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.

Zen and the Art of Beating Your Head Against the Wall Revisited

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“Everything’s been said. But no one was listening, so we have to keep saying it.” — Anonymous.

I’ve said this before, I know. Look away if you want. I won’t mind. Some of this applies across the board, but this is mostly for the short story people out there.

Ok, tough guys of all genders, do you really think you’re ready for this? Of course you do, and why shouldn’t you? You’ve endured the long hours with nothing but you and a blank screen. You’ve endured the rejections. You’ve endured the shoestring operations that either lose your submissions or close up shop before they publish that story they bought from you, the one that was going to make your reputation overnight. Your grin may have been more grimace for a bit, but you got through it. Now you sneer at editorial indifference, you scoff at bad reviews. You’ve been assayed, weighed in the balance, proven. You’re starting to break through; the venues are getting better, the checks are getting larger. This is no small accomplishment. You’re in. You’ve done it. You’ve passed all the tests.

Not all. There’s still one test left. And while we’re at it, how good are you at being ignored?

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Have a Little Faith, Will Ya?

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Feeling dogmatic this morning, so avoid if you ain’t in the mood. Time again I hear two classic questions about writing and submitting stories, most recently on another board– how do you know when something is good enough to send to markets? How do you know when it’s time to take a story out of circulation and trunk it?

Considering how self-evident those answers are, I should be amazed that people keep asking them, and yet I can understand the frustration. The true answers may be obvious, but they’re next to impossible for a beginner to apply, by definition. It makes sense that they keep looking for easier, more relevant to their current state of development answers. Unfortunately, I don’t think there are any. Continue reading →

Meanwhile, Back at the Emperor’s Palace…

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Opinions are divided about series, both at the novel and short story level. Readers love spending time with characters they already know and like, but some purists think they’re the death of the genre (in which case sf/f has been dead for a loooong time). One accusation that’s leveled at series, novel and story length both, is laziness. “Once the background is established and you’re familiar with it, that’s half the work. You’re doing paint-by-numbers after that.”

Yeah. Right.

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Our Text For Today

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While I’m rather fond of the idea of blogging in general, it has some serious limitations and now and then you wonder if the time couldn’t be spent more productively somewhere else. The very thought of which makes me realize that I’m enjoying this, and so probably won’t stop to do something more productive, for I am a sybaritic creature by nature. Besides, if one is in the mood to get up on a soapbox as I am at the moment, there’s no substitute.

I’ve been thinking about and remembering what it was like when I was trying to get started. And how I wished there had been someone there to lay down the basics for me. I don’t mean Heinlein’s 5 basics (and if you don’t know these, you should. Practice your Google-fu), I mean the other basics. It would have saved several precious years of floundering around. To that end, I’m going to post my list of the Five Things I Wish I’d Known Then: Continue reading →

Occasional Status Update

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I started to call this “Periodic Status Update,” but that would apply that there was some sort of regular schedule to things happening that make a status update appropriate, and I’m here to tell you that ain’t the case. Feast or famine is the only schedule I’m aware of, and it’s more of a binary condition than a discreet event…

Ahem. Where was I? Right. Status update. Yesterday I got not one, but two contracts in the mail. Famine is the general condition, but yesterday was more of a feast day. First, I sold the latest Lord Yamada story, “Three Little Foxes,” to Beneath Ceaseless Skies. I think it’ll be online sometime later this year, but I don’t know for sure. I’ll post when I know more. If anyone’s curious, that’s the story that came to me when I was looking at a Gmail background image, so you just never know which direction one of these things is going to arrive from. Continue reading →