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.

Bits of Pieces

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This is going to be a sort of general update post. It’s not that a lot is happening, but some things are happening, things that, for a change, don’t have a lot to do with the daily grind of getting all the things done that I have to get done before I can do the things that I wanted to do in the first place. If you understand that—and I’m betting that most of you do—you’ll get how even a few changes can nudge the needle past So? all the way to Hey! Worth Noting.

First of all, after floundering for a bit (okay, five months), I’m starting to make some headway on the sequel to Black Kath’s Daughter. I still have a long way to go, but forward motion, believe you me, is an improvement. And if everything works out the way I think it’s going to, I’ll finally make a proper connection between the Amaet who was the bane of Tymon’s existence in The Long Look with the Amaet who is the creator of The Arrow Path and the bane of Marta’s existence in Black Kath’s Daughter. And vice versa, truth be told. The working title is: Power’s Shadow. Subject to change, being a working title and all.

The Yamada novel (To Break the Demon Gate) is still on track at PS Publishing for release early next year. So is the Prime Books collection of Yamada stories, Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter. One interesting thing when working with a smaller publisher is that sometimes you actually have some input into the cover design. Not always, but sometimes. I found the image we used for the first mockup of the Yamada collection, but the consensus (and I agree with it) was that it was both too modern and too “horror.” Yes, there are demons in the Yamada stories (and ghosts, and youkai, and…well, lots of such things, and anyone who’s read them knows that already) and they can be dark at times, but definitely not horror, so that’s not going to work. We’re still looking for something with the right atmosphere, and finding just the perfect thing is going to be tricky. When the cover is set I’ll put it up here as soon as the publisher okays it.

A couple of final notes—“In the Palace of the Jade Lion” from Beneath Ceaseless Skies #100 got a Recommended from Rich Horton in the October  Locus Magazine. It’s not as if that’s the first time I’ve gotten one, but it’s always cool. And the most recent Yamada story, “Three Little Foxes,” is due to go live up at BCS in the next few days. I’ll post a link here when that happens.

Scenes From a Marriage #6

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Husband wanders through the living room on his way out to the garage. Wife, watching tv.

SHE:  Damn!
HE:  What?
SHE:  I just wanted to relax for a bit, but everything is in commercial!
HE:  I think they time it that way on purpose.
SHE:  Thank god for the shopping channels.
HE (blinking):  The shopping channels?
SHE:  Yes. They’re almost never in commercial.
HE:  Ummm…they’re shopping channels.
SHE:  What’s your point?
HE:  Well, I mean, aren’t they always trying to sell you something? So aren’t they, by definition, always “in commercial”?
SHE (frostily):  It’s not the same thing at all.
HE:  It isn’t?
SHE:  No! They’re making things available that might interest me. There are things there that I usually don’t see elsewhere. Besides—it’s shopping!
HE (and you just knew he was going to, didn’t you?):  But it’s buying things you found out about on tv! How is that not a commercial?
SHE:  You’re such a … man! Aand you don’t understand anything!
HE: …..
 

(And everything goes downhill from there.)

MUSE (Still dressed like a rocker chick. Interrupting): Liar.
HE: Wait a minute. How did you get in here?
MUSE: I’m always here, you twit.
HE: Oh, right. I forgot.
MUSE: “You forgot”? And I suppose you also forgot just how long you’ve been married?
HE: No, I haven’t.
MUSE:  How long, then?
HE (sighs): Thirty-five years.
MUSE: Right, then. So tell them what really happened.
HE: Okay, fine. We’ll pick it up from about here….

SHE: Thank god for the shopping channels.
HE (blinking): The shopping channels?
SHE: Yes. They’re almost never in commercial.
HE: Right… I’m going out into the garage now. I’ve got to sand something.
SHE: Okay. Love you.
HE: Love you too.  (exeunts)
 

You want to know how to stay married for thirty-five years? Sure, open communication is crucial, but sometimes what’s even more crucial is knowing when to STFU.

You Cannot Defeat Me! Your Mental Google-Fu is Weak!

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One of the interesting things about (Getting older? Not being a kid anymore? Surviving?) is that memories tend to accumulate, fragment, and occasionally, resurface in weird ways. Last night I had a bit of animation stuck in my head. Like an earworm only there’s video involved too. I only knew that it was from an old kids’ show and involved a little alien creature who spoke entirely in rebuses. And I couldn’t for the life of me remember where it came from. I was racking my brain over every ancient cartoon series I could think of. (Linus the Lionhearted? No. Tom Terrific? No. Hoppity Hooper? No. Rocky and Bullwinkle? No, not even R&B).

Let me place what happened next in context: I remember plots and storylines. Anything. Books, tv shows, whatever. Mrs. Ogre doesn’t. Many times she’ll be going, “I know I’ve seen this episode before, but…” and I’ll say something like, “Oh, that’t the one where the bad fairies show up.” Doesn’t matter if I saw the thing twenty minutes or twenty years ago. That’s the sort of thing I remember, but I was drawing a complete blank on the little alien. Then Mrs. Ogre blinked and said, “Beany and Cecil?” And danged if I didn’t realized that she was right before she’d finished saying it. Now that I had enough to go on, Google found it: Strange Objects, ca 1962, starring “Beeping Tom” the space alien. I was seven. Mrs. Ogre wasn’t more than 4 1/2. She remembered it, not me.

I think that worried her a bit.

Friday PSA

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Okay, so it’s more of a self-serving announcement. Maybe we need a new desgination for that. Maybe SSA? Anyway, here’s the deal–Scott Andrews at Beneath Ceaseless Skies has just released The Best of BCS, Year 3. Here’s the ToC:

  1. The Ghost of Shinoda Forest · Richard Parks
  2. Dying on the Elephant Road · Steve Rasnic Tem
  3. Bread and Circuses · Genevieve Valentine
  4. Walls of Paper, Soft as Skin · Adam Callaway
  5. Mr Morrow Becomes Acquainted with the Delicate Art of Squid Keeping · Geoffrey Maloney
  6. Butterfly · Garth Upshaw
  7. Red Dirt · Ian McHugh
  8. The Nine-Tailed Cat · Michael J. DeLuca
  9. Letters of Fire · Margaret Ronald
  10. Fleurs du Mal · J. Kathleen Cheney
  11. Gone Sleeping · Heather Clitheroe
  12. Dirt Witch · Eljay Daly
  13. Silent, Cold, and Still · Kris Dikeman
  14. The Angel Azrael Rode into the Town of Burnt Church on a Dead Horse · Peter Darbyshire
  15. Playing for Amarante · A.B. Treadwell
  16. The Suffering Gallery · Matthew Kressel
  17. In the Gardens of the Night · Siobhan Carroll
  18. Beloved of the Sun · Ann Leckie

 From the BCS web site: “The Best of BCS, Year Three  features such authors as Richard Parks, Garth Upshaw, Margaret Ronald, Matthew Kressel, Geoffrey Maloney, and World Fantasy Award-winner Steve Rasnic Tem.

It includes “Walls of Paper, Soft as Skin” by Adam Callaway, named to Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2012, edited by Paula Guran, as well as three stories named to the Million Writers Award Notable Stories of 2011 and four given Honorable Mention in Year’s Best Science Fiction 29, edited by Gardner Dozois.”

 

Special offer going on– buy The Best of BCS, Year Three from Weightless Books between now and Oct. 19 and get a free copy of Best of BCS, Year One or Best of BCS, Year Two.

You can also pick it up at all the usual places, Amazon, B&N, Smashwords…..here’s the thing–proceeds from the sale of The Best of BCS, Year Three go to pay BCS authors and artists for their work and keep the magazine going. Two subjects near and dear to my heart, it has to be understood.

Okay, commercial over. Thanks for your patience.