Author Archives: Jennifer

Some dark reading…

Hello, my dears!

I wanted to let you all know that my story “Black as Hell” has been published by Dark Valentine Magazine. You can read it here. Take note of the beautiful artwork by Pamela Jaworska. It’s perfect!

I highly encourage you to go read the rest of the stories being posted this month as part of their Fall Fiction Frenzy. Some great stuff by some talented writers.

I also want to encourage any other writers out there to come on over to Luna Station Quarterly’s October Writing Challenge. All are welcome to join in (yes, the boys can come, too!) and it’s never too late to start! Details are available here.

A few notes…

I’m excited about a few things I’m adding to the site over the next week or so.

First off, I’ve already added a link to my latest project. Storyteller Tools is something I’ve wanted to do for some time now. It was meant to be more complex, but in the end, simplicity won out. It is nothing more or less than a Delicious account devoted to the best writing and worldbuilding resources I can get my hands on. It is still a work in progress as I gather links scattered across my various browsers and bookmarking tools. Please do send me any links that might be helpful to your fellow writers!

And secondly, I’ve decided to go ahead and post a short novel I wrote some time ago. I’m going to do it under a Creative Commons license, so it will be free for anyone to read. I will admit right up front that it is a mixed bag of quality, a bit cliched and not the most original thing on the block. Still, it has its moments and in looking it over, I still have an affection for the characters. Stay tuned for more details.

Finally, I’d like to announce that Luna Station Quarterly is now accepting submissions for our first annual drabble issue. 100 words of genre awesomeness, take the challenge if you dare!

Okay, now what?

What do you do with yourself once you’ve completed the biggest project you’ve ever tackled in your life? that’s the question I’ve been asking myself since Wednesday.

My first step is to just rest and breathe. I think it would be a bad idea to dive right into the next big project without taking a little time to compose myself, so I spent most of yesterday cleaning my room and studio, starting my second book since Wednesday, and generally chilling out. Chilling out here, btw, means surfing inspirational TED talks and other fun stuff on the internets.

Today I made sure Luna Station got put in order. I’m also going to transcribe some general real life notes and pull out a stack of ‘to read’ books.

When that’s all done, I think I know what my next steps are. I think a reassessment is in order and I’ve got the tools I need to do it.

First, going back to Ray Bradbury, I re-watched the talk he gave that started me on my path a year ago. In it, he talked about writing down the things you fear and the things you love. I also was flipping through my various writing resources and found my character bio questionnaires. I realized that between these two things, I’ve got the perfect tools for self-assessment.

The Bradbury lists will be the 10 things I love, hate, fear, and desire. This is meant as solid touchstones for story ideas and places to look to when I need a character to feel something strongly.

The character questionnaires will be useful for two reasons. First, by answering them, I will know myself better. Second, I realized as I was reading through the questions that if I could not know how to answer them myself, there’s no way I’ll be able to answer them for a character. It will also make it easier, once I’ve gone through the questions, to tell if a character is just coming out sounding like me with a different name.

When all that is done, I think I know what’s going to happen. I’ve got a ton of short stories to edit (a fair few of which are not actually completed). those will be great for follow through on the writing project and keep me writing while I worldbuild.

The second task will be a shorter-term worldbuilding project with the intent of using the result in a stand-alone novel. The idea has been bouncing around my head for a couple of years and the fairy tales I wrote this year have given me the particular voice I think I need to write this story.

And lastly, there’s the massive, epic worldbuilding project. I don’t actually expect anything to come of that for a quite some time. I want to let it germinate and stew, to really meld. there’s no quick and easy way to work on it with any speed, and that’s okay. I’ve got plenty to do in the meantime.

So there it is. Process. Intent. And now I have to supply the follow-through.

365 + 365 + 365 + 52

It’s done. It’s really, really done. Since this date last year, I have read 365 short stories, 365 poems, and 365 essays. I’ve also written 52 short stories (plus a couple drabbles, a poem or two, and some spare bits of story fodder).

Holy Shit.

So. Tomorrow I start reading ‘Chalice’ by Robin McKinely in an effort to retrain my brain towards reading longer fiction again and start letting my brain relax and reassess where I am in my writing and where I want to go next. Lots of editing to do, of course, but what else?

There’s plenty of writing exercises I can work through, and I can start getting story ideas down as well. Most importantly, though, is that I keep reading. If you don’t have enough time to read, you don’t have enough time to write, so read on, I will.

A funny thing, these welcome posts…

While, yes, a welcome post is most important and lovely and sincere when it is written, it is a temporary thing, at best. I wonder if anyone ever reads a welcome post once it falls off the main page. Does it lose its sense of welcomeness once it is no longer stickied to the top?

Well, we shall have an experiment and do our best to find out, shall we? I’ll check in every once and again and see if this little page has been viewed. I admit mild curiosity to find out the results.

For now, though, let us get back to the matter at hand and let the future unfold as it may, shall we?

Welcome!

This is my writing site, not to be confused with my design site. If you are looking for graphic design work done, I humbly suggest you mosey on over to jenniferlynparsons.net and see if you like my services on offer.

If it is words to entertain you that you seek, then you have, indeed, arrived at the right place. Please feel free to gander at the pages within and lose yourself for a while among the words.

In celebration of the relaunch of this site and it’s spiffy new design, I’m posting a little story that will most probably go homeless otherwise. It owes a debt to Neil Gaiman’s “Instructions” though I will assure you that I did not set out to write such a thing that would owe anything to anyone when I sat down that day and this piece came out from beneath my fingers.

And so, without any further ado, I give you “The Proper Order of Things” and urge you to follow its instructions to the letter if ever you find yourself in a house with a well in the basement.

So there you have it, my welcome message and a few little links to follow. And with that business done and dusted, I bid you good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.