Author Archives: Eugie Foster

Went to the Shakespeare Tavern last night and saw Twelfth Night. Laughed right out loud several times. It wasn’t as good as their Merry Wives but still side-splitting goodness there. They did an interesting interpretation of it, cutting a lot of Sebastian’s part and really playing up Fabian’s. Interesting and lending to greater hilarity.

Came home afterwards feeling pretty spry still so watched Shrek on DVD. That was a terribly clever movie.

I’m now up to twelve crits on Critters and am going to stop complaining about not enough lovin. The reviews are all across the board on this one so far. Several people really liked it, a few thought it was good but needs some work, and a couple are just appalled by it. Okay, it’s bawdy. I wrote it as bawdy. But some people are having some real problems with the lascivious level. Okay, I’m the first to admit that my sensibilities about sex things are a bit further afield than the average population’s, but I didn’t think I was particularly over the top with this one. Maybe having a professional dominatrix as a supporting character was just too much? But she’s so lovable, dammit.

Oh well, I’ll wait until the end of the critique week to determine if I want to scale that portion back.

I did get a critique from one guy that really got me irritated. I’ve been with Critters for quite a few years now and in the course of that membership I think I’ve acquired a fairly thick skin with regard to critiques. But this person’s crit was full of wise-ass cracks, and he just totally missed things that no one else has. Like he thought one scene had two secondary characters in a situation where I only wrote one. First of all, where the hell did he come up with the second character? And next, he goes on to complain about being confused by the presence of two characters in that scene. Well duh, you’re obviously confused because there’s only character there. WTF?

Oh well. I’m trying to just chalk that one up to being on totally different wavelengths, as does happen upon occasion, and moving on. Moving on. La de da de da.

Snarl.

Saw Down With Love. It was fun, but nothing to write home about. Also watched Dracula 2000 on DVD last night. Again, fun but nothing overwhelming. Except the actor they got to play Dracula was yummylicious.

Last Wednesday (the 28th) was the first anniversary of Hobkin’s adoption. The little fuzzwit has been with us for a whole year now. Goodness but he’s changed our life! This week has been somewhat hectic so we didn’t get a chance to celebrate it properly, so we’re going to get a cake this weekend. Something non-chocolate so he can have a (small!) sliver of it and maybe even a little (very little) bit of ice cream. Yes, we’re going to feed our pet sugar because what he really needs is a sugar high. Heh. Well, it’s only once a year . . .

Finished re-reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Sirens of Titan. I like his glib, off-the-cuff style, but I think I’m going to stop my Vonnegut kick here. I think his storylines are too fragmented to be a good influence on my own. As is, plotting is my mega weakness. I don’t need encouragement to just end a story in some odd place and go “finis!” Although to be fair, Sirens ended much better than Slaughterhouse-Five.

I need to read more Harlan Ellison. Again, not great with the plots, but the man nails emotions like none other. On the plotting front, I keep thinking I should read some mysteries, but I just don’t know where to start.

In other writing-related news, I’ve only received four crits so far of the story I have up for review at Critters this week. Sigh. Longer works just do not get the same lovin that shorter ones do. (Edit: a minute after I made this entry, Critters sent me three more crits. MPC karma, woo!) But to make up for it I’m going for another MPC. In the process of doing shotgun critiques, I read the most amazing story that I think I’ve ever seen in the queue. (It’s #8058 for any Critters who might want to crit it this week.) It was a fusion of old mythologies and magic with a fresh twist and a modern setting. Very nice. It’s exactly the sort of fantasy I go ga-ga over. I’m quite jealous of this author’s technique, style, and imagination. She didn’t have a Critters bio so I don’t know what else she’s published, but I can’t imagine that someone who writes as well as she does isn’t.

Back to critiquing . . .

Wah! Where did the weekend go? This holiday went by way too fast! Lamentations galore. And yesterday still felt like a Sunday, even though I knew I had today off. Pook. I’m not ready to go back to the office!

The Dragon*Con staff meeting was yesterday. I made an entry in the Dragon*Con LJ community with a scan of the flier they passed out and a call for submissions for the Daily Dragon. Getting pretty jazzed about the convention. James Marsters, Ray Bradbury, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Asprin, Forrest J. Ackerman. Woo! Can’t wait to meet James Marsters. Rrrr.

Went tooling around the area trying to find a new sushi restaurant after the meeting. The wonderful little sushi place around the corner from us has been AWOL for the last several weeks and there’s a sign on their door saying “gone for family emergency.” I can’t imagine a month of not being open for business bodes well for the future success of that place. Damn. They made the best vegetarian sushi and they did a pretty fine Chinese menu too. Found an okay sushi place a few miles down Holcomb Bridge road, but they weren’t as tasty and they were more expensive. Sigh.

Came home and watched Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Marilyn Monroe was quite the hottie.

So far, no re-surge in allergic symptoms. Crossing fingers it stays that way. I guess we’re not going to the Mensa Memorial Day picnic. I don’t really feel like mingling with a bunch of strangers outdoors. And hours outside when my system is feeling sensitive just doesn’t seem like a clever idea.

Writing: zero words, about 10K guilt. Going to try to do some word countage today.

We watched the movie Amelie on DVD last night. What a quirky, charming movie! I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think it was the first French movie I’ve seen where the theme wasn’t “love is futile and then everyone dies.”

Also went for another lovely walk with Matthew last night. I’m so out of shape. I’m actually sore from that piddly amount of exercise. Faugh.

And I think (I hope) that my allergic reaction might’ve been to something I got into contact with outside on Friday instead of my new med. The reaction appears to be going away, something it wouldn’t do if it was systemic rather than contact. I guess that’s a good thing, although I can’t imagine what I could’ve gotten into on our walk. We pretty much stayed on sidewalks. Of course, I’ve often said that I was just plain allergic to the outdoors, so it could’ve just been me exposed to outside air that did it. Ffft. So I think I will be taking my weekly dose of med tonight and then we’ll see if I keel over and die from it. If I do, I’m allergic to it. If I don’t, maybe it was that maple leaf that brushed against my face . . .

In other news, there’s a Dragon*Con staff meeting today. Been in communication with some folks in my DC2K writers group and so far two of them are volunteering to be on our Daily Dragon staff. Neat. It’ll be fun working with them.

And Hobkin continues to be clingy, but hasn’t been sick again. Hurray! But I’m still mystified by his reoccurring tummy problems.

Writing-wise: about 500 words. Not a big writing day yesterday.

Got an email from one of the editors of the Blasphemy anthology this morning that almost gave me a heart attack:

“Hi Eugie,

I’ve just posted this notice on my site about BLASPHEMY and as you’re a contributor I thought I’d send it to you as well:

Important Notice: Due to financial problems Short, Scary Tales Publications will no longer be co-publishing BLASPHEMY; the anthology will now be solely published by Massacre Publications.”

My brain froze after “will no longer be co-publishing” and I thought “oh, no! My story’s homeless again!” but then I kept reading and saw that the anthology is still on track, just with only one publisher. Whew.

In a concerted effort to get back on the dieting/weight loss track that I resolved to do at the beginning of the year and then promptly didn’t, Matthew and I went for an hour-long rambling walk last night. Perfect weather for it, right at twilight when it’s still light enough to see, but the sun’s low enough not to be troublesome, and the air’s cool and soft. I’d like to make it a regular sort of thing, but I’m pretty horrible at establishing any sort of exercise activity in my daily routine and Matthew’s even worse at it than me. We’ll see. But it was still a nice walk.

And I think I might be showing allergy symptoms to the new med I’m on. Dammit. Now I’m not sure now if I should take the next dose on Sunday. Crap. I feel like I’m spending more times having allergic reactions or recovering from allergic reactions than I am not. That can’t be healthy.

Hobkin hasn’t sicked up again since yesterday. He has been very clingy, though, so I think he might be feeling a bit unhappy still. Poor little guy.

Neat! My honorable mention certificate from the 4th quarter ’02 Writers of the Future contest came in the mail today:

I’d rather have placed and gotten cash and publication, but this is nice too.

To the driver of the black pick-up going the other way who flashed his headlights at me to warn me about the speed trap just around the bend: THANK YOU!

On last night:
Had a blast at britzkrieg‘s birthday shindig. I was naughty and had a Tom Collins, although Matthew helped me finish it so I wasn’t that bad. My speaking voice appears to be at about the same tonal range as the background noise created by a bunch of other people in a room talking. In such situations I always feel like I’m shouting and people still lean close, give puzzled face, and say “what?” a lot at me. Sigh. I tried talking high and squeaky, and Matthew, at least, could hear me better then. But I felt too silly, even with several swallows of gin in me, to keep it up.

On writing:
Hacked at my new “weird” fantasy story a bit. Streamlined the prose a smidgen and added about 600 words (bringing it to around 7000 using manuscript count) to the ending to try to give it a little coherence. I think it’s now spilling over into Dark Fantasy or even Lite Horror, but I’m not sure. I seem to have a hard time labeling what I write. Sometimes I fit nice and snug into genre boundary lines (fairy/folk tales, for e.g.) and others I end up scrolling through all of Ralan.com trying to find a market which might possibly consider a cyberpunk vampire novelette or a SF-ey psychological horror tale. Argh.

Maybe I should just write more fairy tales.

On Hobkin:
I’m rather worried about the little fuzzhead. He’s got a really (really) sensitive tummy. Periodically, for no reason that we’ve been able to accurately pinpoint, he sicks up his food. At first, we thought it was just a young animal thing. Human babies do it all the time. But he’s no longer a baby, and from all the sources we’ve heard from in the skunk owners community, his case is pretty unique. He did it again this morning. He always seems fine right afterward. He’s active and usually hungry, but all this sicking up can’t possibly be good.

We’ve taken him to the vet and they can’t figure out what’s causing it either. Fortunately, they also reassure us that he seems perfectly healthy otherwise. He only sicks up occasionally, not enough to lose weight or run the risk of dehydration or malnutrition. But I’m so worried that things will get worse and he’ll stop eating or won’t be able to hold anything down.

Wah.

Matrix: Unloaded (no spoilers, just vague commentary) was shiny, black vinyl, escapist goodness. Although I really did get the feeling that I was watching a bridge piece between movies one and three, much like seeing The Empire Strikes Back. I also think almost all the action scenes tended to go on for a couple measures too long, but it wasn’t an egregious issue. I still greatly enjoyed it, although I have a feeling that I really need to see what they’re going to do in Matrix: Revolution before I can form a positive or negative opinion about the overall Matrix storyline. It’ll either be really amazing, fantastic, cyberpunk or it’ll be fluff like I find a lot of anime–pretty, but contentless, and occasionally somewhat bewildering.

Also re-read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. It inspired me to try something in a new direction with my writing, style-wise, that I’ve never tried before. Sort of a glib, almost spartan tone. Very slipstreamy. I’m 3000 words into a new story. The words flowed as smooth as soapy water over linoleum. Don’t know how long the rest of it’s going to be, but I hope it comes as easily as the beginning did.

I’m feeling better this week. Although I suspect part of that is that I forgot to take my half-a-weekly dose of my new med yesterday PM and so took the whole dose today with breakfast and lunch. The impact on my mood has undoubtedly therefore been postponed. Or maybe it won’t happen at all. Positive thinking. Rah.

In any case, this week has to be better than last week.

Trying to unwind after this really crappy week with shiny, escapist fantasy.

Last night we watched seven of the nine Animatrix shorts. The Last Voyage of the Osiris really blew us away. It was made by the same people who did the Final Fantasy movie and you can really tell. And we also watched The Matrix on DVD on the big 60-inch upstairs. That’s one movie that a smaller screen just does not do justice to. Today, we’re going to see The Matrix: Reloaded. I’ve been trying assiduously to avoid any spoilers. Excited movie goodness.

On the writing front, I haven’t been doing any all week (fuckity fuckity fuck). I have been continuing my run of rejections, though, amassing five more in just this week, adding to the suckitude. The hard-drive issue freaked me out too much to focus on writing, and I’ve been spending my writing time compulsively going through my backups to see if there were any gaps in the files I had left. They look okay so far. Glad I’ve been anal about backing up those, although now I feel that having a copy on our desktop’s hard-drive and monthly backups on CD-RW aren’t sufficient. I’m debating between burning a monthly CD-R in addition (and just keeping an ever-growing pile of monthly CDs) or burning to a Zip Disc. But we’re a little low on Zip Discs.

I keep wondering if I should make hard-copy backups, but I just don’t have a place to store all those pages and pages of manuscripts. Not to mention every time I make a tweak to a story I’d have to print it out again. The last time I tried to keep hard-copy backups, I lost track of what stack of paper was the most current pretty quickly.

I need a neural implant storage device so I can backup all my files digitally to my brain.