Rhonda Parrish

Sometime last year I set out to prove that the idea of ’stealing ideas’ was silly. I wasn’t talking about plagiarism, mind you, but ideas. My point was that even if you gave two different writers the same story synopsis and set them to writing they would come up with two different stories. To test my theory I created a NaNoLJers writing exercise where people swapped synopsis’ and wrote stories.

I participated and the resulting story, “One Day on Earth” is now available at Poor Mojo’s Almanac(k). I know the guy whose synopsis I received said this story was nothing like the one he’d originally envisioned. I found his synopsis very challenging to work with because it was totally not my style, thus this story is one I’m rather happy with. I hope you enjoy it.

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.

I’m currently at the World Fantasy convention in Calgary and I’ve got to tell you, it is SO full of awesome. I would like to go into the reasons for my saying that (in case they aren’t obvious) but I can’t. I can’t, because if I start I won’t be able to stop and that’s really not what this post is meant to be about. So I’ll talk about WFC later, but for right now I want to talk about Skitter Skitter.

Skitter Skitter is a story I wrote and it’s just been published in Issue #4 of Shiny Magazine.

This is cool for lots of reasons. One of which is that Shiny is a YA magazine, in fact, I think this may be my first YA-specific writing credit. That makes me happy. The other, more important reason, is that I like the story behind Skitter Skitter. It’s dark and creepy and was a whole lot of fun to write.

In fact, it was so fun to write that I wrote it two different times LOL The original format of the story was a transcript, all dialog, no description. It worked (in my not-so-humble opinion) but it was too short, so I re-wrote it with description.

Now, it’s a pretty great mix, even if I do say so myself, and I hope you’ll check it out at Shiny and let me know what you think.

Not so long ago there was an anthology dedicated to retelling the story of Little Red Riding Hood. I wrote and submitted a piece for it called Axe.

Axe is, without question, the most disturbing story I have ever written. I’d just finished reading a bunch of articles about pushing yourself and testing your limits when I wrote it, and I think it shows. Axe tells the story of Little Red Riding Hood from the perspective of the woodsman’s axe. It wasn’t accepted for the anthology I originally wrote it for, but it did find a home in the DemonMInds Halloween issue. That issue is available at Amazon now and DemonMinds have put up a little teaser too. So if you click here you will be able to read the beginning of Axe for free.

Remember though, it’s not for the faint of heart…really. It’s really, really not.

My sexy poem, Whimper, is the featured piece at Oysters and Chocolate today. This poem is very suggestive and is not meant to be read by anyone under eighteen or who is easily offended. However, if you don’t fall into either of those categories I hope you’ll pop by and take a look.

It’s a short poem, a rictameter (I loves me some rictameters) but I think it’s packed full of goodness. I hope you agree

I’ve also got a set of four poems published at The Monsters Next Door where I am in the awesome position of sharing a table of contents with several poets and authors I’ve had the honor of publishing in Niteblade. I’m in good company there and after you check out my poems it would be well worth your time to check out some of the other great work there. For real

My short story, Cuppa?, is in the most recent issue of Blood Moon Rising. You can check it out by clicking here. If you do read it, don’t mind the last four lines…they belong to a different story. I’ve sent a note to the editors to let them know and hopefully it will be changed sooner rather than later

I hope you enjoy the story, I had fun writing it. When I first wrote it it was in 2nd person. I revised it to 3rd because I think it worked better for the story, but I really enjoyed writing from the second person point of view and will likely try it again sometime

I know this post is going to show my nerdiness in beautiful technicolor, but I don’t seem to be able to stop myself.

Arcane Whispers is available on Amazon. This excites me greatly, far more than it should perhaps, but it feels like a significant step forward.

Someday soon a book with my name on the cover will be on Amazon, but for now, I’ll count this as progress and revel in it

I admit it. I like Pamela Tyree Griffin which makes me biased, but I also like The Shine Journal. My work has appeared in it numerous times and I was honored to be one of the judges for their ‘Show Us Your Shorts’ contest earlier this year.

I’ve got two pieces in this month’s issue. If you were to judge them based solely on their titles it might seem as though they were similar, when in fact, they aren’t. Not even close.

The first, Sheltered, is a reprint of an amusing little flash which was originally published by the Mennonite Publishing Network last year.

What?

It really was.

The other is a sad poem I wrote entitled “A House Not a Home“. My great-grandmother was a poet and she wrote a poem after her beloved husband died which compared herself to an empty house; lonely and alone. Not so long ago my own husband was out of town on business and I saw a writing prompt that included a picture of a decrepit house. My loneliness, my great-grandmother’s poem and that picture all combined to inspire this short poem.

I hope you have time to check them out and let me know what you think

My poem, Inspiration, is in this month’s issue of NewMyths.com . I’m a fan of NewMyths.com, and not just because I’ve had my work in two issues…though that definitely helps :). Really, though, if you’re a writer it’s a paying market with a wonderful and personable editor, and if you’re a reader it’s a great venue for reading fantasy works — free.

Anyway, Inspiration is online there now. I’d like to tell you what inspired it, but ironically, I can’t remember LOL However, I do remember that when Scott accepted it he said ‘How could I say no to a poem that starts with the line, Her thighs are spread and trembling?’

How indeed

My flash piece, Ironic Angst, is now online at Every Day Fiction. Obviously, I like my story, but I also really enjoy the way Every Day Fiction works. If you like flash you ought to check it out. They put up a new story every day and you can rate and comment on them. If you stop by make sure you check out my story, then keep poking around — you’re sure to find something you like.