Author Archives: Eugie Foster

Mostly Writing

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I’ve become so soft. Lows in the mid-30s, and I think it’s getting cold down here! Piffle. Must remind myself that I still don’t need to wear an overcoat outside and it’s the middle of November. That’d be an unheard of luxury in the Midwest.

For something completely different (and funny!) – a website that takes some of the popular spam headlines and makes cartoons out of them: spamusement.com.



Writing Stuff:

I don’t usually do memes, but this one seemed apropos. WIP meme (post a single sentence from your works in progress):

From “The Center of the Universe” (slipstream fantasy): Memories like shadow shapes grew from the sightless emptiness, spurred by the familiar scents.

From “Rue and Ruin” (fantasy): Hunger was a close companion to all; his brother starvation hovered nearby, only awaiting a moment of misfortune to descend.

From “The Promise of a Princess” (working title, fantasy): In the sunlight, the pond was a burnished green, filled with water fronds and an underwater root labyrinth.

From “Gilded Cage” (working title, science fiction): The holovision was blaring some femme program with a glitzy off world set, and super-gorgeous men and women prancing around, jiggling and rippling suggestively from all angles.

New words: 100

In addition to the new words, I also cut a couple hundred in the course of a pair of editorial passes–post Matthew’s critique. He liked my story and had some very useful suggestions to make. His comment after reading it: “You were hit a lot by [Iris Chang’s] suicide.” Guess it was pretty obvious.

Anyhoo, I implemented (most of) his suggestions, and the story’s at first draft. Sent it up the Critters queue. Not sure if Andrew will post it tomorrow or next week since I submitted it pretty late in the Critters cycle. Either is copasetic.

Now should I return back to my various works in progress, or start something new? I seem to write much better with the impetus that fresh inspiration gives me, but at the same time, I feel like I ought to finish some of the projects I’ve got in various states of half-completion.

Club 100 for Writers
11/100

Incredibles

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Went to see The Incredibles yesterday. While the theater was indeed less crazy than it was on Saturday, it was still pretty spastic. What happened to teaching children the difference between “indoor voice,” “outdoor voice,” and “shhh!”? There was a row of children behind us who not only didn’t understand “shhh!” but they hadn’t managed to grasp “indoor voice” either. Loud and persistent distractions notwithstanding, The Incredibles was great! Both of us laughed right out loud. Matthew thought it started a little slow–too much focus on the soul-sucking suburbia elements–but I was pretty enthralled from the get go. I liked it best when the family combined their superpowers, and I also really liked the costume creator-genius, “E.” Much giggling, shiny animation FX, and even some clever writing. Go, Pixar! Rah.



Writing Stuff:

Received: 18-day form reject from Alchemy

Words: 100

In my editing, I seem to have added words instead of cut. Hmm. I also completed two editorial passes. Time to hand it over to Matthew to first-reader.

Club 100 for Writers
10/100

Skunk pictures!

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Went to see The Incredibles yesterday, but the theater was swamped with screaming children, not to mention sold out of the time we wanted. We decided to postpone our movie outing until today. Hope it’ll be a little less crazy.

britzkrieg sent me the pix she took at our Halloween shindig, and it included one of my all time favorite snapshots of Hobkin and me:

Continuing the theme of skunk cuteness, yesterday Hobkin was feeling playful and then, of course, sleepy, so I picked up our handy dandy coolpix, and snapped away:
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Writing

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Writing Stuff:

Iris Chang’s death got me reflecting a lot on the past, and death and dying. Finished the story I’m working on with another 400 words, but it went in a totally different direction than I had intended, shaded by my thoughts of her suicide. I also went back in and made some major tweaks and changes to the storyline and characters, and suddenly it’s a lot more personal than I had intended.

Still needs work, of course. Going to give it another couple passed before turning the zero draft over to Matthew for evisceration. I hesistated after I typed out “The End,” debating briefly with myself whether I should offer it up to the public–critters, editors, and prospective readers alike. But in the end, it’s still a story I want to tell. Storytellers need audiences.

Club 100 for Writers
9/100

Suicide and Writing

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Oh. My. God. I just learned that someone I knew from my high school committed suicide. My high school was a laboratory school, 250 kids across five years. Class sizes were around 50 kids. Everyone knew everyone.

Iris Chang was an upperclassman, but I’d known and talked to her. Our parents knew each other as well. She was also an award-winning and best-selling writer. She wrote The Rape of Nanking, the chronicle of the Japanese occupation of China as well as a bunch of other historical Chinese-culture books. She was thirty-six. She was found in her car, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to her head. I’m in a state of shock.

gannet, you’re probably the only person on my friends list who knew her too. If you haven’t seen it, here’s the link to the memorial on Uni’s website.



Writing Stuff:

My excerpt “The Adventures of Trina, Hackersprite” is now up at the Eggplant Literary Productions Library. Click on the cover art to read it:

And the cover for the Embark to Madness anthology has been unveiled:

Words: 2.4K. This story’s nearly done. I jumped ahead and wrote the denouement and conclusion. The only thing left is a page or two of climax. Then, of course, there’s much polishing and shining that needs doing. Definitely a novelette here. I’m cresting toward 10K words (manuscript count). I suspect I can get that down some in the rewrite.

Now how do I count rewriting into the Club 100 figures? I really think rewriting should count. Perhaps two passes equals 100 words?

Club 100 for Writers
8/100

Just Writing

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Writing Stuff:

Somehow managed to forget that yesterday was Wednesday and hence the new Sci-Fiction story comes out. Oopsie. So I read and reviewed this week’s story for Tangent today. Mailed it off to my editor, who has published the backlogged Strange Horizons reviews, but not my backlogged Sci-Fiction ones. Humph.

New words: 1K

Club 100 for Writers
7/100

Autumn Hot Tubbing

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After that Indian Summer stint over Halloween, I’m glad to have the temperatures back down in the “hot tub” range again. Last night, we soaked until I turned pruney. Ahhh.



Writing Stuff:

Received permission from the artist (Sean Simmons) to display his artwork for “Perfidious Beauty.”

Isn’t it gorgeous? Can’t wait to see how it’ll look in print. (And, am I flattering myself, or does “Beauty” have a certain resemblance to yours truly?)

Didn’t post yesterday, but if I had, I’d have logged 640 words.

New Words: 4.7K
Woohoo, finally hit flow! These 4.7K were on a brand new story. (I can’t seem to finish anything these days.) And they’re all incredibly raw. I didn’t even bother re-reading and editing as I go, as I often do, just kept hammering words on the page as long as the images and the story kept coming. I shudder to think how rough my prose on it is. This one is turning out very slipstreamy, almost mainstream. I’ve got it mapped out in my head, the plot and theme, the denouement and conclusion. I just have to finish it. This is going to be another novelette. I hope not a novella, but definitely a novelette at this rate.

Club 100 for Writers
6/100

Hubby home!

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Matthew arrived home, safe and sound, at around 2AM last night. His entry woke me, and we spent the next hour or so cuddling and getting caught up on each other’s weekends before I had to fall back to sleep. I’m so glad he’s home. I hate, just HATE it when we’re apart. I didn’t want to leave him this morning, all snuggled up cozy and warm under the covers. Sigh.



Writing Stuff:

Got to see the illustration by Sean Simmons for “Perfidious Beauty” that’ll be going in the Embark to Madness anthology. It’s gorgeous! Not sure if I’m allowed to post it publicly. As soon as I can, I will.

New words: 100+

100 Club for Writers
4/100

Lonely Sunday

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I miss my hubby. Got a few emails from him in Kentucky. He’s expecting to be home late tonight–probably more like early, early tomorrow. It’s hard to sleep without him in the house; it’s too quiet and too empty.


Here’s a picture I snapped of him napping before he left. My sweetie didn’t even stir at the flashbulb. *sigh* I really hate being apart from him for any length of time.

Thought there was a homeowners association meeting today, but I couldn’t find an email or a flier saying where and when. Dangit. Hope I didn’t miss it. Despite the fact that I hate them, this one was supposed to be an important one.


Writing Stuff

Received my check from Leading Edge for “Of Two Minds in Lanais” in the mail yesterday. Yay!

Did no writing over the weekend. Just couldn’t get in the proper mindset for it. Plus there was all the prep for the skunk show. I’ve decided to give myself weekends off from the 100 Club for Writers. I tend to do a lot of writing on weekends, but I think of it as “bonus” time. Plus there are some weekends which are just too busy to find time, and I don’t feel like I should beat myself up when those happen.

Skunk show 2004!

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The drive to the show was a fast one. britzkrieg and I arrived at 10:30, the start of registration, far earlier than I had expected. So there was, as seems typical for skunk shows, a lot of waiting around. It was a much smaller venue than last year’s–not the same place as I had originally thought. And there was also a much smaller turnout.

First up was conformation and friendliness. Hobkin was in a terrible mood. He actually nipped or lunged at all of the judges this year. I was mortified. They couldn’t pick him up at all, which means the judges didn’t spend much time with him and couldn’t really evaluate him. He totally tanked on “Friendliness,” of course, and didn’t place at all in conformity.

Next came Prettiest Tail. I thought Hobkin showed wonderfully in this event. His tail was fluffy, and poofy, and long. But I guess the judges didn’t agree. Or perhaps they were still nursing the wounds he’d given them earlier. He not only didn’t succeed in defending his title from last year, but he didn’t place at all. This was the only event that I was truly disappointed with. I really did think he had the prettiest tail again.

And last of all came the color classes. Hobkin won first place in his color class! A salve to his dismal showing in the previous categories. So he has another pretty, blue ribbon to add to his collection.

There was the obligatory costume contest, with much evil adorableness, but again this year, we opted not to attempt to subject Hobkin to that. But I took a lot of pictures!

I’m a bit flummoxed by how poorly the fuzzwit behaved. He was so sweet and huggy when he was in my arms, but as soon as anyone else touched him, he turned into a snarling demon. I’m concerned that the skunk show might be too stressful for his wee brain. Will have to think about whether we want to show him again next year.

There were adorable skunk noses everywhere. Skunks to see and people to talk to. I had expected to see Hobkin’s godmother, Debbie, and her skunks but they weren’t there. I did get a chance to catch up with puskunk and aljit (and see her short, blue hair!). Aside from my worry about Hobkin, I had fun. britzkrieg was fantastic. I couldn’t have done it without her. She drove, did the majority of the packing and unpacking, and took pictures for me while I held a stressed Hobkin. She also bid at the charity silent auction and won a beautiful, green afghan. And last I checked, she’s still willing to talk to me! britzkrieg, you are a saint and a total sweetheart!

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