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.

The Ferris Wheel and the Werewolf, or How to Annoy Pretty Much Everybody

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 The pitfalls of self-promotion is–unfortunately–a subject I’ve been forced to think about lately, so when author Jim Hines wrote a parody song that explains the nature of this particular animal, it rather crystallized some notions that I’d been turning over myself. First, to set the mood, I think it would be a good idea to sing along with Jim on this, so go here first and then come on back. I’ll wait.

Right, then. Some of  you may remember an animated TV show from the 90’s called The Critic, starring Jon Lovitz as the voice of “Jay Sherman,” the movie critic of the title. In one episode a book tour goes horribly wrong because Jay’s publisher has an animatronic bookstore display of Jay holding his collection of movie columns and repeating “BUY MY BOOK!” on an endless loop. It not only kept the customers away, but at least one of the store managers was alleged to have committed suicide. Of course it was a exaggeration, a parody of the hard-sell, but not as far removed from reality as we’d like to think. Especially lately.

Now then. I’ll grant you, it’s possible to go too far the other way. In his introduction to Hereafter, and After, Andy Duncan quoted screenwriter Ben Hecht as describing a shameless publicity hound as “a cross between a Ferris Wheel and a werewolf,” to make the point that I wasn’t one. And it was true. I wasn’t. I pray I am still not, but what I was at the time was the other extreme—completely self-effacing (hard to believe, I know, but it’s true). I wrote the stories. I sent them out. They were published or not, but either way that was pretty much the end of it, so far as I was concerned. Then I published my first collection, then the fist novella chapbook, then the first novel, then my second and third collections, and somewhere along that line I finally copped to the obvious truth that hiding your light under a bushel is not a game plan.

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Now It’s Your Turn

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Punchline to an old joke, but probably appropriate here. See, I had an interesting night not too long ago. And by “interesting” I mean it was to me, so I’m going to talk about it here.

 I had one of those cliché dreams where you’re going back to school. No, I didn’t forget I had a class until time for the final or have to give a speech naked. It wasn’t quite that clichéd.  Apparently I was going to a private college with communal dorms, and your dorm group (housemates?) bought food as a group and took turns cooking. A little odd and outside my experience, but ok. Then, in the middle of the school term while I’m sure I had other things to do, I went to Hell. Literally. Not sure why. I don’t remember the death experience in the dream. I’m not even sure there was one, but there I was in Hell, not having a good time. The Devil was being about what you’d expect him to be, punishing people, and once fighting off a challenge from a rival god (not the God. A god). Then I was back in school, but I wasn’t out of Hell (“Why,this is Hell. Nor am I out of it.” – Faust) More like a furlough. See, being in Hell was no excuse for missing your turn cooking, so there I was, fresh out of Hell and back in the dorm trying to make pancakes. Problem was, being in Hell had screwed up my sense of temperature, so I kept burning them.

Then back in Hell. Where I found out it was someone ELSE’s turn to be the Devil. Apparently, we were all taking turns there, too. As above, so below. Wonder how they were managing in Heaven?

New Story Time – “A Thing or Two About Love”

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Looking back on this story now I can see that it’s just,oh, maybe a tad cynical about the subject. I acknowledge and own this, but I’m not going to apologize for it. You have to write from the place you are at the time, even if, apparently, in 1997 I was being a bit of a smart-ass.

“A Thing or Two About Love”

Excerpt – The Heavenly Fox

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I’m trying something new for the blog–snippets. Today’s post is an excerpt from The Heavenly Fox (PS Publishing 2011). To frame this bit,  the fox vixen Springshadow has successfully brewed and and imbibed (how often do I get to use that word?) the Golden Elixir of Immortality, and now she’s awaiting the results with her friend, a Taoist immortal named Wildeye and the goddess/bodhisattva Kuan Yin who showed up unannounced for reasons of her own:

     Springshadow stood up. Her form was somewhere between fully human and fully vulpine; a transitional form that gave her human hands and other aspects of humans that were useful, without fully surrendering her fox senses, and she’d used it often. Only now there seemed to be more to it. Several “mores,” actually.

     “My tail feels funny.”

     “Say rather your tails, girl,” Wildeye said, and started counting.

     “You’re a Heavenly Fox now, Springshadow. Look up,” said the goddess.

     Springshadow looked up. There, in the distant sky far beyond the clouds, far beyond the mortal world yet clearly visible, clearly reachable, was a magnificent floating city with towers of gold and walls of the finest jade.

     Wildeye gave a grunt of triumph as he finished his count. “Nine! And each as magnificent as the last.”

     “What are you babbling about? Nine what?” Springshadow said, unable for the moment to take her eyes off of Heaven and the floating city.

     “Tails, of course,” he said.  “Yours.”

     That finally got Springshadow’s attention. She quickly glanced behind her like a courtesan checking her appearance. It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing, but she finally saw what Wildeye saw–fox tails.

     Nine in all, and all, as Wildeye said, belonging to her. Attached.

     “Nine?!”

     “Nine.” Wildeye nodded in grudging respect.  “You have to admit,” he said, turning to the goddess, “that’s pretty damn impressive.”

Following the Wrong Gods Home

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I was reading over an old blog post on the subject of short stories versus novels, and the thing that struck me about whatever I was ranting about was how dated the thing was. Irrelevant, even. I am constantly reminded that so many “truths” that I had internalized to the core of my being about the writing and publishing of sf/f just aren’t true anymore. Some were never true at all.

It’s something I should be used to by now. Back when I was struggling to “break in” at even an entry level, I had a very clear idea of what I wanted, and where I was trying to get to. The field had fairly clear parameters. I knew what magazines “counted” and what my targets were. For writers, I knew who the major players were. But a funny thing happened on my way to entering the field—by the time I got there, it wasn’t the same field. Remember the phrase, “There were giants in the earth in those days”? Well, there were. My first sale was to the venerable Amazing Stories, the absolute oldest of the magazines and arguably the first real sf magazine, period. By the time I sold my second story, to Asimov’s SF, Amazing was no more. My third story sale was to a magazine that didn’t even exist when I was targeting the first two, SF Age, now also gone. For the first fourteen years that I was selling stories my “go to” market was Realms of Fantasy, and now? Poof. Gone.

And it wasn’t just magazines. I had my heroes, writers who were almost like gods and goddesses to me. And by the time I felt somewhat part of the field, again, it wasn’t there anymore. Many of the old gods had died off or retired. New people, like me, were filling the niches. Some would go on to be major players, people I’d never even heard of in the preceding years. I was where I wanted to be, but it wasn’t where I thought it was. Continue reading →