Publisher’s Weekly Comes Through

Posted on by

Yamada_BTG_cover-V06b-PrimeOne problem with the writer existence is that it’s feast or famine, and there is an awful lot of famine. But, now and then, a feast. Last night I got an IM from my publisher telling me to check my email, and sitting there was a link to a Star Review in Publisher’s Weekly for Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate. I’ve only gotten one of those before. You can read the entire review here, but one takeaway is in the final line.

“Playing with Japanese demonology and political scandal, Parks creates an absorbing and original tale.”

I’d only quibble with the first line of the review, wherein I am proclamined to be “prolific,” which I know I am not, or at least not nearly enough. As for the rest, you can’t beat that, not even with a really big stick.

Doc, It Hurts When I Do This….

Posted on by

WRITING 02Yeah, I know. Old joke, but then old jokes come to mind when I find myself repeating old mistakes. Stale humor goes with stale habits.

Some time ago a friend asked me to comment on another story in a magazine I was also in, and I did. Regretted it immediately, and belatedly remembered why I stopped doing that. I see it as no win, at least from my own perspective. Whether I honestly like a story or not, and especially when I have a “stake” in the issue I can’t see it as anything other than 1) sucking up to my peers or 2) dissing the competition. You see the problem — I don’t trust my motives. I consider this wise, because anything I write about the issue will involve my own writerly ego, which is an extremely unreliable narrator. The ego is important and extremely useful, but move it out of its proper sphere (getting the work done, dealing with either the hostility or (worse) indifference that usually follows) and it becomes a liability. By extension and in hindsight this is why I stopped reviewing, period (though of course I never reviewed a magazine issue I was in). Now, reviewing was a useful phase and I’m glad I did it when I did. It helped me analyze my own work when I had to figure out what was wrong (or right) with a story I was reviewing. I think I was a very decent reviewer while it lasted, never pulled a punch or skimped on praise when appropriate. But then it was time to stop, and wanting more time for my own work was only part of the reason. I just didn’t want to do it anymore. I was never comfortable with it and was never going to be. I will do it now and again, but only when I can’t help myself. The infrequency of reviews posted here should attest.

Oddly enough, in the context of a writer’s group I have no problem at all giving very harsh criticsm when I think it’s required. That, of course, is when the story can still be saved. Sometimes, it comes down to telling a proud parent that their baby is really, really, ugly. I have a problem with this. Other writers don’t.

Shrug.

Yamada Monogatari: The War God’s Son — Audible Update

Posted on by

Break The Demon Gates endpapersI just got the news that Audible.com has made an offer for the third Yamada Book, The War God’s Son, so there will be an audiobook edition of this one as well. Word is they want the fourth one too, only there’s the slight technicality that it isn’t written yet.

I hope they’re able to get Brian Nishii to do the narration again, but that’s something to be determined later. In the meantime the third book actually is written, turned in, and scheduled for release in October of this year from Prime Books.

Capsule Description:

“With the Abe clan and its allies in full rebellion, the Emperor’s greatest military leader, Minamoto Yoshiie, is targeted for assassination by magic. It is up to the newly sober Lord Yamada and his exorcist associate Kenji to keep the young man alive long enough to put down the uprising before the entire country is consumed by war. Yamada knows how to deal with demons, monsters, and angry ghosts, but the greatest threat of all is one final assassin, hidden in a place where no one—especially Lord Yamada—would ever think to look.”

RIP Ratstein

Posted on by

Yoshino-1On top of everything else we’ve had to deal with lately—there’s more, there always is, and lately a LOT more—we’ve had a rat living behind our dishwasher for the past three months. We’re not entirely sure how it got there—it didn’t come through the attic and down the wall. We strongly suspect it was one brought in by our cats to play with, because they’re both strong hunters but only one knows what to do with prey once it’s caught, and he only goes after smaller mice and lizards. Sheffield is the bigger, better hunter, but he hasn’t a clue what to do after catching prey because, to him, everything is a cat toy, so he brings them in to have some fun. So far we’ve removed three chipmunks, a mouse, and a cardinal from the house, but this one eluded us. This wouldn’t have happened in the old days with the late lamented Valentine. He was a killer. If he caught something, he ate it, and at most we—by which I mean me–would now and again be called upon to clean up the crime scene, but never to capture something he had decided to let go. Valentine wasn’t into catch and release.

I grew up in a small town and lived mostly in old drafty Victorian-era houses. Now and again we had to deal with rats and mice. It came with the territory. There wasn’t a great deal to it—bait a snap-trap, every now and then check and remove the bodies. Reset. Repeat. This rat wasn’t playing. Continue reading →

Oh, Oh, Oh, It’s Magic!

Posted on by

Hereafter, and After2Ever since my first PC, I’ve kept my story submissions file in electronic form. It’s undergone several conversions to different formats in that time, but the basic organization hasn’t changed: new works get their opus number, they go into the last spot on the queue in the file. They don’t leave the file until they’re either moved to the sold file or the trunked file, in which case it’s cut and paste into the new file, whichever one it turns out to be.
Continue reading →