demon Gate as well. I don’t think I can mention his name just yet, but he’s bilingual and was born in Tokyo, so I doubt they could have found anyone more qualified. Normally in a case like this we’d be in contact for any questions the voice actor might have, but I rather imagine he won’t need the pronounciation guide. More likely he’ll be able to point out anything I got wrong, so we’ll see how it goes. I think it’s going to turn out great, and I can’t wait to hear it. Once I get a firm release date I’ll be sure to post that. Post? Heh. I’ll be shouting it from the rooftops.

Yamada_BTG_cover-V06b-PrimeYamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate has its own page now at Prime Books, with a listing of places where you can pre-order. Early ordering does as much good for a book as anything–it nudges suppliers into ordering more copies and helps get the word out, so if you’re going to get the book anyway (and why wouldn’t you?), it couldn’t be much easier. Besides, most sources will have it for less than list.

One last note: Prime has also listed Yamada Monogatari: The War God’s Son in their official schedule for October 2015. Once we have the cover art set I’ll put it up here, so stay tuned.

Note: Edited to fix some obvious typos and incorrect usage. As the old saying goes, “I always know better. I just don’t always do better.”

Audible.Com Deal for Yamada Books

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Yamada_BTG_cover-V06b-PrimeNow that all the t’s are dotted and eyes crossed, I can announce here that Audible.Com and Prime Books have signed a deal for audio editions of several books in the Prime Books catalogue, including works by Ekaterina Sedia, Rudy Rucker, and the first two Yamada Monogatari books, Demon Hunter and To Break the Demon Gate (due in out in December of this year).

So now there will be audiobook editions of both books in addition to the print and ebook editions. It’s possible that the third in the series, The War God’s Son, will also have an Audible edition, but that’s yet to be determined. The deal was negotiated by Jennifer Jackson for the Donald Maass Agency, and you can read their announcement here. Also, Prime now has pre-order information for To Break the Demon Gate at their site, so now you can select another vendor if you’re avoiding Amazon at the moment. It is, after all, not the only game in town.

Step4-Yamada

Goodbye to the Far Horizon (II)

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PeavyH2Never mind the writing stuff for a bit. This afternoon I’m saying an official goodbye to my Peavey Horizon II guitar. I wrote about acquiring it some time ago. It was and is a beauty, and one of the most well-made guitars I’ve ever owned, but as space dwindled and what I laughingly refer to as my playing focus started to develop, I realized that ax just wasn’t meant for me as either a guitar student or player. I know I did the right thing, rescuing it from that flea market. I also did the right thing when I sold it, for about four times what I paid for it, to someone who will treat it well and play it as it deserves to be played. I will also point out that the buyer still got a really good deal, even at that multiple. I got it cheap, and so did they.

I “only” have five guitars now, which is really three or four more than I need at this stage of my development, but I’m not giving up any of the others for the forseeable future. Just so you know.