I have a new layout. If you’re reading this on livejournal pop over to my main site (http://www.rhondaparrish.com) and take a look. It’s a lovely green layout that looks fresh and ready for spring*. My friend BD made it for me, because she is incredibly awesome. I actually want to write a whole blog entry about how awesome she is and invaluable to my writing, but, that would embaress her. I don’t want to do that (and not just because she could totally kick my ass), so I’ll just leave it at this:

BD, you rock. Thank you.

In other news, Heather, from Doubleshot Reviews gave Lost and Found a read and made me happy with her review. She analyzed Xavier and Colby’s characters a little bit, found them believable and gave them a thumbs up. That makes me smile. You can check out the whole review here: Lost and Found Review.

Lost and Found is almost done! That’s crazy. It seems like it should keep going, but next week will be the final chapter. Then what am I going to do for my Monday blog entries? I’m going to have to like, think of something clever to write, or something. I apologise in advance I do hope you’ll check back next week though, to get the final chapter of Lost and Found and see how it all turns out.

Whee?

*I took the photo used in the new layout. Another point in the win column if you ask me.

I’m having one of those days. You know the ones. And yet, it’s Monday, which means I’m supposed to blog. It’s really tough for me to turn out a decent blog when I’m busy feeling sorry for myself and stuff so I was waffling back and forth. Should I blog, should I not blog, was there a way to turn my craptastic day into a positive thing by finding some sort of writing-related lesson in it. The answer the the first question was yes, to the second, no. Happily I don’t have to be able to come up with a clever blog entry in my current mood because there’s a new review of Lost and Found in and I can talk about that. Yay!

As a quick aside, I don’t blog about reviews I get on Goodreads-type sites and stuff, just book review blogs. Specifically the ones I’ve contacted and asked to review my work. If they go through the effort of reading and reviewing, I think the least I can do is link back to them by way of saying thank you

So, as I was sayin, Ashley from Book Labyrinth reviewed Lost and Found. One of my favourite quotes from her review is below:

I thought this novella was quite interesting and well written. Rhonda Parrish has created an almost fairy tale-like setting which is populated with some very interesting characters.

I’ve never really thought of Aphanasia as a fairy tale-like setting, but I think it’s very cool that she did It made me smile on a day smiles were tough to come by. Overall Ashley gave the story three and a half out of five stars, you can check out the whole review here and check out her reasoning.

Actually, now that I’ve re-read it I think I’ve thought of a great blog post subject. Ah well, I’ll save that one for another day

My family celebrates a secular version of Christmas I’ve taken to calling Giftmas. This year’s Giftmas was very book-centric.

I got:

• The Hunger Games trilogy
• Hitchhikers Guide to the Galxay trilogy (I know I should have read it before now, but I haven’t. Don’t judge :-p)
• Entice by Carrie Jones
• Dragon Bone by Patricia Briggs
• Red Hood’s Revenge by Jim C. Hines

Whoot!

I can’t wait to get reading them, though I don’t know where to start. A dear friend of mine, Amber, sent me a crapload of books just before Christmas, and I want to read them too. I need a few more hours in the day, please. That would be fabulous. It’s also fabulous to have so many books I can’t wait to dive into

In related-to-my-book news I have a new review of Lost and Found to share. Clayton Bye, of The Deepening, reviewed it and he liked it. I liked his review, in fact it made my day yesterday.  Why? Well, in part because he said this:

Parrish represents a fresh and powerful voice in fantasy

*happy dance* How cool is that?

As you may have guessed he mostly liked the story with one notable criticism. The review is right here if you want to read it in its entirety, but be warned, it’s pretty spoilerific. If you don’t like spoilers you may want to wait until you’ve finished the story before popping over.

Speaking of the story, the next chapter will be going up on Monday

As I sat down to begin this post I realised I hadn’t reported on the progress I made on my Writing goals for November, and that’s pretty relevant to this blog, so let’s start there, shall we?

My goals were:

• At least 50,000 words toward a first draft of my novel ‘Richter’. (I’m calling it a paranormal mystery for lack of a better genre. At least until it’s been written )
• 30 poems, one a day, based on prompts from the November Poem-a-Day challenge. All with zombie themes in order to give me the last pieces I need to put together a zombie poetry chapbook
• Work with Danica on a poetry project. I’m not putting a specific poem goal here because the challenge in this will be learning to work together and have fun with it, not on the finished project.

Well, of those three goals I accomplished the first one LoL. In fact I finished the first draft of the story formerly called ‘Richter’ and currently sporting the title ‘Twixt’ (we’ll see how long that lasts LoL). I think it’s a pretty strong first draft, and I’ve got some fairly good revision notes for when that time comes. For right now, however, it’s resting while I reset my brain and re-charge mentally from finishing the draft.

Writing that draft in long hand and trying to keep the NaNoWriMo pace meant that I didn’t have time to do the Poem-a-day thing in November, and Dani and I both were’nt feeling our poetry project after the first day. I plan to use the PAD prompts soon to work on some zombie poems still, and Dani and I will be going back to our project in the new year.

So I reached 1/3 goals, but I’m oddly okay with that and optimistic for future completion of the other two goals.

Speaking of goals…

I bet you recognise this cover

Dragonlance novels, and specifically the Dragonlance Chronicles series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman are what hooked me on fantasy novels. I love them. LOVE them. I still have every Dragonlance novel I’ve ever bought (including multiple copies of some because they were re-released with new covers) and I can’t imagine parting with them. I named my daughter (in part) after a character in The Cleric Quintet by R. A. Salvatore and I can sooner imagine parting with those books than my Dragonlance ones. When I was in grade nine I created a complete gaming/RP system based on Dragonlance stuff called ‘From the Stories of Children’. Are you feeling the love I have for them? Yeah.

When I created Aphanasia, and with each story I’ve written set in it, I’ve been strongly influenced by the feeling of the Dragonlance books. The incredible world with its diverse races, deep history and potential for amazing stories. I wanted to create that too. To have a world where I could hop from character to character, story to story and culture to culture.

Recently Red Haircrow reviewed Lost and Found and said, in part:

If I had to compare to other works of fantasy, it was be books in the Dragonlance series by Magaret Weis, Tracy Hickman and others. “Lost and Found” has excellent potential and I would certainly be interested in reading further installments.

Talk about making my day If you want to read the full review it’s right here. There’s a tiny bit of a spoiler in there, but it relates to something in the middle of the story, not the end, if you’re the kind of person that makes a difference to.

I am one happy bunny today

I’ve been sick, and today is the first day I’ve felt well enough to actually work in far too long, so I’m beginning to chip away at the things I’d fallen behind on. One of those things is sharing reviews of my work. I got a new one for Shades of Green a while ago. The reviewer won a copy on GoodReads and she said, in part:

I liked this story, it was quick and to the point, and didn’t really need to be any longer. And it was nice to be surprised by the ending.

She gave it 3.5 stars out of 5, and her full review is right here at her website Spoilers and Nuts.

The first review of Lost and Found is in. I sent Kari Wolfe of Imperfect Clarity a review copy of the manuscript, which means she got to read the whole story in one sitting instead of getting it a chapter at a time.

Kari said,

I love reading Rhonda’s work… I love the descriptions she uses.  She’s very exact in what she writes.  There’s no ambiguity here at all,  Each word has a reason for being chosen–they all have weight.  A substance.

There is a whole lot in between the first sentence and the second there in the original review, but I wanted to share both tidbits here. Hence the elipses :-p

Overall Kari seemed uncertain about her feelings for Lost and Found, which is somewhat disappointing, but whatcha gonna do? I’m grateful to Kari for taking the time to read and review my story just the same. You can read her whole review here. Then, if I may, I’d suggest heading over to the page for Lost and Found and either reading, or listening to the first few chapters. If you like what you read/hear then check back and keep following the story, and then you can make up your own mind about how you feel once we reach the end.

Incidentally, once you make that decision, I’d love to hear what you think. For better or for worse.

There’s a brand new review of Shades of Green out, and the reviewer loved it. Universe? This is how I’d like to start all my Mondays, if you don’t mind.

Clayton Bye reviewed Shades of Green for Alternative-Read.com and said I worked magic. Awww! He also said:

When a story pulls a reader in to the extent that he forgets about all else, the author has done exactly what she’s supposed to do.

That’s awesome, what a great way to start my week

This review reminded me that I haven’t given away a copy of Shades of Green in a fairly long time. I’m going to have to change that. I will be giving away one copy to a random subscriber to my Newsletter tomorrow to make up for it. If you’re not into newsletters, don’t despair — I’ll also be giving one away in a contest to promote the fact I’m giving away Lost and Found… soon. That’s not a Blizzard soon, it’s a ‘In_a_month_or_so’ soon.

Book ratings are tricky things. I think the thing which contributes the most to their trickiness is time.

How much I (or you, I’m betting) enjoy a particular book has a lot to do with when I read it. How old I am, what’s going on in my life, what book I read just before it. These are all things that alter how I feel about a book. For example, when I set up my Goodreads account however long ago, I couldn’t stand having an empty virtual bookshelf but I certainly wasn’t about to go through and add every book I could remember reading. My compromise was for me to add the books from the shelf nearest to me (or maybe the two nearest me, I don’t remember). Adding the books was easy enough, but rating them was a little trickier.

Between about the ages of 11 and 13 I read a lot of VC Andrews. A LOT. I devoured them. Now, if I were to read them today I suspect I would like them only slightly more than I did Twilight, which is to say, not very freaking much. But I’d loved them then, so how should I rate them?

I think, in the end, I gave them 5 stars because when I read them, I loved them.

Thus, I say again, book ratings are tricky things…and if you look at my Goodreads bookshelf and the stars I gave a particular book make you scratch your head because it seems out of character? Remember that time totally has to play a part.

Book reviews are also tricky things. I am not very good at writing them but there are loads of people who are. One of those people is Fate, the blogger behind The Fickle Hand of Fate. Fate agreed to review Shades of Green.

Rhonda’s strength definitely looks to be in the area of plotting, (Twists! Reversals! A totally unexpected ending, but still a square peg in a square hole!) and worldbuilding…

Fate didn’t love it unconditionally, however. You should read her complete review here. She makes a lot of very good points, which I should totally address in another blog entry because this one is getting a bit long

Oh, and the picture? I took it. That flower is the result of some ‘blooming tea’. I like tea while I read…and um…yeah, that’s as strong as the connection gets to the content of the blog I’m afraid. It’s pretty though, no?

The lovely Lototy from Coffee Time Romance reviewed Shades of Green today. She gave it 3 coffee cups out of five. She articulates the issues she has with the story, the ending especially I think, but also has some nice things to say like:

The visuals in this story are most amazing, and keep you intrigued with the characters as well as their environment.

You can read her complete review by clicking on the picture above, or by clicking here

In other news, my friend Scott’s book BREATHERS is on the ballot for a Stoker award this year, and the award ceremony is this weekend. Good luck Scott (it’s not bad luck to say that, I hope). I’ll be thinking of you

March is a crazy month around here. It really is and it always has been. My birthday and two of my siblings birthdays are all in March. Now that I’m a grown up (in theory anyway) it’s still frenetic. Jo’s birthday is in March, as are several members of our extended family. It’s also exam time at the university which means Jo is really, really busy at work. Between setting the exams, help sessions, supervising exams, marking them and answering loads and loads of student’s emails there’s not a whole lot of ‘down’ time. As if that weren’t enough, schools always seem to plan things for March; meetings, info sessions, student performances…

It’s crazy!

We’re halfway through though, which is yay!

I heard back from Clarion, they said thanks but no thanks. I also applied to Clarion West and am waiting to hear back from them with my fingers crossed. I’d prefer CW over Clarion, actually, so I’m not overly disappointed about Clarion. Besides, did you see who’s teaching there this year? I bet the competition was pretty crazy. Which is not to imply it isn’t for CW as well.

I will be disappointed if I don’t get into Clarion West, but not destroyed. This is a good thing. A very good thing. I want to go, but I don’t -need- to go. We’ll see what happens

While I wait I’m writing a lot. I’m doing a pretty good job of sticking with my plan to write each morning when I have my coffee. So far as a result I’ve got one poem, a pretty darn good short story and have almost finished another short. They are all first drafts, but since I find revising easier than getting the first draft done, that’s a pretty big hurdle. I’ll be sharing the second short story (in all it’s first draft glory, I’m afraid) with my newsletter readers…tomorrow. I won’t have time to finish it today.

The last (but, as they say, not least) thing I wanted to share today was this. It’s a review of Shades of Green, this time by an unbiased reviewer. Zeek from The Way I See It reviewed Shades of Green and, for the most part, he liked it. He said some nice things about the story, including that he enjoyed the world and could see how it would be the springboard for more stories, and also made me smile with this.

…there is much potential and its obvious the author has her craft honed already, so in the end this story gets a 3.9 out of 5 from me.

I like it when people think I have honed my craft. I know I have so much more to learn, but it’s wonderful to feel as though I’m progressing steadily.

Oh, and what’s with the picture of the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco? Nothing. I took it last summer when we were on vacation and I like it. That’s all.