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June 2021 Parsec Meeting

Join us for the June Parsec meeting on Saturday June 19 at 1:00 pm

Wulf Moon will be our guest speaker.
We will also announce the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners of the annual Parsec Short Story contest! Come back after the meeting for an updated announcement on the winners and their stories.

Wulf’s topic is Perseverance Yields Rewards.
The definition of success is getting up one more time than you have fallen. Wulf Moon has fallen many times, as have other writers, but success is determined by how you deal with the setbacks, and how you find the power to stand back up and continue the climb.

The meeting will be held via Zoom: Parsec meeting REGISTRATION Link
If you previously registered, you can use the same link Zoom sent you last month. 
If you lost that link just click on the registration link and Zoom will send you a new meeting link. 

Please check into the EVENT PAGE ON FACEBOOK and let us know you will be attending.

Wulf Moon learned oral storytelling as a child when he lived with his Chippewa grandmother. He begged stories from her every night and usually got his wish—fireside tales that fired his imagination. If Moon had a time machine, those are the days he would go back to. Since he doesn’t have a time machine, he writes.
Wulf Moon wrote his first science fiction story at fifteen. It won the national Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and became his first professional sale in Science World. He has won over forty writing awards, and thirty in public speaking. His stories have appeared in Writers of the Future, DreamForge Anvil, Future Science Fiction Digest, Best of Third Flatiron, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and Best of Deep Magic Anthology 2. Moon is a professional voice-over actor and is podcast director at Future Science Fiction Digest.
Wulf Moon’s award-winning SUPER SECRETS Writing Resource and Workshops have been attributed by many aspiring writers as the secret to their success in obtaining first professional sales and international contest wins. Two of Wulf’s books on writing will be published by Mark Leslie of Stark Publishing Solutions in the fall of 2021. Want in on the Secrets? JOIN THE WULF PACK at http://thesupersecrets.com!

Feel free to invite a friend or post the information on your own social media pages.
Parsec meetings are always free to attend and open to the public
!

May Parsec meeting

Join us for the monthly Parsec meeting on Saturday May 15, 2021 at 1:00pm

Our presentation this month:
Science Fiction and Comics, A Multimedia Presentation
by Joe Coluccio

Science Fiction and Science Fiction Comics share the same heritage, strolled the same paths.
From Buck Rogers to Fiction House, Amazing Stories to Mysteries in Space, Weird Tales to Weird Science, Mad Magazine to Dangerous Visions and Beyond. Registration is required.

Register in advance for this meeting HERE

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Joe Coluccio is the President of Parsec meeting group and the Board of Directors, Pittsburgh Premier Science Fiction and Fantasy Organization. He was program director for WYEP-FM, a local community access radio station in the first years of its existence.

Parsec Meeting 2021/04/17

The Parsec meeting this month will focus on eighteen years of Parsec Ink’s Triangulation anthology!

Zoom registration is required! Please register [HERE]

Our featured speaker is Jamie Lackey, author of The Blood of four Gods and Other Stories, Left Hand Gods, and Moving Forward, a novella of life after zombies.
Jamie will be regaling us with readings from the anthologies that she produced during her years as the Parsec Ink Triangulation editor.

Find out more about Jamie Lackey by visiting her website: https://www.jamielackey.com/
or LIKE her FB page: https://www.facebook.com/TheBooksThatJamieWrote

Parsec Ink has been producing quality Triangulation anthologies since 2003. Many fine editors have been part of this ongoing production, including; Diane Turnshek, Barb Carlson, Pete Butler, Bill Moran, Steve Ramey, Jamie Lackey, Frank Oreto, Douglas Gwilym, Chloe Nightingale, Isaac Payne and now in 2021, John Thompson.

We hope you will join us this month to celebrate the hard work of all the editors and eighteen years of Parsec Ink Triangulation anthologies!

This meeting will be recorded.

March 20, 2021 Parsec Meeting

The March meeting on the 20th will focus on topics for the annual Confluence conference. This meeting is a great time to bring your ideas and suggestions to the table. We hope you will join us. 1:00 pm on Zoom.

Click here to register in advance for this meeting

Join our event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/490602451933472

Join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2245148262388315

Like and follow our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/parsecsff

Feb Parsec Meeting

Date: Sat Feb 20, 2021
Time: 1:00pm
Via Zoom: REGISTER HERE

Presentation Info:
 Marie Vibbert on How Not to Sell Your First Novel
“Galactic Hellcats had an unusual journey as a novel, starting out as something I wrote in a spiral notebook when I was fifteen, and finally selling off of a tweet when I was forty-five.  Along the way there were many lessons on how not to become a writer.”

Marie Vibbert Bio
Besides selling over sixty short stories to top markets such as Analog and F&SF, Marie Vibbert has sold poetry and comics and video games.  She played O-line and D-line for the Cleveland Fusion women’s tackle football team.  Her work has been translated into French, Chinese, and Vietnamese, and was called “..the embodiment of what science fiction should be…” by The Oxford Culture Review.

The deadline for the February Issue #429
of Sigma is due Sunday 2/8/21
Send your plain text or RTF document to:
joe@joecoluccio.com

Parsec Holiday Party 2020

You are invited to the Virtual (Zoom meeting) Parsec Meeting and Holiday Fun Night Shindig  We can dance if we want to. Food, drink, conversation and all sorts of frivolity.

BYO Everything! 

When: Dec 19, 2020, 1 – 7 pm Eastern Time (US and Canada) 
Registration: Required!

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwkdOitpjksGNQfJXG4FjSIzOpg2k_ZxrSM

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Triangulation: Extinction is here!

It’s been almost a year in the making, and finally, Triangulation: Extinction is finished.

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The goal with this anthology was to build on the foundation Dark Skies had laid down for environmental activism, and I think we’ve achieved that goal. Species extinction and the loss of biodiversity are pressing issues, and what better way to bring awareness to them than with speculative fiction?

We received over 400 submissions and broke last year’s number of submissions by a landslide. It’s so heartening to see authors from around the world rally around a common cause, putting their skills to work for something they believe in.

From those 400 stories, we chose 27 to make up Triangulation: Extinction, clocking in at just about 200 pages of quality, environmentally aware, speculative fiction. Plus, wonderful cover art and interior illustrations from Katerina Kireeva.

This anthology couldn’t have been possible without the help of our great junior editors and consulting staff, all named within the pages. Thank you to everyone for helping make this vision a reality.

Read and enjoy: https://amzn.to/2XXQP85

Best,
Isaac E. Payne
Editor

News from Mary Soon Lee

Mary Soon LeeWed, Jul 22, 12:05 PM

Hello,

The last few months have been hard on almost everyone, and I find myself more grateful than ever for pieces of good news. So it makes me very happy to report that “Elemental Haiku,” my book of haiku for the elements of the periodic table, has been nominated for the Elgin Award, and that I also have two poems in this year’s Dwarf Stars anthology.

In a similar vein, it was lovely to read Ann K. Schwader’s review of “The Sign of the Dragon.” Ann is a SFPA Grand Master for her contributions to speculative poetry, so it meant a great deal to me that she described the book as “… an utterly beautiful, impressive, & occasionally heartbreaking reading experience!” Her full review can be read at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3312504890

N.B. The ebook of “The Sign of the Dragon” is available from Apple Books, Google Play, Kindle, Kobo, Nook, and I’m donating any money I get from 2020 sales to Doctors Without Borders, the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, and the Trevor Project.

Since last month’s update, I’ve had poems in F&SF, Star*Line (three poems), and Eye to the Telescope. One of the poems in Star*Line is an Editor’s Choice selection and so may be read online: http://sfpoetry.com/sl/edchoice/43.3-5.html. And the whole issue of Eye to the Telescope, my poem included, is online at http://www.eyetothetelescope.com/.

Unusually for me, I also had two short stories published. “Redemption” is in the Summer 2020 issue of Fireside, and my short-short story “Catastrophe” is in Frozen Wavelets: https://frozenwavelets.com/issue-2-2/catastrophe-by-mary-soon-lee/.

I’ve been reading compulsively and have several recommendations. On the non-fiction front, I found Adam Becker’s “What Is Real?” to be excellent (it’s about quantum physics and the controversy over its interpretation). On the poetry front, I loved one new book, “The Alpaca Cantos” by Jenny Blackford, and two older ones, “The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou” and Alice Walker’s “Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful.” On the fiction front, I loved Martha Well’s latest Murderbot book, “Network Effect.”

But the book that I liked best is “Mindtouch” by M. C. A. Hogarth, the first in her Dreamhealers series. It’s a science fiction novel devoid of space battles, malevolent AIs, and visions of apocalypse. Instead cookies are baked, friendships formed. I feel oddly defensive toward it, as I imagine other people scorning it as pedestrian or slow-paced, but it captivated and delighted me. I can’t remember the last time I’ve found a book so softly moving. My reviews of this and many other books may be unearthed at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/6731291.

Sending good thoughts: may you be safe and well,

Mary