I’ve got a couple fulls out to agents right now, for both Swamp Story and Shadows, and I’m kinda going insane I think. I don’t want to get my hopes up too high because if things don’t work out it will be quite devastating, but at the same time, it’s very hard not to. Please keep your fingers, metaphorically crossed for me. I am not going to go into any more details just yet, I don’t want to jinx myself LOL

I do have some news I can go into details about though. My funny little flash piece, Swapped, is included in the current issue of Mississippi Crow Magazine. Rumor has it you can get a copy of the .pdf for free, if you check it out I’d love to hear what you think

And please, send good thoughts my way re: agents and staying sane.

Do you ever feel like you’re racing death? I do! I don’t know when it started really, but I am very well aware of the fact there aren’t enough years in the human lifespan to do everything I want to. Not even close. With that in the back of my mind, I am driven to get as many things on my ‘Lifetime To-Do’ list as I can before the grim reaper cuts me down. I am, in essence, racing death.

That is how my blog entry today over at Ginger Simpson’s blog starts. If you’d like to see what I say after that and read the short poem I share, please click here and head over. As always I value your comments, here or there.

I have a newsletter It was about time, don’t you think? The plan is for me to send out about one email a month, and hopefully I will actually manage to find time to make it a pretty .pdf newsletter, but if time is short I’ll do the straight-up text thing. That works too

Anywho, the newsletter is right here –> Rhonda’s Newsletter

The subscriber page is less than pretty, and sadly I expect it to stay that way. It’s functional, and that’s the main thing. I think I cover any questions you might have about the newsletter here, but if I missed something, don’t hesitate to drop me a line and let me know.

Oh, and please sign up? I don’t want to have a subscriber base of one. That would make me sad.

So, I’m NaNoing, as usual, except that this year I had zero enthusiasm for it and writing my story was like pulling teeth. I was working on ‘See the Sky Again’ which is an Aphanasian novel. Writing the Aphanasian piece I felt like I was pulling teeth. It really, really hurt. The problem, I think, was that the setting (an underground city) wasn’t fully formed in my mind yet. It’s still not. Once it is I’ll go back to it, but in the meantime I’ve switched and I’m now working on my WIP zombie novel, Deadmonton.

The words are coming much easier now and I’m really very fond of this novel. I can’t wait to get it done so I can share it with people (my brain won’t let me send out WIPs for critique).

And here is a short excerpt — warning, this is a pretty violent and profane passage, it is, after all, a zombie novel

(more…)

I’m freshly returned from World Fantasy and though I keep trying to settle down enough to write about how amazing an experience it was for me, I keep failing. There is so much to say and I don’t know all the words. Suffice to say it was mind-blowing.

One part of the conference which was particularly amazing for me was the open mic poetry reading Carolyn Clink put together. Yes, the same one I was just talking about a week ago and admitting how I was too big a wuss to participate.

The week-ago me was wrong.

I went to the reading and I participated! I read a very short piece, a haiku in fact, titled “Lovers” that was originally published in Star*Line. I was -so- nervous. I could barely breathe and I’m not sure exactly how my knees held me up, but I did it. I did it because I figured it would be easier to suck up my nerves and fear and do it than it would be to live with my self-condemnation for years and years to come for being too scared to do it. So basically, because it was easier in the long run.

I’m so glad I did, though even now my fingers get a bit shaky when I think about it. I honestly don’t know how big the audience is because I seriously had tunnel vision the whole time, but I heard someone say ‘This is a bigger audience than I would have expected at a poetry event.’ so that’s good.

Best of all, after I read no one booed, in fact, there were a few chuckles, so I guess I enunciated my words okay.

That was one heck of a way to get my poetry-reading cherry popped though. The people reading were:

• Joe Haldeman
• David Lunde
• Colleen Anderson
• Rhea Rose
• Eileen Kernaghan
• Rhonda Parrish
• Carolyn Clink

Yes! That really is my name on the same list as all those amazing poets! *swoon*. So I’ve done it. I don’t know if I’ll ever manage to find the courage to do it again, but…ah hell, who am I kidding? I’d totally do it again, and again, and again…and hopefully better each time. Just…not any time too soon.