Kat Parrish's Blog, page 3

New Urban Fantasy Coming Soon.

 

It was 1993 when I read my first Urban Fantasy novel and it changed my life. I'd never heard of the the genre before. But I felt like it had been invented for my own particular pleasure. A mixture of mystery and fantasy!!!! 

I loved the snarky voice of the heroine, Anita Blake, vampire hunter. I started looking for new UF authors and found them. Nancy Collins and her SUNGLASSES AFTER DARK, Carrie Vaughn and her Kitty Norville books, Jim Butcher and Harry Dresden. When I first ventured into longer fiction after writing short stories for about a decade, I went for urban fiction. All the stories in my L.A. Nocturne world are about vampires and werewolves and the humans they interact with in a paranormal "open" city. I love my paranormal Los Angeles, where the largest vampire in the city has taken over my favorite building in the world, the Griffith Park Observatory.

But then I started venturing out and got sidetracked for a while writing sci fi and paranormal fantasy and sweet romance. I love all those stories, but now I want to go back to UF for a while. I'm going to start with Witch and the Hunter, a story set in the Pacific Northwest, which is aplace I love, particularly in Autumn when everything is ablaze with fall color.

I won't quit writing the other books--I'm releasing short, sweet Christmas romances every single day in December--but it'll be nice to return to my first love. You never forget your first.

Total Fireworks...

 

I really like writing romances revolving around holidays, but so far I've concentrated on Christmas and Halloween (my two favorites). But I've joined this anthology that'll be out next summer, and I couldn't be more excited. Using my USAT bestselling author pen name Katherine Moore, I'm writing a story that takes place at a small town Fourth of July festival with a city girl and her first love. fireworks ensue, although I write Hallmark-rated hijinks, so it's pretty sweet. (But there are a number of writers in the collection and the stories will come with all the levels of heat.) 

You can preorder it here for 99 cents. 

USA TODAY Bestseller List is BACK!

 

I am in a boxed set of mystery stories that was aiming for a list win that got derailed when the paper closed this list down. Now it's back, we're hoping we can still make it. You'll be hearing more from me, but here's a picture of my personal cover:

A Woman Presumed.

I took the title from an NPR story I heard about a double murder where the police found a victim and "a woman presumed to be his wife." And I thought...what if the dead woman wasn't his wife? And what if the person who identified the body knew that? I'm really excited by the story. 

Here's the link to pre-order Talk Deadly to Me.

I love the cover for the collection. This collection is close to my heart because I grew up reading mysteries. Yes, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, but back then, there was no such thing as YA or Middle Grade reading, so once you were done with those, you pretty much graduated to adult reading. I was reading Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and my mother read a mystery a night (because she was an insomniac.) I read everybody--Josephine Tey and Sue Grafton and Dick Francis and Agatha Christie (of course) and ... on and on and on. 

Follow me on Facebook...

 

I'm pretty low-key when it comes to pimping out my work. I'll post links if a preorder goes up, or if a friend of mine has a book I think you'll like, but 90 percent of my FB content is interesting stuff. Or things I'm interested in that I think you might be interested in too. But I'm currently trying to get a book deal and one of the metrics the editors are interesed in are HOW MANY FOLLOWERS you have. Which makes it sound like they're only interested in signing cult leaders. But I'd love it if you followed my Kat Parrish page here. Or while you're at it, follow my Kat Parrish Amazon page.

Coming soon--Chimera in Vella

 I'm giving Vella another trial after finding this cover (and another) from Chris at Novel Storm on Etsy. (Find it here.)

My story is a future, space opera-ish take on Robert Louis Stevenson's Island of Dr. Moreau. I've been playing with the idea for years!

CHOSEN ...Fight Like a Girl now on pre-order

 

Stories of bad-ass women (some of them with swords) available on preorder now. I have two stories in this collection. One by my pen name Kat Parrish, one by Katia Kozar. The stories will fit into my Twelve Realms world and be short works of epic fantasy. 

Find it here.

Speaking of epic fantasy, I watched Dungeons and Dragons today, which I enjoyed very much. I never played the game, but I know all the tropes and it was to see how the writers handled them Loved the fat dragon. It looked like Hugh Grant was having a great time. Ditto Chris Pines. Not a rod of lordly might in sight and nobody paid for their drinks with coppers!

Seasons of Silver Birch out today and FREE on Kindle

 The Christmas Experience was my first novel as a romance writer, and I created the fictional town of Silver Birch, Washington to be its location. At the time I was living in Bellingham, Washington (it's so gorgeous in the fall that it almost looks like it's a fairyland). I took my favorite parts of the city, embellished them, and before I knew it, I'd written a bunch of novellas and short stories based in Silver Birch. So I decided to combine them. The result is more tha 400 pages of cozy romance with all the tropes--second chance, friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, surprise love, holiday romance. The  book is out now and it' free on Kindle. 

I had a lot of fun writing the stories. I hope you will enjoy reading them. 

Find it here.

Magic Discovered...now on preorder.

 

This new anthology was a lot of fun. My story, "Dragon Moon," is about what happens when the employees of a bookstore in Toronto are stuck inside at closing time when Dragons suddenly start appearing. It's got all my favorite tropes--enemies to friends, the outsider becoming a hero, working class kids and intellectual dreamers, and lots and lots of books. I think you might enjoy the story, and all the other ones you'll find inside. You can preorder it here. 

A new series...coming soon

 I've lately been wanting to do something that combines historical fiction, spy thiller, and mystery. And as often is the case, I found a series of book covers that inspired me. Set in the WWI era, with a train, a dreadnought and a plane, the particulars of the character and the situations came to life. I'm still researching those. My grandfather served in WWI so it doesn't seem so long ago but more than a century?  All the covers have a similar sepia tone with the ghostly immages of WWI era machines in the background.

But then yesterday I was searching covers on Etsy and ran across a perfect cover by Puzzle Vault (www.etsy.com/shop/PuzzleVault). And it was perfect for updating my character to a new war and a new set of circumstances. It's in color, which helps sell the time shift. It's going to be set in 1937, 20 years after the first book ended. My hero is 50 and tired of "the Great Game." He was always a cynic, but now that cynicism is on the brink of turning dark.All around him, he sees betrayal. Especially of the men who fought the war and the many who died. All around him, he sees disruption.And all around him, he sees despair. For the mistakes after the Armistice have seeded the war that's coming and he fears it will be terrible. His world has endured the Spanish Flu Epidemic. The Great Depression. The Advent of Talking Pictures. The Communist Revolution. The world was never simple but now it is more complex than ever.I am eager to write these books but first I need to clear a bunch of sequels off my plate. 

Blue Hearts

 I'm starting to see Blue Heart gifs everywhere. i think this is my favorite:  https://tenor.com/view/heartonfire-bl...

I think symbolism is important. I don't wear t-shirts with slogans. I don't wear buttons or caps with initials on them. But my politics are pretty simple and pretty straightforward. I'm for kindness. I'm for inclusivity. i read banned books. I watch more than one news station. 

But wearing our (blue) hearts on our sleeve isn't enough. There is so such going wrong--everything, everywhere, and all at once--that it's really easy to be overwhelmed. And it's not like you can hit pause on your life and devote yourself full time to solving problems. But there are things you can do. 

Check out the suggestions from the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom. 
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Check out these tips on how to get nvolved. And read these books. Buy copies ad leave them in Little Libraries. Give them as gifts. 

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Pay attention.

Read everything you can.

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