Member Publications

To keep track of my submissions, acceptances, and publications, I use a couple of different spreadsheets. Plus, I try to keep the list of publications on my web site up to date. There are times I do have to check back at my site or my spread sheets to see what was published where, and when.

As for stepping outside of my usual genre, what is my usual genre? I've written an occasional mainstream literary poem alongside my speculative fare. And I tend to cover the gamut in terms of speculative genres, writing science fiction, fantasy, and horror pieces. Sometimes I even mix genres. "Sorceress Devolution", for instance, is a rather dark fantasy poem, with some horror elements.

And I've written more than just poetry. I do have a handful of non-fiction articles out there. I've been meaning to write more articles, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Admittedly, I've been hoping to write some prose fiction as well, but time seems to be against me. Now that I'm spending more and more time on art, I seem to have no time for prose writing.

My wizardly scifaiku "Electric Blue Sparks" now appears on-line in the July 2009 issue of the web-zine Aphelion. Check it out:
http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/poetry/2009/07/ElectricBlueSparks.html

While I think the description is quite clear, I believe I leave it up to the reader to fill in the details of what specific action is actually taking place. Am I describing a wizard's own spell backfiring, or am I describing a rival's attack? I don't know if such a thing is necessarily proper for haiku and their speculative derivatives, but it seemed to work for this piece.

For someone who used to always play fighters in Dungeons & Dragons because all of his magic-user player characters died swift deaths, I do write quite a bit of wizardly verse. For some reason, I find sorcerers to be a great source of inspiration, poetically-speaking. Fighters apparently don't stir my muse the way wizards do.

Alas, I realized that this is my only poetry publication for the month of July (I had several illustrations published earlier this month). My poetry roll may be finally slowing to an eventual, inevitable end. I only have one poem scheduled for August publication, another scifaiku set to appear in Aphelion. And I found out that Issue 8 of The Monsters Next Door is scheduled to be released September 15th, so I will have at least one poem published in September. After that, I have a poem or two slated for publication in November, and one set to be published Spring 2010. Currently, I have nothing slated for publication in October or December.

Of course, much of this is my own fault. I'm terrible at multitasking. As I shift gears from poetry to art, my poetic productivity has been declining dramatically. As I spend more and more time on various illustration projects, I'm finding little inspiration to write more verse. I guess I'm one of those types that needs to concentrate most of his artistic energies on the task at hand, engrossed in a single-minded creative obsession.

Oh well. A while back, I did hear word from my publisher that she is hoping to release my illustrated dark speculative poetry collection in early 2010. That will go a long way in making up for any forthcoming poetry publication slump. And I do have another collection in the works, through another publisher. I just have to find the time to work on the large number of illustrations planned for this particular project.

Yes, more drawing. It seems as if I've truly become an artist who happens to write poetry, instead of the other way 'round.

Keep up the good work Richard. You have done amazingly well with your talents!

Thanks!

Some of my critics might say otherwise, but I'm learning to take all such criticisms with a grain of salt.

Guess you can't please all of the people all of the time as they say. I think you are doing great.

Will a gigantic cosmic whirlpool suck up the Earth at its aphelion? Or will the seas drain down a hole in the crust when the planet reaches its farthest distance from the Sun?

Actually, no. My mythic scifaiku "roiling gyre" now appears on-line in the web-zine Aphelion:
http://www.aphelion-webzine.com/poetry/2009/08/RoilingGyre.html

And I make no apologies for flexing my vocabulary muscles in this one, fitting a couple of interesting words into three little lines. In case you are wondering, a gyre is a circular ocean current. Using perhaps a bit of poetic license, I can argue it is roughly synonymous with a gigantic whirlpool (I didn't want to use whirlpool, vortex, or maelstrom). And a trireme is an ancient war galley with three banks of oars.

And why "mythic", other than the general ancient feel created by my use of "trireme"? Because the myth of the Greek whirlpool monster Charybdis inspired this piece.

Alas, this may be my only poem published in the month of August. My roll is slowing to an eventual, inevitable end, due in no small part to the fact that I've switched gears and am now concentrating on art. I'm currently in the middle of a rather large art project (with others waiting in the wings), and I simply don't have much time (or energy, or inspiration) to compose poetry.

Then again, my muse may start pestering me any day now. She's like that.

A large art piece, 'eh? Can't wait to see this one! I love how your art feeds your writing and vice versa...it is almost as if the two things have created this surreal world in a bubble that you go into and create anew with each creation you come up with.

It's a large art project, not really a large piece of art. It's large as in complicated, with lots of elements, not necessarily large in actual dimensions.

I'm creating medieval-style decorated letters and Celtic knotwork frames for the pages of a book of Lancelot poetry (not by me) to be published by Cyberwizard Productions. This project has kept me quite busy for the past several weeks, and I have quite a bit of work ahead of me yet. And best of all, I've been getting paid on a fairly regular basis.

My essay (or commentary, or editorial, or whatever you want to call it) "The Good and the Bad of Critiques" is now on-line at the Creator and the Catalyst web site. Check it out:
http://www.creatorandthecatalyst.com/audio_essays/essay_text/the_good_and_bad_of_critiques.htm


In the piece, I voice my personal views regarding the relative importance of critiques to those receiving them (it is all relative, after all), and how some things passing for constructive criticism are actually closer to toxic insult than anything truly constructive. The gist of the overall spirit of the essay may be something that I've stated repeatedly: tastes, opinions, preferences, and biases differ from person to person, from reader to reader, from editor to editor, from critic to critic.

Now, in case you were wondering, this essay came about due to my comments in the Aphelion forum in response to a feature about critiques published in the August issue. Mark Edgemon, a regular Aphelion contributor and studio director at Creator and the Catalyst, commented that my forum entries would make a fabulous essay. Even though I don't really consider myself an essayist, I figured I shouldn't pass up a unique opportunity, so I edited and polished my entries and sent them Mark's way. Voila, almost-instant essay!

Will others disagree with my viewpoints? I'm almost certain of it, and some may even feel that my opinions hold no real value. Nevertheless, I hope this essay is of help to some.

My dark poem "Visages of Betrayal and Madness" has been published in Issue Eight of The Monsters Next Door, their very-first print issue:
http://www.themonstersnextdoor.com/8.html
The poem can also be seen in the free pdf sneak-peek.

Hmm...what do I say about this poem? Do I dare admit that it deals with my very real, very troubled thoughts regarding my own parents? It is true; I did delve into my own pain, disappointment, and resentment when writing this piece. It's a hell I've revisited once or twice before. Not that I'm going to turn into a murdering monster because of what the monsters in my past did to me, but I figured it could definitely happen to the subject of this poem. And I also took something I saw on the telly about a madman tearing the faces off his victims (or something like that), gave it a slight twist, and added it to the brewing pot of bloody mayhem.

In a departure from my more typically supernatural dark verse, there is nothing otherworldly about the events in "Visages of Betrayal and Madness". The monsters this time around are decidedly human, not creatures from the shadow realm. I've written about human monsters before, but I don't do it very often. Perhaps it hits too close to home. After all, I grew up surrounded by plenty of examples of monstrous humanity.