Author: Richard Parry

Delilah: Part Four

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If you haven’t seen Delilah yet, start at the beginning. Delilah crushed that line of thinking, tossing it out of her mind and over the bridge of thought to drown like an unwanted sack of puppies in the dark of her subconscious. Her brother Oliver — her Ollie — was one of these … cripples. The thought wouldn’t go away, now she was seeing so many at once. A hundred or more people, racked and stacked like organic wares at a chop shop, wheelchairs and exosuits in equal numbers. They all shared the same jerky movements, tainted meat everywhere Delilah looked. A hundred fucking cripples at a mad king’s birthday party. The people he’d mutilated, celebrating with him. Sampson was sick, and he would die tonight. Hell with the bonus. The car hissed to a halt, the door clunking open with confidence. Delilah put a Read More …

Tyche’s Demons is Out!

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Much excite! The leader of the fallen Republic returns. Destruction sweeps across Earth. Grace Gushiken and Nathan Chevell rule the Empire. While they petition seditionist worlds for aid in a war humanity struggles to win, Grace’s father arrives. Kazuo Gushiken brings the might of the insect-like Ezeroc to crush humanity’s home. Kazuo travels with a fallen civilization. AI machines fight at his side. They are allied with the Ezeroc in a common purpose: destroy humans, once and for all. If they kill the heads of the Empire, all planets will fall. The AI destroy humanity’s Navy, leaving Grace and Nate to escape on an old ex-war heavy lifter. Pressed into service one more time, the crew of the Tyche must survive against the combined might of the Ezeroc and AI. If they can’t, they will die, and humanity’s hopes with Read More …

Changing Everything

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There’s a school of wisdom that says you shouldn’t change more than one thing at once. Why? If you do and something gets destroyed, you can’t be sure which change caused the failure. Since I’m more into positivity than dire gloom, I rephrase this as, If something turns amazing, you’re not quite sure which thing brought the sunlight in. I think around July 2015, we were advised our home was being acquired under compulsory acquisition provision within the Public Works Act by the Greater Wellington Regional Council. I posted on Facebook about it in early August, but since Internet stalkers probably can’t read it, here’s what I said: Yo. The Kitney and I have got a few emails on this over the past couple o’ days. The short version is that yes, this does effect us – our home is one Read More …

Plot vs. Character

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A buddy wrote me recently about the upcoming movie, Upgrade. It’s not an adaptation of my book. This was as heartbreaking for me as it is for you, no doubt. I think the subtext of the email I got might have been, “Those motherfuckers stole your idea!” While it’s difficult to tell from a trailer whether someone has stolen my ideas verbatim, I think it’s more likely there’s some parallel evolution going on here. This is probably okay, and maybe we should even encourage it. What the actual fuck? Read on. The movie trailer looks great. Here: Broadly, it shares some ideas with Upgrade. Not necessarily stolen, but common: the upgraded-human thing is very #cyberpunk, for example. Writers in genre fiction share some concepts (e.g., Altered Carbon…). The weird thing is, a movie and a book named the same thing might help. Read More …

Delilah: Part Three

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If you haven’t seen Delilah yet, start at the beginning. The first task was to find Sampson. The man was an enigma. A ghost. A shadow. No one even knew if he was a man; he could have been male or female, young or old, God/gods-fearing or atheist. Delilah had been hired to find Sampson, destroy his tech, and bring him in. If she couldn’t, leaving his body cooling in a dumpster would be a good second option. His code was the real prize: Sampson had released a virus into the link network, turning ordinary people into husks, their bodies crippled, minds shattered. The syndicates didn’t agree on much, but they agreed that Sampson needed to go down. Reed Interactive was just the latest one willing to put good cash on the table to see it done. Their angle was curious though; Reed’s tower was Read More …

Tyche’s Grace

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The final Tyche Origins story was the hardest to write. Let’s be honest, Grace hasn’t had a good run at life, has she? Despite that, she’s Grace. It’d be hard to keep her anywhere she doesn’t have a mind to be. Check it out — it’s on the store today! Grace Gushiken is a prisoner at fourteen. Grace is confined on her father Kazuo’s grounds. She, like him, is an esper: a reader of minds. Kazuo has arranged extensive training for her. Stealth. Infiltration. And combat. When a simple trip to the ancient city of Ise brings disaster, Grace tries to run. Her stunted esper abilities betray her. Kazuo turns Grace’s friends against her. No one can stand against the power of his will. When her father is called away to meet the Emperor, Grace has one shot at freedom. She must Read More …

Canadians Doing It Right

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I watched a two-part documentary about a video game recently. While how I choose to spend my time should be free of your judgment, a thing worth calling out is the repeated themes from the company involved. Digital Extremes are based in Canada. Throughout the videos where they talk about company hard times, the repeated messages are about how they can look after their people, and how they can sustain this long term. Success for them is measured in employing a couple hundred souls, making sure there’s a good work environment for them, and being able to sustain this. Communication between them and their fans was more important than having a lot of fans (quality over quantity). With all the recent megacorp news about companies losing data, or type-A management trying to use you like an ATM, it’s easy to lose sight Read More …

Getting it Wrong

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By that, I mean on purpose. Before we get started, I need to preface with a couple of points. These are tips for writers. If you’re a reader, this shit might give you a glimpse behind the curtain. Good or bad? I don’t know. We’ll discover that. Together. This is not a post about alternative facts or some other political bullshit. There is no excuse for not knowing your shit. This post is not about how to fudge things so you can get away without doing research. Let’s turn that handle, yo. Let me set a scene for you. You’re watching a cop procedural on Netflix. In the scene are the good guys on one side of a table, bad guys on the other (you decide if the cops are good or bad in this scenario – it doesn’t matter). There’s Read More …

The Power of Names

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Ever since I read Le Guin’s amazing A Wizard of Earthsea, I’ve been captivated by the idea of names having a kind of power. (Side note: if you haven’t read the Earthsea books, you’re missing out. I don’t use ‘amazing’ lightly; this is a series I re-read often. The writing is brilliant, the characters captivating, the stories both beautiful and poignant). Hobb has her own take on this with her Liveship books (also excellent). Same but different, you know? Worth your time (and I needed to look up ‘Fitz’ when I started on these books). Me, I’m pretty much a hack compared to those two. But I still want the names of my characters to have meaning. In my Tyche books, I named the crew with a purpose. Some of the characters were renamed from their originals (did you know, Hope used Read More …

Tyche’s Fury

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My original working title for Tyche’s Fury was, “Kohl’s Bad Day.” It all starts with a bad idea over saki. But hell. No epic story started with a salad, amirite? Someone wants to hire October Kohl. First mistake. Trypso is a below average world filled with below average people. October Kohl wants off the crust and away from the wannabe Yakuza there. When the crime syndicate contacts Kohl with an opportunity to be free of both them and Trypso, Kohl jumps at the opportunity. The job’s easy money: deliver a package to another planet. Get paid. Then grab a beer. When a rival gang gets his scent, Kohl must make an unlikely alliance with the captain of an ex-war heavy lifter. If they can’t get along, everyone’s dead for sure. If they manage not to kill each other, the prize is Read More …