Author Archives: Eugie Foster

Dammit, Patrick can’t make it. Issues involving cars, money, and an incorrect SS# on his tax return have conspired to keep him in New Orleans. Pook.

But Max really liked “Icarus Exult,” the piece I wrote for his theater company. He says he’s already got it incorporated into the program book. Going to see if I can get him to autograph the contrib. copy he’s going to send me.

Matthew, dude_the, and I watched Support Your Local Sheriff and many Firefly episodes. dude_the hadn’t ever seen Support, a situation that needed immediate rectifying. There was much guffawing.

And Hobkin has been totally cool with having unfamiliar people in his territory. Haven’t had to dope him up with Rescue Remedy or anything! He curled up for a long nap in dude_the‘s lap, even staying asleep during a relocation from computer chair to couch. Although calling either dude_the, or Kristin for that matter, “unfamiliar people” is a bit of a stretch as he’s seen more of them than anyone else aside from Matthew and me, and his godmother. It’s all good.

Today: vicarious enjoyment of a ritualistic sporting event punctuated by mildly alcoholic beverages and high-salt/high-grease foodlike products. Rah!

Matthew and dude_the are asleep still, and Hobkin’s snoozing on my lap. I am the only awake being in the house.

No sign of Patrick, but Kristin came by yesterday for a marathon viewing of Firefly. She’s also going to try to show up on Sunday for the game thingy. Hurray!

Worked on the formatting of my website with dude_the. I think I fixed the Safari bug. I hope. And I’ve got a better grasp of positioning coordinates and what they mean in CSS. Theoretically . . .

Also got a transatlantic call from Max! He’s a good friend of ours that we spent a lot of time with when we lived in the Midwest. After he graduated, he moved to London (the lucky bastard). He’s started a theater company there, the Icarus Theatre Collective, and the opening night of their first production is this Tuesday. I’m so excited for him!

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It’s Superbowl weekend! Rah! I’m not exactly what anyone would call a fan (I only watch one game a year and my viewing is punctuated with questions as I don’t fully understand the rules), but it’s our tradition every year to have folks over to watch the Superbowl on our big screen TV. dude_the will be flying in later this evening, and Patrick is supposed to be driving up from New Orleans. There’s some difficulty with the whole driving/car/transportation thing with him, so I don’t know what’s going on with that, but crossing my fingers he’ll be able to make it. Kristin’s also swinging by tomorrow for a Firefly viewing marathon. So, a nice full weekend coming up.

Redid my eugiefoster.com website. Decided to move away from my framed navigation approach and experiment with Cascading Style Sheets. Had to still do an inline frame in order to link to LJ and my Guestbook, but overall I’m pleased with the results. Although I could only test it on IE and Mozilla/Firebird.

If anyone’s using a different browser (Opera, aol, Netscape, etc.), I’d appreciate it greatly if you could visit my site and let me know if there are any glaring layout issues or errors. A note in my guestbook would be appreciated too.

Writing stats:

Despite the cotton wads between my ears, thanks to the Clonazepam I’ve been taking daily, I finished the rewrite of my Urban Fantasy piece. I totally rewrote the ending, lopped off about 500 words, and it’s out. Fwoosh. Fly little story, fly!

Got a note from the editor of Paradox. Due to financial constraints, he’s switching production from quarterly to bi-annual and that means my story “The Tiger Fortune Princess” which was slated for publication November of this year, will be pushed back to June of 2005. Sigh. Oh well, that’s not the longest lead-time I’ve heard of. Hell, I waited two years to get word of a sale to Dreams of Decadence; I can wait a year and a half for publication in Paradox. But still . . . *twitch*

Matthew was generally ambivalent about the fantasy piece inspired by that Suzanne Vega song. I’m mulling over his suggestions to get to first draft state, then up to Critters it goes.

Received rejections from Argosy and two from the ELP library to round things out. But I’m pretty pleased with 2004 as far as fiction sales are going so far.

Woohoo! After a two year wait, I’ve finally received word from Dreams of Decadence. Actually, I had to query the sff.publishing.dnapublications newsgroup to find out. Nothing like making a public query to strike up the ole anxiety meter. But I sold “The Few, the Proud, the Leech Corps” to them! WOOT!

I’ve been wanting to break into D of D for ages!

Hurray! The results are in of the 2003 Preditors and Editors Readers’ Poll! Both my stories “All in My Mind” and “The Reign of the Wintergod” finished in the Top Ten of their categories (Best SF Short Story and Best Horror Story, respectively).

I’m quite pleased. Thanks to everyone who voted!

Matthew and I went to see The Lion in Winter at the Shakespeare Tavern last night. It was amazingly good. I know I gush a lot about the productions there, but this one just totally blew me away. They had an astoundingly good Eleanor, an actress who I haven’t seen before, and Maurice Ralston, a regular there, totally owned his Henry II part. They got a standing O from us. And now I want to see the Peter O’Toole/Katharine Hepburn movie version again.

britzkrieg, if you and Jaime were interested in seeing another play at the Tavern, I highly recommend catching The Lion in Winter. It was incredible.

The performance was sold out so we ended up sitting in the balcony–the first time we’ve done that. And while the table situation is a little awkward (I kept banging my knees against the food ledge), the view is actually better for catching the play. And the very pretty actor who I admired ogled in his scanty guard costume in Salome gave me his arm to escort us up the balcony. Rrrr! Matthew was amused at my lascivious panting. I can’t help it, that man is lovely. Especially with his shirt off in barbaric guard attire. During Salome my eyes kept straying to him even while the main actors on stage were doing their thing. Hubba.

The play (The Lion in Winter not Salome) also inspired me to start pondering a new novel concept. It’s a political ascension fantasy concept currently. Not too surprising considering the inspiration. I’ve throwing together a synopsis and going to try to do an outline from that. A novel is too long to do fly-by-seat-of-pants, so I think an outline is essential. But this time I’m going to try to do just a bare bones outline before attacking it. Apparently the “outline every chapter in exquisite detail” approach isn’t working for me. Wonder how far I’ll get . . .

Took a Clonazepam. Pain better, and the world’s all soft and fuzzy. Maybe I should go lie down now . . .

Wheeeee!

Early AM insomnia. Arms hurt. Four rejections this week:

– F&SF: “nice writing but . . . ” from JJA. I miss the “alas”es from GVG.
– Arabella: “elements that appealed but . . . ”
– NFG: “grabbed the attention of the editors but . . .” they’re also willing to see a rewrite, which is something.
– Fantastic: “closed to subs until 2005”

Pook.

In other writing news, the editor of Scrybe Press said he’s going to try to get Carrie Hall to do the cover art for “Ascendancy of Blood” and wants to publish it as a chapbook. I’m excited to see how that’ll turn out.

But, no new words. No rewrites. I hurt too much. I shouldn’t even be typing this journal entry. Stupid extra rib.

Okay, my TOS has returned something fierce. I actually took off all of yesterday and Tuesday afternoon from work because of the pains zinging up my arms. Been downing Clonazepam like candy. The upshot is I’ve been sleeping pretty heavily. But the downward side of things is my brain feels pretty muggy. And I still hurt.

Of all the ironies, my muse came a-calling too. 1000 more words on the little fantasy I started and it’s done. Zero draft completed. It’s a short piece, a sort of mystic/spiritual examination of war as a theme. It was inspired by one of the songs on the CD britzkrieg gave me for my birthday: “The Queen and the Soldier” by Suzanne Vega. The lyrics stuck me with me, haunting me with images until I sat down and hammered out a story to frame them. So, hurray, my first completed story of 2004. Having Matthew first reader it, and then up to Critters it goes. But also, ouch.

Wish I could learn how to type with my toes.

Got a note from the editor of Song of the Siren. The January 2004 issue is live. “Second Daughter,” my fairy tale that originally appeared in issue #44 of Brigham-Young’s Leading Edge magazine, is now up. Rah!

britzkrieg and her fiancé came over last night for dinner and a movie. (A double date ). Matthew made a veggie stir-fry and after some excellent gabbing–we always have great conversations with them–we split off into chromosomal groupings for the passive entertainment portion of the night.

The boys went upstairs to watch Zulu on the 60-inch home theater system, and britzkrieg and I stayed downstairs and watched Thelma and Louise on the smaller set. I’ve been wanting to see T&L for ages now, but Matthew has been less than enthusiastic about it. I’m so glad I finally saw it. Some truly beautiful cinematography in that movie.

Hobkin was a sweetie too. I think he’s getting more laid back about the whole “people in his territory” thing. Thank goodness.

Woke up ridiculously early this morning, though. Stupid, whacked-out circadian rhythms.