Category Archives: Writing

Quick Alert

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Not that I need a Lert. (Sorry, old fannish joke).

Ahem.

There will be a price promotion on my novella , Hereafter, and After, starting tomorrow at 8 A.M. PST, and lasting…well, not that long before the price starts going back up. This novella was originally published as a limited hardback from PS Publishing. Here’s what Charles de Lint had to say about it in Fantasy and Science Fiction:

” (It) allows Parks to poke gentle fun and make some serious commentary on our belief systems, and it gives us a terrific read. Hereafter, and After is a story that would have made Robert Nathan or James Branch Cabell proud — and probably would James Morrow, too, who’s still alive and could read it. And it certainly shows that Parks has the chops to work at a longer length.”

Been a while, but I’m still blushing.

Lady Kuzunoha’s Daughter

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I’m pleased to say I’ve just sold a new Yamada story to Beneath Ceaseless Skies, “The Fox’s Daughter.” It mostly concerns what happens when circumstances force Lady Kuzunoha to entrust her daughter Kimiko to Yamada’s family temporarily. Yamada has quite a bit of experience with kitsune, but less so with the sullen teenager equivalent. Fortunately, Tagako-hime is there to pick up the slack. All that said, Yamada will still have his hands full sorting out one Kimiko-induced crisis after another.

This makes the third new Yamada story following the events of The Emperor in Shadow, after “Uzumaki of the Lake” in BCS #300 and “A Minor Exorcism,” the latter of which should be out from BCS in the next few months. There’s actually a fourth already written, a flash piece I plan to expand and include as an original in the eventual new Yamada collection. After that, who knows. I’ll be sure to post when “The Fox’s Daughter” is scheduled.

It’s easy to tell that the first book in the series, Demon Hunter, is out of print now in pb, considering that the only sources listing it are selling it for $47 and “new” copies for $128. Well, they can list it for whatever they want, I suppose, but I can’t imagine they’re selling very many.

And before anyone asks, yes, I’m still working on the concluding volume of The Laws of Power series. It’s just not the only thing I’m working on.

Monday After Monday After Morning After

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Is it the End of the World as We Know it? Do we feel fine?

I can’t say I do. This whole year has been a dumpster fire that just will not go out. Most of it preventable, or at least the embers tamped down. Yet the people in charge can’t do anything and the people who could aren’t in charge. Sort of a perfect storm of SNAFU. I don’t feel fine. But I’m enduring, which feels like a win.

 

When the book’s finished I’ll likely put together some kind of price promotion for the first in the series, The Long Look. In the meantime, here’s a snippet of the The Seventh Law of Power, submitted with absolutely no context nor explanation. You’re welcome.

 

“I admit you’ve lost servants in a short order before,” Bonetapper said, once he was back in his raven body. “But you outdid yourself this time.”

“She was never my servant,” Marta said. “Not really. I thought I was acting according to the precepts of the Arrow Path, but I never felt the connection, the bond. Now I think it was no more than our interests coincided for a while.”

What can’t be taken, can be given. The Second Law. So perhaps according to the Laws, but not the Path?

Marta hadn’t thought of it in those terms before, but it was clear to her now that the Laws and the Arrow Path were not the same. The latter was simply a map to the first. If anything, her time with Dessera had proven that.

“Whatever else she intended, Dessera did me a favor. I’m beginning to understand something now that I did not before.”

“So am I, or I never would have realized the nature of my curse. You did me a favor, too.”

Dessera stood before them once more, a ghostly shimmer in the firelight.

Marta smiled a wistful smile. “I never expected to see you again.”

The ghost sighed. “Nor I you. Toban apparently had no questions about his next course. I’m embarrassed to admit I have no idea what should come next for me. I don’t feel imprisoned in this place now or indeed any other, yet I do not know what stage of existence or oblivion awaits me.”

“True of most of us,” Bonetapper offered. “Yet we assume, when the time comes, we’ll know.”

“I cannot help you with that,” Marta said. “I honestly wish I could.”

“I know. But would you mind if I traveled with you a while longer? I can be useful, and perhaps it would help me sort the matter out,” the ghost said.

Marta thought about it. It wouldn’t be the first time someone traveled with her as a companion rather than a servant; she rather missed it. And Dessera wasn’t formally asking for her help as would fall under the Arrow Path strictures, after all. She was simply asking a favor, as one person to another.

What can’t be taken, can be given. I believe this too is covered by the Second Law.

“I have no objection,” Marta said. “What about you, Bonetapper?”

The raven looked startled. “What? I actually have a say in this?”

Marta demurred. “Say rather you are free to express your opinion, as you always do. Just as I am free to ignore it.”

“That’s what I thought you meant. Fine. Just try not to get us killed.”

“Always,” Marta said.

 

More Progress

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Chapter 4 of The Seventh Law of Power is in the can, or would be if it was a movie from thirty years ago. Everything’s digital and the can is a metaphor. Chapter 5 is begun. Only about 11,000 words in and Marta has already discovered the 6th Law of Power.

Frankly, I hadn’t expected this to happen so soon. But as the end of Chapter 4 came into view and I reviewed the seven laws, I realized I’d set  it up perfectly. Which would have been very clever of me if I’d realized this was what I was doing, but of course I didn’t. Neil Gaiman once said something to the effect that the real purpose of a rewrite/edit was to go back and fix the details so it looked like you knew what you were doing all along.There’s a lot of truth in that. Even so, I like it better when I get it right in the first draft.

Even if I didn’t realize this was what I was doing.

Still plenty of time to get things wrong. And I’m certain beyond a reasonable doubt it’s going to take Marta the rest of the book to find the 7th Law. Would be even more of a surprise if this particular event happened sooner. As with the discovery of the 6th Law, Marta and I are always open for surprises.

Drink to Me

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I’m going to plead a remodeling project and the tricky install of an A/C unit, but I am a little short of hours at the moment. So here’s a piece of flash fiction for my time slot. Hope you enjoy. The illustration has nothing at all to do with it. I just like to remind myself every now and then that the book exists.

 

 

 

 

Drink to Me

“’Drink to me only with thine eyes’ said the Bard. Metaphorically it’s a lovely thought, but he didn’t mean a word of it.”

“Neither do you,” she said. “That’s your third stout.”

“No need to count, my love,” he said. “They used to do that for tax purposes, you know. Count the number of inns and alehouses and taverns. That latter is derived from the Roman word taberna, which meant—”

She shut him down. “A retail shop of some sort. Yes, I know. What I don’t know is why, when you’re in your cups, you feel the need to mansplain so much.”

He shrugged. “Could be worse. Some people are mean drunks.”

“That is mean. Or at least annoying. I was the classics major, not you.”

“Or right. I forgot.”

“Which is another thing. Drink makes you forgetful.”

“Which is entirely the point, at the risk of mansplaining again. ‘The world is too much with me.’ A little forgetfulness is a blessing. I’ll also point out that this only occurs until the immediate effects wear off. Studies show that moderate drinking helps maintain cognitive function as we age. Or as the old saying goes, ‘A man’s a fool to drink before the age of forty…and a fool if he doesn’t afterward.’”

“Worth a try,” she said, pouring herself another glass of zinfandel.

“That’s your third,” he said.

“’No need to count, my love.’ And if you bring up alehouses and obscure Latin words again, I’m cutting you off.”

“You say I’m in my cups but I’m merely pleasantly buzzed. Stone drunk is off the table. I learned my lesson in college.”

“Likely the only one you did learn. But I assume you’re referring to the Belinda Barrows incident? Making out with your best friend’s girl? Not cool.”

“The blessing there is I don’t remember any of it.”

“Maybe, but it’s not as if you didn’t hear about it. As I understand it, the entire episode was repeated to you in lurid detail at least once a week until you graduated. If we’d been dating at the time, I’d have killed you. You’re lucky Kurt let you off with a warning, and only because you were drunk.”

“Luckily I wised up and went after you.”

“That was almost a compliment. So color me almost flattered. Besides, you never wised up. You only developed a little taste. I mean, Belinda? Seriously?”

“That wasn’t the tequila shooters. I plead hormones. I mean, back when I had them. ‘In the spring, a young man’s fancy’ and all that.”

“You also tend to quote poetry, though you barely read it and don’t write it, and if it wasn’t one you had to memorize in English Lit, fuggedaboudit.”

“I already did. The stout is working.”

-The End-

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