Kat Parrish's Blog, page 20

Moonlight Mist

This limited edition paranormal romance collection has been extended through the fall. Which is good news because it's a fantastic collection of work. (And I'm not just saying that because I'm one of the authors in the set. (My novella, Waking Dream, was written just for this set.)
You can get it on Kobo.
On Barnes & Noble
on Amazon

Here's the blurb:

The creatures of this alternate plane lurk beyond the mist. 
Searching.
Hungry.
Craving for what they need. 
Some may find it. Some might even curb that hunger. But a few will not.
Without knowing what it is they need to satisfy a primal need, they seek out something more. Something that will test their limits in search of something greater. Something powerful... Something everlasting. 

This collection includes:



Searching.
Hungry.
Craving for what they need. 
Some may find it. Some might even curb that hunger. But a few will not.
Without knowing what it is they need to satisfy a primal need, they seek out something more. Something that will test their limits in search of something greater. Something powerful... Something everlasting. 


This collection includes:

Night Falls  (Racinitine Pack 1) by Nicole Morgan
Kinzey will not only change Paul's world, but the only life his pack has ever known.
 
Fighting Fate  (Windsor Woods 2) by Krista Ames
Can a lonely Alpha accept his fate?
 
The Acquisition of Dr. Iris  by Erin Lee
True love exists only in darkness.
 
Twilight Rising  by Erin Richards
Telepathy. Murder. Hot detectives...all in a day's work.
 
The Waking Dream  by Kat Parrish
To dream is to be alive.
 
Close Encounter  by Stephanie Morris
Maybe having a werewolf in your bed isn't such a bad thing...
 
Only Tonight  by TMonique Stephens
One night to fall in love. One night to save the world.
 
Sparks Fly  by Donna R. Mercer
Anything can happen when Sparks Fly.
 
Unexpected Trajectory  by Terri Bruce
Love can find you in the most unexpected place - even among the stars.
 
Taken by Him  by Jan Springer
Calder can't ignore the way she fires his blood...
 
Destined  by Carly O'Shea
 
Safe With You  by Sharon Coady
He wants to be alone, she wants to protect him...
 
Iroida  by Berlin Rhodes
A love even the gods can't prevent.
 
Flamekeeper  by Helen Scott
Nothing burns hotter than dragon fire.
 
Code Red  by Carma Haley Shoemaker
Saving lives is easy. It's being in love that's dangerous.
 
Honor Bound  by Rebecca Tran
Only love will save Hallie when she wanders into Underhill.
 
Loving the Lion  by Marie Mason
How long will it take this alpha male to realize she's not only just what he and his animal need, she's what they crave?
 
Grateful for the Gymnasium  by Deelylah Mullin
When Gunny and Hallie fall in love, will the full moon take them by storm or help them settle into a happy place?
 

PLAYING WITH FIRE on pre-order

I know, you've got boxed et fatigue. It happens! 
But you really want to check out PLAYING WITH FIRE, the set I'm in coming this fall.
It's a collection of tales themed to FORBIDDEN LOVE.


Get your pre-order here (iBooks and Amazon links are not yet live.)
Claim your freebie gifts!

My story is a version of the classic Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot tale I call The Poisoned Cup. I had
A.S. Oren of Glass Crocodile make the cover and am quite pleased.

Deadly Southern Charm...a crime fiction collection

This new collection of crime fiction from Wildside Press features more than a baker’s dozen of stories about “steel magnolias”—strong southern women who “embody that legendary mix of femininity and fortitude. The contributors are members of the Central Virginia Chapter of Sisters in Crime and some “guest authors” and the tales run the gamut from period pieces like “Southern Sisters Stick Together” by Stacie Giles to the opening piece, “the Girl in the Airport” by Frances Aylor, a neatly done bit of airport noir.
The tone of the tales ranges from Lynn Calhoun’s Gothic tale “Cayce’s Treasures,” (with its references to the fad for wearing “lover’s eye” jewelry to the black humor of Libby Hall’s “Stewing” and the flinging around of dog carcasses to the hilarious send-up of country music songs (“”Take My Heart, Leave the Dog”) in Sherry Harris’ “Country Song Gone Wrong.”
A couple of stories touch on the supernatural—Ronald Sterling’s “Just like Jiminy Cricket” for one, and Brad Harper’s “Shadow Man.” Food comes up a lot and the reference to grilled bacon and pimento cheese sandwiches will make any reader’s mouth water. (K.L. Murphy’s “Burn.”)Twist endings, unfaithful spouses, unreliable narrators, and lots and lots of southern local color—pick your poison (and yes, there’s poison here too). 
If you love crime fiction, pick up Deadly Southern Charm and enjoy. You can buy it on Amazon or directly from Wildside Press. For more Sisters in Crime anthologies with Virginia writers, check out the SinC website.

A review of Monkey Justice by Patricia Abbott

Patricia Abbott crafts stories like Cartier designs jewelry, one polished gem of a word at a time. And yet there’s nothing “precious” about any of these stories—gritty, gravely, raw stories about people and their worst impulses. Many of these stories take place on the margins, in the places between memory and the present. Things aren’t always what they seem, and if there is any justice to be had in the end, it is rough justice, vigilante justice, final justice.
Abbott’s stories are character-heavy, and dialogue-rich. Even the internal musings of the characters have substance. Her descriptions are precise, and immediately relatable, as when she describes the “gluey, mousey” smell of all used bookstores. “I thought only cops used the word vehicles,” one character muses, “but maybe prisoners and cops traded words like a cold.” It’s an offhand comment but it seems like the perfect combination of words.
Most of the stories here are dark, effortlessly noir-ish and strongly rendered slices of low-life pie. But there are also delights like “Bit Players,” which features the late, great character actor Jack Elam and a telling bit about the way casting directors work in Hollywood.
Not all of the characters are as sympathetic—there are an awful lot of dangerous daddies here—but they are all memorable—even indelible. This collection of stories is a master class in the art of short fiction writing, an assemblage of great tales to be read one at a time or binged, like episodes of Breaking Bad. If you love short stories, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy  at Down and Out Books or your favorite retailer.

Follow her on Amazon.

Feed your reader!

I love boxed sets, both as a reader and a writer. I love being able to sample work from writers I don't know and I love being a part of a group of writers putting together collections of work with a common theme. (You'll be hering a lot about PLAYING WITH FIRE in the coming months. It's a boxed set of stories about forbidden love and I'm reworking the Arthurian myth in my tale.) But Playing with Fire won't be up for preorder until next month. In the meantime, here's a set you can preorder.

CURSED LANDS. Twenty-two tales  where magic, danger, and romance lurk between the shadows and the light.  All the authors you love and more!

Delayed gratification isn't for you? No problem. Here are a couple of boxed set you might have missed. First, The Witching Hours, a collection of eleven noels about witches and witchcraft withbooks from Christine Pope, Stacy Claflin, Yasmine Galenorn, Sarra Cannon, Phaedra Weldon, and more. (Including me--my MAGIC IN THE BLOOD is included.) Get it here for FREE.

For 99 cents, you can snag another boxed set, FATED MATES. It's all about shape-shifters and their mates and if you're curious about what all the "reverse harem" hype is all about, there's that too. Here's the Amazon blurb:

Seductive supernaturals. Steamy reverse harems. A collection that’s destined to make you fall in love.
Alpha females, powerful packs, sexy shifters, and dark immortals war for dominance in these 23 addictive, entrancing tales.
Join USA Today bestselling authors along with hot new talent as they bring you the Paranormal Romance and Reverse Harem boxed set you've been waiting for.
Don’t let destiny pass you by. One-click now and claim your Fated Mates today!

Once Upon a Star, a review

Fiddlehead Press has a whole series of ONCE UPON A … sets of retold fairy tales and this newest one may be its best. The fourteen fairy tale-inspired science fiction tales are all fresh and inventive and lots of fun to read, from Sarra Cannon’s Matrix-meets-Robin Hood spin on the classic tale (“Loxley”) to Christine Pope’s “The Cyrano Solution,” which is an epic take on “The Princess and the Frog.” The “inspirations” for the stories run the gamut from a trio of Russian tales to “The Goose Girl,” and while there’s a Cinderella story, it’s quite unlike the classic tale. One of the best things about the set is that it doesn't fall back on the same old/same old stories that everyone seems to retell--Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, the Little Mermaid, but bring in a much more diverse set of stories.
The writers all seem to be having a lot of fun, but there are some lessons to be had here as well—revenge and redemption figure large in several of the stories.
There’s also nice world building. Some of the stories, like those by Anthea Sharp and Christine Pope, take place in between “episodes” of their long-running series, while others are “one-offs” the writers admit were a genre stretch. Moreover, while it’s possible to see some of the influences on the stories, the writers have augmented their ideas with other bits and pieces of lore and myth and folktale. And so, we have Grimm’s fairy tales coexisting with Pinocchio and Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow. Wrapping a science fiction skin around these old stories makes them feel as shiny as the titanium hull of a space craft.
If you like science fiction and fairy tales, this is a boxed set you NEED to get.  You can buy it here.

Author Interview with Veronica Marie Lewis-Shaw

Born in Lisboa, Portugal to parents of Portuguese/Russian descent, Veronica Marie and her partner of seven years and wife of four years, Christina Anne, are "still very much on honeymoon!" 

When not teaching, Veronica writes noir and crime fiction. She has been published in Pulp Metal Magazine, The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology, the horror anthology 100 Horrors, from Cruentus Libri Press, Katherine Tomlinson's Nightfalls: an End of the World anthology, Drunk On The Moon 2: A Roman Dalton anthology, Gloves Off: Near To the Knuckle's debut anthology, and Lily Childs' new horror/urban fantasy anthology, February Femme Fatales, which went "live" on Amazon on 8 February 2014. She has also appeared in the inaugural issue of Literary Orphans magazine. 

What is the first piece of writing you ever sold and do you remember how much you got paid for it? Once I decided to let the world see my writing, I jumped right into anthology submissions, mostly charity anthologies; I liked the idea of my words helping others. I haven’t given much thought to submitting to a publication or online entity for pay, although I see Switchblade is doing an open submission call during the month of February.

      You primarily write short fiction. Is there a novel in your future? Definitely! Or a series of novellas; I’ve been tossing that idea around too. My novel is a contemporary/noir crime fiction, whose main character is a female lesbian police detective – Aimee Belanger. Aimee has a past… don’t we all… and balancing that against her new career in law enforcement, coupled with her sexual identity and ‘help’ from a sometimes ally – an eight-hundred-year-old lesbian vampire - presents a unique set of challenges.
4    Do you tend to stick to a genre or do you branch out when you’re writing? Is there a genre you’d like to try? Noir/contemporary crime fiction is what I seem to ‘know’, and we should always write what we know, right?  I have dabbled in horror and queer erotica. I wouldn’t mind having a ‘go’ at some sort of sci-fi/fantasy/alternate worlds kind of thing. I have an idea for a story about aa matriarchal fairy (think wood nymph) society where the male of the species are workers, nothing more. 

It is solely the females who procreate (an asexual species that produces both sexes) and have relationships. The evil that drove them from their home world has found the Faluans escape portal and now threatens their existence on Earth.
      Did you ever write a fan letter to a writer you admired? If so, did they respond? Yes… and no. The author did not respond personally, but I was contacted by his publisher and invited to read and review an ARC of his upcoming novel.
6    Who are the writers you do admire? How much time do you have… lol! Dickens, Daphne du Maurier, Flannery O’Connor, Thoreau, Anais Nin, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky… more current writers would be Nicole Baart, Camille Pagan, Ann Wertz Garvin, Katherine Tomlinson, Gregg Hurwitz, Aimie K Runyan. These writers have a keen understanding of the human condition and their stories stay with the reader.  (Editor’s note: I am humbled to be included in such stellar company.)
7. 
 What is the first book you remember reading? I assume we’re not talking Goodnight Moon or Harold’s Purple Crayon, right? Those don’t really count because they were first read to me. I would have to say my first book was Judy Blume’s Are YouThere, God? It’s Me, Margaret. It is certainly one that has ‘stuck’ with me through the years, probably because I learned a few things about myself from that book.
8     Are there some things you write that you wouldn’t want your mother to read (if your mother is still alive)? My mother passed away several years ago, but if she were still on this earthly plane I would hide ‘Chasing Rainbows’ – my queer erotica story. When I was a teen, Mama confiscated enough of those Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazines to not be surprised that is the genre I write in now.
9    What piece of your work are you most proud of? That would be the very first story of mine that was published… ‘Lost But Not Forgotten’, in Lost Children: A Charity Anthology to Benefit Children 1st and PROTECT. How that came about is an interesting little story. I joined an online flash fiction group – Flash Fiction Friday – in 2010 and had been ‘honing’ my writing skills. 
F    Flash fiction is a great discipline or any writer, but especially for a ‘new fish’ such as myself. Anyway… there were several established authors in the group and one day I was approached by one of them, Thomas Pluck, inquiring if he might include one of my flash fiction stories in a charity anthology that he, Fiona Johnson, and Ron Earl Phillips were putting together. I think I was walking on air for about a week. The story is only about 700 words, as I recall, but except for my memoir, I am most proud of that story.
1     If you could go on an all-expenses paid vacation anywhere on earth, where would you go? Italy!  Tuscany and Northern Italy. I could do about a month in each region. The art… the history… the architecture… the food! Not to mention the inspiration I could get there. A little Italian noir, eh?
1    You are married to a strong, supportive woman and you speak often and lovingly about your relationship with her. Have you ever gotten pushback from editors who ask you to take out references to your marriage in your bio? Tina is my rock! She more than anyone else encouraged me to pursue writing fiction and has always been my staunchest supporter. 
P    Part of my editing process is to read my story out loud – you can pick up grammar errors in particular when you hear the words out loud – and Tina has always found time, even when she is out of town on business, to listen to one of my stories. I have yet to encounter any pushback from an editor, though I suspect I might soon for an article I am contemplating submitting to a particularly conservative website. I could leave that out of my bio, but that feels like hiding and I stopped hiding who I am a long time ago. It will be what it will be.
       On the whole, everyone I have been involved with… writers, editors, publishers… have all been not only incredibly supportive of my writing, but also very, very respectful of my personal life. By and large the writing community… and all it encompasses… is very inclusive, open, and supportive of all writers, regardless of sexual orientation/identity, colour, race, gender, lifestyle.
Want to know more about VMLS?
Here’s her page on Amazon Here’s her page on Goodreads Here’s her blog

Free Sci Fi Books

There's a freebie sci-fi book giveaway going on now until March 17. Check it out here.

Need a place to party?

Come hang out at the Playing with Fire boxed set people. You'll get a WARM welcome. There will be giveaways and takeovers and prizes and games. Meet the writers and readers supporting this limited edition boxed set of stories about "forbidden love."  Check out the action here on Facebook.

Swag! Don't you love swag?

New York Times bestselling author Skye Warren has a new book out and to celebrate, she's offering a great package of prizes. Click here for more information and to enter.