Goodbye to an Old Friend and March 2021 Update

Here in southern Ontario the temperature is finally hovering at or above the zero mark more consistently, after a spell of cold weather. I’ve placed my orders for seeds for the garden, which must be a sign that spring is on the way. 

Earlier in February, a fair bit of my time was taken up keeping an eye on my almost-fifteen-year-old border collie, Emma. Though she was in pretty good health up to Christmas, the last few weeks her health went into a steep decline. Sadly, we had to let her go on February 22^nd. It’s quiet around here without the click of claws on the floor and the occasional woof from the front window if she happened to spot a passing dog. 

Emma’s passing served as a reminder for how quickly time flies by. It sounds trite, but it seems like only yesterday that she joined our household. I hadn’t realized how much she’d become a part of my daily routines, from morning feedings to night-time excursions into the great outdoors so she could attend to nature’s call. It seems strange to put on my jacket to go outside and not see someone standing there demanding to come too! Even more strange to bring in an order of pizza and not have someone doing a happy dance when she scents what’s in the box . . .

Recent Publications
A short story titled “To Catch a Chameleon” was published in the Were-Traveler’s Women Destroy Retro Science Fiction, link below:

https://the-were-traveler.weebly.com/current-issue/issue-22-women-destroy-retro-sci-fi

A poem titled “Things You Left Behind When the Great Floods Came” was published in Polar Borealis, Issue 17, February 2021:

http://polarborealis.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/POLAR-BOREALIS-17-February-2021.pdf

A review of Shapers of Worlds, edited by Edward Willett, appeared on The Future Fire’s web site February 1, 2021:

http://reviews.futurefire.net/2021/02/willett-ed-shapers-of-worlds.html

A short story “Sisters” was published for Rhonda Parrish’s Patreon sponsors as part of her lead-up to the release of Clockwork, Curses, and Coal, a steampunk fairy tale anthology edited by Parrish and published by World Weaver Press. “Sisters” was my first attempt at a steampunk fairy tale, but contained elements of historical fiction as well. The story converts the “Four Talented Brothers” fairy tale into the story of four talented hockey-loving sisters. 

Rhonda posted a blog piece that I wrote explaining some of the background to the story. The hockey attire sported by the women in “Sisters,” as well as the enthusiasm women demonstrated for the game and some other factors, were based on information I ran across while doing research for my (never-completed) Masters’ thesis in Sport History years ago. If you’re interested, you can read the blog piece here:

https://www.rhondaparrish.com/home/sisters-the-story-behind-the-story/

What I’m Working On
I’m continuing to work on short stories for send-out, as well as some creative non fiction pieces for a number of Chicken Soup for the Soul submission calls. I’ve also amassed a healthy (some would say overzealous) number of books for review, which I’m steadily working through.

Coming Soon
My first-ever novelette, titled To Push Back the Darkness, is due out March 13^th from JMS books. Released as an e-book, To Push Back the Darkness is a futuristic f/f sweet romance/police procedural.

February 2021 Update

Recent Publications

My poem “Into the Sea” was published last fall. It’s now available online at Utopia Science Fiction’s web site, link below:

https://www.utopiasciencefiction.com/into-the-sea 

A poem [snowstorm on Titan] appeared in Frozen Wavelets, Issue 5, December, 2020:

https://frozenwavelets.com/issue-5/

My review of Anthony Berger’s No Place for a Woman appeared on the Miramichi Reader site, January 19, 2021:

https://miramichireader.ca/2021/01/no-place-for-a-woman-by-antony-berger/ 

I posted a review of A.J. Hackwith’s The Archive of the Forgotten on Goodreads (link below). This book, the second in Hackwith’s Hell’s Library series, is a sequel to The Library of the Unwritten.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3767047384

What I’m Working On

I’m still focussing primarily on short stories. Two that I’m currently working on are entries in the “Quicksilver and Pepper” series, which focus on a pair of AI-enhanced Galactic Space Service operatives whose personalities are loosely based on my one-time cat Smokey and my border collie Emma.

I’m also working on several book reviews I’ve committed to.

Coming Soon

My review of Shapers of Worlds, edited by Edward Willett, is due to appear on The Future Fire web site shortly, and according to my records I should have a couple of items included in the February print edition of Scifaikuest.

I also have my first-ever novellas coming out, one in March and one in April. More on those in the coming months.

 

 

January 2021 Update

The end of one year and the start of another seems to be a good time to do some cleanup and organizing. To that end, I’ve gone through my bookcases, paring out items I (reluctantly) acknowledge that I am unlikely to read again. The upside of the process is that I also took the opportunity to better organize my bookshelves, which should make it easier to locate items when I need them. 

One item I haven’t gotten rid of entirely is a handful of my favourite Andre Norton paperbacks. I still remember as a teenager tearing out the order sheet at the back of the book, going through the difficult process of selecting from the list (I wanted them all!), and mailing off my requests along with a money order from the post office. Because our local library didn’t have the full range of Norton’s titles available, I deeply enjoyed dipping into the package of books when they arrived, opening new and exciting worlds. 

Hilarious to look at the prices on the cover though: the majority of them were priced at $1.25. Then again, that’s when I was working at a part-time job that started at less than $2.00 per hour . . . 

Recent Publications

Two poems, “Blackbeard Returns as a Porch Pirate,” and “The Day Politeness Revealed Its Limits,” were published in Frost Zone Zine, Issue 2, Winter 2020-21. 

A story titled “Gone” and a poem “No Fairy Tale World” made it into New Myths’ second anthology, Twilight Worlds: Best of NewMyths Anthology Volume II (link below). It’s always a pleasure to be included in the pages of the New Myths zine and the resulting anthologies. 

https://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Worlds-Best-NewMyths-Anthology/dp/193935417X 

My review of On This Day: 365 Tales of History, Mystery, and More, by Dale Jarvis, appeared on the Miramichi Reader web site December 19^th. Link below: 

https://miramichireader.ca/2020/12/on-this-day-365-tales-of-history-mystery-and-more/

What I’m Working On

I’m continuing to work on short stories while also catching up on a backlog of book reviews. Maybe it’s the influence of my former employer, but at the start of each year, I set goals for the coming year—some concrete, some less so. In 2021, I’m planning to focus on going deeper with my fiction, which means more time up front planning and outlining. One possible outcome is fewer submissions, with the trade-off (hopefully) of a higher acceptance rate.

Coming Soon

For a variety of reasons, I don’t have the usual number of submissions out in circulation, so it’s not surprising that there’s not too much coming down the pipeline publication-wise in the next couple of months, aside from the February Scifaikuest and a couple of other items. Further out, there are some pending items in March/April. More on that as we get closer.

 

 

 

December 2020 update

Thanks to encouragement from some fellow SF Canada members, I participated in NaNoWriMo in November—not working on one specific project, but trying to make progress on some short stories and a poetry collection. Though I didn’t hit the NaNoWriMo target of 50,000 words, I did manage to more than triple my usual monthly output by writing more than 30,000 words, which I count as a success! I got the base draft completed for two novelettes as well as a couple of re-drafts and a start on a collection of non-speculative haibun. Now to work on refinements. 

Recent Publications
A poem “Planets With Two Moons” was published in Spaceports and Spidersilk, Hiraeth Publishing, October 2020. 

My review of Ursula Pflug’s Seeds and Other Stories appeared on The Future Fire web site November 20. The link is below: 

http://reviews.futurefire.net/2020/11/pflug-seeds-and-other-stories.html 

Looking back on the books I’ve read over the course of the year, I’d say Seeds and Other Stories is up in my top three, along with Julie Czerneda’s Mirage and Nina Munteanu’s A Diary in the Age of Water.

What I’m Working On
During the next month, I’ll be refining and sending out some of the raw work I put together during November, as well as working on a submission for a specific call for 1960’s detective stories. Researching for that has been a lot of fun so far! Being born toward the end of the 1950’s, I was around for the ’60s, but have needed some fact-checking to fill in the blanks. 

I also have some book reviews to complete and submit.

Coming Soon
A handful of poems are due out in December, January, and February. More on those as they appear.

 

 

November 2020 Update

Lots of rain the past couple of weeks in our part of southern Ontario. Not to mention the first snowfall a couple of days ago. All the more reason to stay in and write!

Recent Publications
My short story “The Disconnect” was included in Third Flatiron’s Brain Games: Stories to Astonish (Third Flatiron Anthologies Book 28).

Four poems, “For Leonard,” “Ghost Planet,” “History Waits to be Written,” and “Wings of Wax,” were published in Stellar Evolutions, an anthology of stories and poems from the first fifteen issues of Polar Borealis Magazine. In total, the anthology includes 21 poems and 23 short stories selected and edited by RainWood Press Publisher Rhea E. Rose.

A poem “ABC’s of Sci-Fi Nightmares” was published in Polar Borealis, Issue 16:

http://polarborealis.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/POLAR-BOREALIS-16-Sep-Oct-2020.pdf

A poem “For Laika” appeared in House of Zolo Journal of Speculative Literature, Volume 2, available through Amazon.

A poem titled “Into the Sea” was published in Utopia Science Fiction, Vol. 2, Issue 2, October 2020.

A cartoon titled “Corvid” was published on the Funny Pearls web site, October 9, 2020:

https://funnypearls.com/2020/10/corvid-lisa-timpf/

My review of A.J. Hackwith’s Library of the Unwritten appeared in The Fifth Di..., published by Hiraeth Books, September 1, 2020.

A review of Suzanne Palmer’s Finder appeared on the New Myths web site, at the link below:

https://sites.google.com/a/newmyths.com/nmwebsite/books-we-are-reading/finder

I posted a review of And the Angels Sang by Lorina Stephens on Goodreads.

What I’m Working On
I’ve been continuing to work on short stories for send-out, while also reading through various resources on plot and theme. After some dithering, I opted to enrol in NaNoWriMo, thanks to a discussion on the SF Canada website. Rather than tackling a novel per se, I’ll be focussing on nature haibun, based largely on material drawn from canoeing/camping journals, and on science fiction short stories for various upcoming calls.

And, of course, I’m continuing to pick away at some book reviews I’ve committed to do. One of the books I read recently, Julie E. Czerneda’s Mirage, was a real gem. Since I jumped into the series mid-stream, reading Mirage inspired me to check out some of the previous volumes dealing with the central characters, and I liked those too! When I place the review, I’ll post information about where to find it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

House of Zolo Volume 2 and Stellar Evolutions now available

Just a quick note about two publications that include my work:

House of Zolo

The House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature Vol. 2 released October 21, with a special promotion making the Kindle edition available for free October 21-23 (it can be ordered at Amazon.ca or Amazon.com, depending on your location.) For a few days after the 23rd the Kindle ebook will be available for a reduced price.

The print edition launches on Friday October 23rd. Paperbacks will be available worldwide via Amazon, with other online and retail outlets bringing the book live throughout November.

My poem “For Laika” appears in this volume.

About House of Zolo’s Journal of Speculative Literature, Volume 2:

In this much anticipated second volume of speculative literature, authors examine relationships and how technology impacts our connections to each other, to nature, to space and time. The writing in this volume is often dark and rich in satire, yet there are many whimsical moments, and a strong undertone of irreverence. Writers deep-dive into challenging themes to bring us stories and poems that explore gender, immortality, the obsolescence of the human body, biohacking, decay, and the evolution of love in a transhuman world.

Stellar Evolutions available now

I also had the good fortune to have four of my poems included in Stellar Evolutions, the Best Short Stories and Poems of Polar Borealis Magazine's First Fifteen Issues, edited by Rhea Rose. The e-book is now available for order on Amazon.ca or Amazon.com. The Amazon.ca link is provided below:

https://www.amazon.ca/Stellar-Evolutions-Rhea-Rose-ebook/dp/B08KQ3F74G

Wishing both of these publications the best of success!

 

 

October 2020 Update

We’ve had some lovely fall weather in our neck of the woods in southwestern Ontario. Our small greenhouse is happily producing kale, carrots, and radishes and I’m getting ready to plant fall garlic outdoors. Still finding time for some writing, though, which brings us to . . .  

Recent Publications
A poem “The Further We Flew” was published in Space and Time, Issue 138, Autumn, 2020.

A poem “Laughter,” inspired by a news story, appeared in Third Wednesday Vol. XIII No. 4, Autumn, 2020.

A short poem [watching the Perseid meteor shower] was published on the Quatrain Fish site, September 2020, https://quatrain.fish/

My review of Depart, Depart, by Sim Kern, appeared on The Future Fire review site:

http://reviews.futurefire.net/2020/09/kern-depart-depart.html

A review of Nina Munteanu’s A Diary in the Age of Water was published on the Miramichi Reader site:

https://miramichireader.ca/2020/09/a-diary-in-the-age-of-water/

What I’m Working On
Progressing on some short story ideas, while continuing to read up on plot and structure.

From a review standpoint, I just finished reading an electronic copy of Julie Czerneda’s Mirage, Book 2 in the Web Shifter’s Library series. It took me a few chapters to get into it, but after that I found myself drawn along by the plot. I also very much enjoyed the humor. Will start on the review after I clear up a couple of others ahead of it in the queue.

Just started Archive of the Forgotten, second book in A.J. Hackwith’s Hell’s Library series. Having read Book 1, the characters and settings are familiar. Looking forward to getting further into it.

Coming Soon
I have four poems slated for publication in Stellar Evolutions, an anthology of stories and poems from the first fifteen issues of Polar Borealis Magazine. Stellar Evolutions should be available for pre-order starting October 15th, and available for purchase on October 31st. In total, the anthology will include 21 poems and 23 short stories selected and edited by RainWood Press Publisher Rhea E. Rose.

Until next time . . .