Author Archives: Eugie Foster

Our good friend Patrick drove up from New Orleans for a visit. He brought a slew of really awful movies with him to revel in and mock. He’s a film student at UNO and he and Matthew have been engaging in a lot of shop talk and film gabbing. My head is filling up with cinema trivia and theory.

Writing Stuff
Thanks to ogre_san, I went out to the Realms of Fantasy website, and saw that my story “The Storyteller’s Wife” is going to be in the June issue. Yay yay yay! My second appearance in RoF. Can’t wait to receive my contrib. copies!

Also heard from the editor of the Revenant anthology that it will debut April 9th (even though it has a June 15th release date) at a Florida book fair. Much coolness.

glenn5 swung by yesterday for a classic SF double-feature and pie. I made a vegetable pot pie, which turned out excellently, if I do say so myself, and he brought scrumptious key lime for dessert. We watched When World Collide which was amusing in so many ways, and Planet of the Apes (the 1968 one, not the 2001 re-make atrocity) which is just an excellent production, even if I did have The Simpsons musical number going through my head nearly the whole time we were watching it:

“Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
Dr. Zaius, Dr. Zaius
I hate every ape I see
From chimpan-a to chimpan-zee
No, you’ll never make a monkey out of me”

A fabu evening all in all, marred only by a niggling headache which would not go away, no matter how much Sudafed and Excedrin I popped, and a pronounced return of my breathing difficulties. I think the abundance of dust in our house triggered it, since we did some dusting earlier yesterday and that seems to have stirred things into the air which were intended by nature and God to remain in a thick layer on our furniture and appliances. Dusting, ptoo.

Writing Stuff
Due to all the stimulants I’d taken in the OTC meds, the stims in my Albuterol inhaler, and the coffee I had with the key lime, sleep was not easy or forthcoming. But, in all my tossing and slipping in and out of consciousness, my muse decided to bitch slap me. The setting and tone which I’d been mulling over, trying to get straight in my mind, coalesced in a “eureka” moment, which fortunately I didn’t forget when I woke up.

Writing commenced.

Words: 700. Pausing to do some timely research. But the story scaffolding is taking shape nicely in my mind, and my writing muscle is limbering up. Just need to get my stamina back so I can start cranking out some real word countage.

Club 100 For Writers
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500/day
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Writing Stuff
Getting back on track, although my writerly muscle has atrophied from disuse. Did a couple editing passes on various WIP (including the folktale that I still haven’t foisted on Matthew yet) to get warmed up. Also doing more Chinese folklore research. Cranked out a couple hundred words, but they were slow and halting.

Novel novel novel. Need to finish novel. (Lather. Rinse. Repeat.)

Words: 200

Club 100 For Writers
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Writing Stuff
I’ve languished in a post-Fantasm haze for long enough. I’ve fallen off the 100 words a day wagon AGAIN, and I can’t remember when the last time I was able to crank out 500. I’ve caught up on outstanding Tangent work, filled out and flung back various and sundry paperwork (contracts, submissions, etc.), and updated all of my spreadsheet logs. I am officially out of procrastination activities. Got my mug of tea beside me, and when I finish this LJ entry, I will have no more excuses not to write.

Time to get back to work.

Muse, get your ass over here and make with the nicey!

Slept for most of Sunday and a remarkably huge chunk of Monday, and I’m still feeling a bit loopy from Fantasm. Sheesh, it’s taking me longer and longer to recover from these cons.

Dropped dude_the off at the airport yesterday, and Hobkin is relieved to have us back at home. He’s been clinging to me with all his fuzzy might, alternating between expressing his fuzzy neediness and demanding to be fed.

The world returneth to normal.

Writing Stuff
Gah! I came back to a huge backlog of Tangent work. Spent the wee hours that I was awake last night (my internal clock appears to be experiencing a reset from the weekend) catching up on it. Still have much to do, but at least it’s less overwhelming.

Came back to no fewer than SIX, count them six rejections from this weekend. Fortunately, I was extremely anesthetized when I got them, so none of them have particularly fazed me.

In order:
– 13-day “Just to let you know, FADE TO BLACK CAME in second. Good luck placing it elsewhere or submitting it again next quarter if you so desire.” From Stephen D. Rogers Presents. DAMMIT!! So close! To re-submit it next quarter or not . . . HELL YES I’m going to submit it again next quarter.
– Three 11-day rejects from the Corpse Blossoms anthology after they invited me to submit multiples to them. After getting a couple “we really liked this but it isn’t what we’re looking for”s, I sent them a range of stories, hoping one of them would fit. Instead, I gave the editors the impression that I suffer from multiple personality disorder, and apparently pump out fiction whilst in the thralls of my various personas. Well, crap.
– 266-day YFoP from Realms of Fantasy with personalized scribble at the bottom apologizing for holding it so long and telling me they’re overstocked.
– 8-day glowing reject from Lenox Ave.. They had wonderful things to say about my story, but found that it wasn’t right for them. Fooie.

Need to make a post office run today, most definitely.

The Final Fantasm blow out has left me groggy and even more incoherent than I was yesterday. I’m sure I’m down a significant number of brain cells. So, more shiny pictures!

First off, my panel with wicked_wish and jackzodiac, The Dark Side of Publishing, whereupon we bitched and complained for an hour and a half about the publishing nightmares we’ve personally experienced. Cathartic whee.

Matthew wanted to see the hypnotist show, so off we went. Forteneau requested volunteer subjects, and off Matthew and dude_the scampered to the stage (along with something like twenty-five other eager convention-goers). They were mercilessly humiliated. I giggled much. (Pardon the blurry image. Had to turn the flash off):

Hooked up with various excellent folk and off we went into the party battles. Continue reading →

Went to sleep at 3:30AM, woke up at 8:30. Damn sun! Everyone else, comatose. Posting a pastiche of pictures and events from yesterday. Coherency low. Pictures, shiny.

Panels:
Whee! jackzodiac, tstauffer, Andrew Greenberg, and me in The Hero is a Monster and then jackzodiac, tstauffer, and me on a panel ostensibly on Short Stories, but which we just rambled on about the biz of writing, and praised Harlan Ellison.

ghostgrrl continued to rock as Ink Track director, taking good care of us all.

Programming:
jackzodiac got tapped as judge of the Ms. Fantasm pageant again. Our pictures ended up crap because of the lighting. But jackzodiac was happy with his appointed task, which is the important thing.

Parties:
Masquerade Ball!

Continue reading →