I came across a review of In the Outposts of Beyond at epinions.com:
“Read enough anthologies in a row and pretty soon the stories all seem the same in your memory. The ones that stand out are the ones you mention when suggesting to a friend they read it. If I were to tell one of my friends to read In the Outposts of Beyond, I’d mention Ralan Conley’s “The Walking Man” or Eugie Foster’s “A Little Soul Music.”
–C. Dennis Moore
I’m grinning like a loon.
Thanks to the folks who responded ’bout my domain registration question! I decided to go with hostingdude.com as my registrar, although godaddy.com was a close second. There was a ten cent difference between their prices, but identical services otherwise.
*drum roll* I now own http://www.eugiefoster.com. Hurray!
I’ll be pointing it to my comcast URL. Didn’t need to mess with hosting or anything that way (since Comcast is already taking their pound o’flesh every month). My new domain name should be live as soon as all the registration stuff propagates through the proper channels–they said in 24-48 hours.
Neat. I won’t have to worry about my stupid ISP changing again.
That was a lot easier and cheaper than I thought it was going to be. I feel like I ought to have done it a long time ago. Oh well, better late than not at all, I guess.
Now I get to change all the contact info. on my cards and everything . . .
Okay, I’m beginning to mull over finally biting the bullet and registering my own domain name. Any hints, tips, suggestions on folks to use or pitfalls to avoid?
Thanks!
So I took a clonazepam for the first time in months last night, both ’cause my arms and hands are hurting again, and I haven’t been sleeping very well. The upshot of that is, I slept like a dead thing. Rah! The less uppy part is that I hit snooze three times on my alarm clock before dragging my groggy self out of bed this morning, and didn’t have time to put my contact lenses in before going to work.
And the drive to work was . . . fun. I felt spacey and light-headed, which is, of course, exactly what you want to be feeling while maneuvering a large piece of metal through commuter traffic. But, fortunately, I was focused enough not to get into trouble. And as soon as I got to my desk, I poured myself a great big cup of steaming hot coffee.
Half an hour later, I was very, very happy. Apparently a dose of caffeine mixed with the dregs of a clonazepam buzz is a good recipe for a warm, fuzzy state of being. Or maybe it was the discovery that the deadline I thought was next month, isn’t actually until March.
I’ve been busting my tail at work, cranking out specs and code for a major upgrade my company is doing. I finished the first batch of thirty-four modules I was given, and like a good worker bee, I asked my team lead for more. He handed me fifty more programs, and I began muttering under my breath “hard work never goes unpunished” as my new mantra.
Feeling overwhelmed, I sent a note back to him to verify the timeline as he’s an excellent TL and I couldn’t believe he’d load me with so much work with such an impossible deadline. I had to be missing something. He replied, telling me that yes, I’ve got two weeks more than I thought I had. Whew. It’ll be tight, but it’s enough. So I dig in.
This morning, I open up that old email to check some detail or other about the project, and my eyes flit upon the date he gave. Somehow, I had misread “mid-March” as “mid-February.”
I don’t have two extra weeks. I have six. Woo!! Nice surprise. And the world is a calm and loving place once again.
Although my arms still hurt.
Writing stats:
1000 words on a new fantasy story. What happened to the other new fantasy story I’d started? It’s sitting on my hard drive, sad and forlorn. Blame my muse, the flighty strumpet.
Ended up with twenty-seven crits on my Critters story. Hoping to get some work done on the rewrite over the weekend.
Haven’t been sleeping well all this week. Between just having a restless time of it, Hobkin’s been restless too and keeps hopping up and down next to me all night, waking me up every time he does it. To make matters worse, I’ve been seeing an encore of my early AM insomnia. Been barely able to make it through the workday, calamity-free, even slamming high intensity coffee. Not good. And my hands and arms, which for several months have been pain-free, have started giving off warning tingles and little zapping shooting pains again. Dammit.
Writing stats:
Finished the rewrite on the Magic Realism piece. It’s out. Fwoosh.
The Urban Fantasy that’s up at Critters will be coming down after today. It’s got twenty-four crits now–a nice, manageable number. I expect a few more to trickle in between today and tomorrow, but I’m fine with this level of feedback.
I’m hearing some dissatisfaction with the ending, which has brought about something of a quandary. This story has a pretty heavy addiction theme. I didn’t intend to submit this to On Spec for their “Me and Mr. Jones” issue, but two critters now have suggested I do so. Problem: it’s 1000 words longer than On Spec‘s maximum stated length. So, do I want to totally overhaul the ending and gut some of the earlier bits to see if I can cull 1000 words? Or do I just want to do a less aggressive rewrite and just skip sending it to On Spec? Ponder ponder ponder.
No new words, though. My muse is undoubtedly napping somewhere. At least one of us is getting some sleep.
My early AM insomnia seems to have reared its head. Woke up at 5ish and then couldn’t get back to sleep. Dammit.
The first Dragon*Con directors meeting was yesterday. They fed us again. Yum. We traded small animal adventures with dire_epiphany, astralfire, and tk0667 whereupon we learned that tk0667‘s nemesis is gerbil-kind. Laughed so hard my side still aches, and I had tears coming from my eyes.
Also swiped a whole bell pepper from the buffet table to bring home for Hobkin. A peace offering for abandoning the fuzzbump for so long.
A few announced guests for this year at the meeting:
Harlan Ellison (!)
Peter Jurasik
Peter David
Storm Constantine (she’s actually going to direct a new track this year!)
Emerald Rose
Cruxshadows (yes!)
I’m jazzed.
It was also officially announced that Matthew will no longer be co-director of the Daily Dragon with me as he is now going to be the director of a new film track as well as taking over webmaster duties for the main site. Sigh. I knew I’d lose him from the DD, but I didn’t think it’d be so soon! But he’s bouncy about the film track, so that’s cool. Less bouncy about the webmaster position . . .
Just found out the Scrybe Press senior editor liked my story too! I sold “Ascendancy of Blood” to them. Woohoo!
This is turning into a truly excellent weekend.
After a whole pot of tea, I am zingy and ecstatic. It must be magic tea.
And . . . *drum roll please* I made my first sale of the year! And it’s also the shortest response time I’ve ever gotten. Under three hours to an acceptance email from the editor of H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, the new sister magazine to Weird Tales. I sold them “Within Your Soul I Sightless See.” Very, very happy now!
Last night, Hobkin decided it was “pull and bite Mommy’s clothing” day. Scorecard: new holes in sweatpants, a strand of yarn pulled out of the sleeve of my brand new sweater, several pinches to my flesh that are showing blue and purple when he went deeper than cloth.
Also, he just wouldn’t settle and ran amok for most of the evening while I was trying to work on the computer. But apparently what he wanted was a couch mommy to snuggle against. A computer mommy wasn’t good enough, oh no. I tried to pick him up and settle him on my lap several times, but he would scramble away as soon as I stopped using two hands to pet and cuddle him (i.e. to type or mouse). But as soon as I left the computer and went to go sit on the couch, he hopped up beside me and flopped asleep. Silly fuzzwit was cranky because he needed a nap.
Then, when I was getting ready to sleep, he couldn’t make up his mind where he wanted to be. He’d hop up (waking me up) and cuddle beside me for an hour or so, then hop down (thereby waking me up again) to roam around. This happened many times throughout the night until he finally decided he wanted to sleep under his hutch. Needless to say, I was rather sleep deprived and fuddle-headed this morning.
Writing stats:
200 words on the new fantasy piece. Sheesh. 200. That’s barely enough to count. Suckitude.
Pleased at the Preditors and Editors Readers’ Poll award thingy. I don’t expect to win, but it’d be nice if I made it to the top ten in one of the categories.
{* shameless vote-whoring: Vote for Reign of the Wintergod for Horror Story and All in My Mind for SF/F Story}
Beginning to twitch for another sale. I think it’s a new year sort of thing. I seem to recall feeling similarly at the turn of last year. It doesn’t help that I’ve got several “strong maybe”s dangling:
– Got a finalist story in this year’s Phobos contest. When, oh when, will the judging be finalized?
– Still waiting to hear from On Spec. Coming up on 300 days soon. Should I query again? Eep.
– Waiting to hear the senior editor’s verdict from Scrybe Press.
– Passed the 2nd reader level at Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. Will it get picked up for an issue? I think they said one in three submissions who make it to this stage do.
And then, of course, there’s the slew of other submissions that aren’t in the “strong maybe” category that are out and about. *twitch* I’m just not very good at waiting.
All the writer folk I’ve talked to say the only way to combat the black-abyss-of-nothing mailbox blues is to write the next story/novel. Unfortunately, see above, re: sucking.
Only thing left to do is to attempt to beguile my absentee muse by slamming a lot of caffeine . . .
I’ve got story nominations in two categories of the annual “Preditors & Editors Readers’ Poll” for 2003! It’s a little Internet award sponsored by the same guy who is the moderator of Critters.org. But it’s a nice feather-in-the-cap sort of thing since it’s popular especially among the small-press venues.
Voting ends next week. It’d make me very, very happy if my stuff made a decent showing. Vote for me? Pleeeeease? Pretty please? 
Best SF/F Story published in 2003 (All in My Mind):
VOTE
Best Horror Story published in 2003 (Reign of the Wintergod):
VOTE
