Category Archives: Writing

Tor.com Yamada Monogatari Sweepstakes

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Final-Cover

I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t mention that Tor.com is now giving away copies of Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter to ten (10) lucky winners. All you have to do to enter is go to the Sweepstakes Page and leave a comment. You have to be a resident of the U.S. (I know, sorry) but otherwise that’s pretty much it. A chance at a free book and all you have to do to enter is post a note attesting to your existence. Even I could manage that on a bad day, but the contest closes on March 18th at 12PM Eastern Time, so get your posts in before that.

Processing…

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Yoshino-1I managed about 1000 words on Monday, then about 2000 yesterday. Today…well I guess I’ll find out when it’s time to take stock. Writers love word counts. Writers hate word counts. Or rather, love having them or hate not having them. Even if you’re not working on something, you feel like you should be, and why the heck aren’t you working, you lazy worthless slacker??? Where’s your word count??? Continue reading →

SO Not the Star of this Little Play

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SleepingBuddhaEveryone who publishes short fiction knows that we have to write a lot of bios. Some just repeat, but every so often they have to be updated. The first few are fun. “Talk about the glory of ME? Sure!” But somewhere around the 40th or 50th you realize “OMG, I’m even boring myself!”

The work’s never boring to me, and I hope to (almost) no one else, but talking about me? That gets old quick.  I totally understand the impulse to just make s*%t up (“Richard Parks’ hobbies include breeding racing slugs and teaching Tai-Chi to polar bears.” You get the idea). Interviews, on the other hand, are a bit different. Especially when the people conducting them have done a little homework and ask interesting questions. I’ve written a lot of bios in my time but I’ve done very few interviews for obvious reasons. So it was a bit disconcerting when, over the space of a week, I wound up doing three: one general and one story-specific interview for LightSpeed and another for SFSignal.com. Mercifully short ones in both case, and I’ll put a link up for anyone who cares once they’re online. One of those for LightSpeed  will be in conjunction with a reprint of “The Man Who Carved Skulls,” probably in the May issue. They asked such good questions that even I, the sole living authority on that story, had to really think about it.

Sure, it’s flattering and all when someone pays attention to us as writers, but what really floats our little boats is when someone pays attention to the work. Otherwise, we’re just talking to ourselves.

Lost and Found

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SleepingBuddhaWhen my wife’s parents passed away a few years ago (married over 50 years, and went within a year of each other) we were part of the family crew cleaning out their old house. Which partly inspired the two of us to do some cleaning out of our own, since it’s just bloody amazing the sheer amount of STUFF two people can accumulate in a small space. Despite really not wanting to accumulate more STUFF, there were a few things we claimed. Mrs. Ogre claimed a cameo she had given to her mother as a momento of a school trip to Rome. I took a pair of carvings I did years ago, an American Eagle display I’d made for her dad and a carved cardinal (the bird, not the prelate) made for her mom.

Also stumbled across a package I’d sent them loong ago, containing some of my earliest published work. My in-laws were always supportive and proud of my writing, much more so than my own family, so I got in the habit of sending them things over the years, and I had totally forgotten this lot. This even predated my fanzine work, containing my first ever published story(“The Courtship of Tharga-Roth”) from a college lit. mag called Microcosm and my SECOND ever published story from a pamphlet done as a group project by an early writer’s group that worked out so well I didn’t join another one for over twenty years. The “book” was titled THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN 13 DECATUR SF STORIES IN THIS BOOK, BUT OUR CRAYON BROKE. I swear to Heaven, that’s the title. Our group leader actually sent a copy of it off to Locus, who no doubt did the charitable thing and burned it.

So, hurrah or alas, I have the only known copies of both remaining, so no one else will see them until I’m dead. Or maybe not even then.

Completely Self-Serving Post. No, Not Even a Little Bit Altruistic.

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Japanese MaskIt’s that time of year again, so here’s the thing: In the Palace of the Jade Lion made the Locus Magazine Recommended Reading List for 2012 in the Novelette category. Which mostly means that at least two of the magazine’s staff and reviewer pool thought it didn’t suck. I would say it also means that the story is eligible for the annual Locus Award in its category, but that would be deceptive. Frankly, any story that was published last year and otherwise met eligibility requirements is eligible in its respective category. What being on the Locus Recommended List really means in this context is that the story will be listed directly on the Annual Locus Poll and survey, where readers can vote on their favorite stories, and you wouldn’t have to do it as a write-in. That’s pretty much it.

So if you read “In the Palace of the Jade Lion” and also thought it didn’t suck, you could follow the link above and, you know, vote for it in the poll. You don’t have to be a subscriber to vote; that’s open to anyone, and the poll is open until April 15th. And if there are any more stories or books that you liked last year, you can vote for them, too. Frankly, we could all use the support, so it’s all good.

Okay, I’m done. Next post I’ll try to have something less self-serving to say. No promises, though.