Author Archives: Eugie Foster

Hot skunk, “A Thread of Silk,” Part 2 of “Writing Multicultural Fiction for Children”

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Hobkin doesn’t like the heat. It makes him grumpy and stompy and prone to tearing about the house huffing at things. We were hoping to be able to hold off on turning on the air conditioning for a little while longer, but ended up switching it on this weekend. I feel sorry for the little guy, after all he’s got a fur coat on, and I don’t think he can tolerate as much heat as we can—especially since he doesn’t drink water.

We’ve now switched ISPs, and not only is our connection speed noticeably faster, but part of the package deal was switching from our Dish TV to AT&T’s cable—with a DVR thrown in. Really loving the DVR! I can record cartoons (from my computer, even!) and save them up to watch on weekend mornings. Rah!

   


Writing Stuff

Published:
• Part 2 of “Writing Multicultural Fiction for Children” (nonfiction reprint) is now up at Absolute Write.
• “A Thread of Silk” is now up in the June, 2008, issue of Baen’s Universe with illustrations by Anthony Hochrein.


I’ve waited a looong time for this one to see print. I subbed this right before Baen’s was taking an extended slush holiday, resulting in unusually long RTs. But the wait was worth it.

Writers for Relief 2, Daughter of Bótù, Caesar’s Ghost, Manny the Mailmobile

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*REMINDER: We’re switching ISPs. My Comcast email address will be defunct as of tomorrow. Please use my eugiefoster.com or gmail addresses from now on!

Over the 4-day (!) Memorial Day weekend (yay 4×10!*), we resolved a couple hardware issues:
• Fixed the hibernation problem my laptop was having after I upgraded my RAM. A bit of research showed me that the glitch seemed to be a common one in XP machines with over 1GB of RAM. Just had to download and install XP Service Pack 3, and voilà, all good.
• Replaced the battery in my car. Y’know, I find it to be a very strange thing to discover that one’s car won’t start when the temperature’s above 70 degrees F. I’m accustomed to it happening in the subzero season in the Midwest, but I guess I don’t expect it here in Georgia in summer. Didn’t even leave the headlights on or the overhead or anything.

We took it to the Honda dealership on the off chance that it was the alternator and not just the battery. Just the battery, though, thank goodness; apparently one of the cells went bad.

They also wanted to hit us up for a 90-mile service and a routine maintenance/oil-change/check-up (since we’re overdue). The former would’ve included changing the timing belt, which braced fosteronfilm, at least, for a scary-shock estimate. But even so, the bottom line they trotted up made both of us go bug-eyed: $1500. $1K for the 90-mile-timing-belt-service and $500 for the routine maintenance, etc.

So yeah, we told them “no can do, just the battery, please.” We’ll take it to a lube-n-go place for the oil change, and I’m fully prepared to use the old timing belt until it dies, thank-you-very-much. The only thing I’m a little worried about is that my SRS (the airbag system) warning light has been on for a while, and I’d like to have the sensor checked. If it’s the seatbelt, both the check and fix would be covered under Honda’s warranty. But if it’s the SRS system, it’s not, and we’d have to eat the $190 appraisal as well as whatever it’d cost to get it fixed. It’s rather a lot to gamble on warranty vs. no warranty, but at the same time, the airbag wouldn’t deploy right now in an accident, which really makes me nervous.

I really don’t get along well with hardware stuff. It’s expensive, capricious, and baffling. Sigh.

*Another benefit from my new 4×10 workweek: In addition to not having to make the drive to the train station and back on my day off and thereby saving on my overall gasoline use, since I’m leaving earlier in the morning and coming back later in the evening, the traffic is better—much better in the morning and slightly better in the evening. I don’t have enough data points to know for sure exactly how much time I’m shaving off my daily commute, but I’d estimate right now that it’s something like half an hour. Sweet.

   


Writing Stuff

New Words:
• -250. Yes, that’s a negative number. There was a lot of cutting and tightening. But the fork’s in, and “Morozko,” retitled to “Beautiful Winter,” is done done done and sent off to market. Huzzah.

Uber thanks go to marshall-payne for the speedy and thorough crit.

Published:
• “Caesar’s Ghost” (audio reprint) in Pseudopod. catrambo read it, and I think she did a stellar job. Go listen! There are ferrets.

Received:
• Contrib. copies of the Aug. 2008 Realms of Fantasy with my story, “Daughter of Bótù,” in it. Shiny!
• 40-day SALE of “The Adventures of Manny the Mailmobile” (audio reprint) to the Clonepod podcast. Woot!
• A note from daveybeaucham that Writers for Relief 2 (with my story, “Running on Two Legs”) is now available for pre-order. This is the second in his charity anthology series, this one to benefit the Bay Area Food Bank (the first was to benefit the survivors of Hurricane Katrina). Other contributors include Todd McCaffrey, A.C. Crispin and Christie Golden, Elizabeth Blue, David Drake, Mur Lafferty, Tony Ruggiero, and many others. Great fiction for a great cause!

Comcast kicked to the curb

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So we’re finally switching our ISP from Comcrap.

Between the appallingly bad customer service, the increasingly slow connection speeds, the frequent outages, and their throttling/blocking of peer-to-peer traffic, not to mention the premium rates they charge for this shoddy service, I’ve been ready to kick them to the curb for ages. But we’ve been holding off because 1. We wanted to ensure that the ISP we switch to will have broadband speeds comparable to what we’re getting now (easier and easier to achieve as our connection speeds continued to decay to near-dial-up slowness) 2. We were hoping to take advantage of a juicy “switch to us!” incentive deal and 3. It’s a ginormous pain to change email addresses, and we’ve wanted to gradually migrate away from our ISP email accounts.

The stars aligned, the cosmos gave its nod of approval, and lo, our new ISP destiny is now. Or rather, the end of this month.

Ergo, anyone who’s still using my old Comcast email address, it’s going to be deactivated in a week. Please update your address books accordingly and send all future emails to either my eugiefoster.com domain email or my gmail address.

   


Writing Stuff

I’m absolutely loving my new 4×10 work hours. Not only am I pleased as punch to have an extra day off each week, but I’m also tickled to have the extra hours per day at work. I can get so much more done! I’ve written more this week than I have since session ended, which means this is the most productive I’ve been all year.

New Words:
• It’s hard to say. There was a lot of cutting, furious typing, and then more cutting. But I’ve got a handle on the WiP (the Russian folktale) where before I was vaguely unsatisfied with it. It’s currently at 6,250 words, and I anticipate hitting zero draft today or tomorrow. Huzzah.

Received/Published:
• Fan mail from school children in China (!) for “The Tax Collector’s Cow” in the June, 2006, Spider, forwarded along to me by the good folks of Carus Publishing. Utterly squee-some. I love getting fan mail, of course, but I especially love hearing from my young readers.
• Contrib. copy of The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 2: Provocative essays on feminism, race, revolution, and the future. velourmane invited me to contribute my thoughts on dealing with racist and sexist material in writers workshops for this project last year, which of course I was delighted to do, and I’d completely forgotten about it. I also didn’t realize (or had totally forgotten) that it would be a gorgeous trade paperback and that I’d be getting a contrib. copy. Receiving an unexpected contrib. copy is like finding candy, a special surprise treat.
• Note from the folks at Aberrant Dreams asking me if they could buy audio rights for “Nobodies and Somebodies” (which they published in Summer, 2006, in issue #8) for a new audio venture they’re putting together. Of course I said “yes.” A sale out of the blue is even better than found candy!

Twiddling about this week

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Still floating high about selling Returning My Sister’s Face to Norilana. Thanks for the deluge of congrats!

Things I’ve done this week:

• Sold my flash story “The Wiggly People” (audio reprint) to Drabblecast.
• Seen part 1 of my article, “Writing Multicultural Fiction for Children,” reprinted at Absolute Write.
• Decided that I will try out the new flexible work hours being implemented at work. Starting next week, I’m going 4×10 (10-hour days, 4-day weeks). I used to work 9×80 at my previous job (three-day weekend every other week), which was nice, but I’m wondering if a 10-hour workday might be a bit long.
• Received, signed, and sent back contracts from Norilana, the Triangulation: Taking Flight anthology, and Drabblecast and looked over galleys from the Killers anthology and Baen’s Universe.
• Broke then fixed the Daily Dragon website, giving myself a crash course in PHPMyAdmin in the process.
• Added 1 GB of RAM to my VAIO laptop, upgrading it from its original 512 MB to 1.5 GB. Very stressful, and in the end, I needed fosteronfilm to seat it properly for me; I don’t get along well with hardware. But my laptop is speedy-fast now…although the hibernation function keeps going wonky.
• Joined Facebook (friend me if you’ve got an account!).

Things I haven’t done this week:

• Write.

So yeah, not a productive week…

Norilana Books buys Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice

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Got the most incredible, fabulous, wonderful news! Norilana Books—founded and owned by the talented and lovely Vera Nazarian (norilana) is buying my short story collection, Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice.

The collection will contain a selection of my Far Eastern fantasy stories originally published in venues including Realms of Fantasy, Paradox, and Baen’s Universe and will be released in both hard cover and trade paperback. The tentative hard cover release date is first quarter 2009 with the trade paperback to follow three months after.

*squee!*

A bit of blurbage to whet the appetite:

Enchantment, peril, and romance pervade the shadowy Far East, from the elegant throne room of the emperor’s palace to the humble tea house of a peasant village. These are stories of adventure and magic from the Orient: the maiden who encounters an oni demon in the forest, the bride who discovers her mother-in-law is a fox woman, the samurai who must appease his sister’s angry ghost. Where luck can be found in a jade locket, and dark and light are two sides of harmony, therein lies the stuff of legend.

Skunk in the bathtub

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I want to give a huge “thank you!” to everyone who answered the eleventh hour plea for volunteers and came out to help rescue fifteen pallets of Meisha Merlin books last week! Y’all rawk.

This past weekend was a three-dayer for me, since we Georgia government employees get Confederate Memorial Day off. Yep, Confederate Memorial Day. And how exactly does one celebrate Confederate Memorial Day? By bathing a skunk, of course!

It actually went better than usual. I did not get smacked in the face by a sudsy tail—the first time that hasn’t happened, I might add. And, while Hobkin was obviously displeased at being plunked into a bathtub full of lukewarm water and lathered up with baby shampoo, he put up less of a fuss about it than we know from experience he’s capable of. Also, he did not (this time) go running amok through the house afterwards, collecting dust mice and lint in his still-damp, newly washed fur.

Of course, I was compelled to snap a couple pictures to compound the indignity of his ordeal:


Doesn’t he look piteous?


“Umf. Must escape bathtub!”

   


Writing Stuff

New Words/Editing:
• Back to work on WiP, “Morozko.” A major editing pass to hack out around 500 superfluous words and then hammer out 600 new ones gives me a net gain of 100 words. Making progress.
• 1400 on “Cthulhu Editing.”
• 550 on a new story that I started just to get some words going. It worked, but I’m not sure if I’ve enough enthusiasm to see this one through. Had a bunch of imagery that needed an outlet, but the story’s pretty nebulous.

Published:
• “Daughter of Bòtú” in the August, 2008 issue of Realms of Fantasy. Yay! Actually, I don’t think the issue’s out yet (haven’t received my contrib. copies). But I got to see an e-ARC. Happy shiny.

Strong backs in Atlanta area needed: Free Books for the carting

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To All You Book-loving Atlanta Locals:

I just got a note from Sean Wallace, Publisher/Editor with Prime Books/Wildside Press. It seems that SF/F publisher Meisha Merlin, which declared it was shutting down in November, has a rather large amount of stock (tens of thousands of books) in its Stone Mountain warehouse (1440 Kelton Drive, Stone Mountain) that needs to be rescued or it will all be destroyed/recycled.

Sean is renting a truck which can fit fifteen pallets, single-stacked, or thirty double-stacked, but there’s no forklift available, only a pallet jack. So he has to fill the truck by hand. He’ll be in town Tuesday and Wednesday (4/22 and 4/23) to load up, and he’s asked me to spread the word that he’s desperate for volunteers to help him. Anyone who volunteers can cart off any books they want that don’t fit into the truck.

If you can help out or know of folks who might be able to, email Sean at: seanwallace@comcast.net

Taxes, Dragon*Con, various website updates

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This weekend, we did our taxes. Glargh.

It was tempting to postpone filing them since we’ve got until May 19th due to our county being one of the ones declared as a federal disaster area from the recent tornadoes, but we (mostly fosteronfilm) went ahead and crunched the numbers and signed the forms, and they’re winging their way to the IRS in time to meet the regular deadline.

I continue to be appalled at how much Uncle Sam takes out from my writing income. It’s effectively double taxed—at a higher rate, even, which is supposed to make up the difference for Social Security…except I pay Social Security through my day job. Every year at this time I contemplate whether it would be beneficial to incorporate myself, start delving into the labyrinthine forms and regulations to do so, get confounded and flummoxed, and give up. So this year, I’ve resolved to skip the forms–>frustrated step and go straight to “give up.” But I really wish I knew whether it would be worthwhile. ‘Course, I could hire a tax lawyer to advise me, but I’m sure that would eat up any possible tax benefit and then some. Sigh.

In other news, while I was updating the Daily Dragon website (details below), I went in and overhauled Hobkin’s website, Musta-lay-day Grove, and moved it to my domain server. Comcast, my ISP and the previous host of the site, doesn’t give users admin access to the hosting space it provides (did I mention recently how much I hate Comcast?), and I wanted to upgrade Musta-lay-day Grove to a WordPress platform—which requires admin access in order to create a database and DB user. So I decided to make Musta-lay-day Grove a subdirectory of my eugiefoster.com domain.

Now I’m wondering if I want to go ahead and register a domain for Hobkin’s website. I even went and checked the availability of mustalayday.com and mustalayday.org (unsurprisingly, both are still up for grabs). It’s a silly and tiny hobby site—skunk pictures, a FAQ, and some links—so I’m not sure if I can rationalize the expense. Then again, I’ve maintained the thing for years, and I kind of like Hobkin having his own web presence. Ponder ponder.

   


Writing Stuff

Received my guest acceptance letter from Dragon*Con. I was actually thinking about not applying to be a guest this year. Last year was just so hectic with running the Daily Dragon, I had to cancel out of a lot of my panels (which, among other things, brought on a load of guilt for shirking my responsibility to those track directors) and one of my readings, and I ended up being so overbooked that I enjoyed the convention the least of any year since I started attending it. But in the end, I decided to go ahead and apply.

The thing is, sometimes my panels are the only times I manage to get out of Daily Dragon headquarters, and my guest obligations often help to ground my time sense. Knowing that I have to be at a panel at XX o’clock keeps the days from blurring into convention limbo space-time. Plus, I frequently enjoy doing panels, despite the panic and hyperventilation beforehand. Although I am going to ask the scheduling folks not to slot me for any readings. There’s just way too much prep involved, and I intensely dislike doing solo speaking gigs.

On a related Dragon*Con note, the Daily Dragon website moved to a new .org URL from its old .net address, as D*C is doing an across-the-board upgrade to its website server/hosting/etc. I decided that a site overhaul for the Daily Dragon was long overdue, so I migrated it to a PHP platform, specifically WordPress, which should greatly ease DD website updates during the convention. It’ll also allow my reporters to get me their articles from anywhere they’ve got access to the Internet during the convention. Rah.

New Words:
Zero, nada, zilch. I suck.

I tell myself that I’ve been busy with overhauling and upgrading my various websites, but what I’ve been doing is procrastinating. Going to try to apply words to page this afternoon. I’ve run out of excuses, and I’m getting really pissed at myself for not making some progress, any progress, on the writing.

Writing Season Opens

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It’s been eerily quiet in the office. Many folks are gone for the week, escaping on a much-needed vacation now that session is over. I’m the only editor in residence in the editor’s room today*, although the senior editor is also here in her office. One of the attorneys came in to say “hi” and fell asleep on the couch for half an hour or so—it is, admittedly, quite a comfy couch. Everyone’s in serious depressurization mode.

Beginning to make forays into my to-do list. I’ve also opened up my writing files and have started putting (or rather, trying to put) words on the page.

*Edit: elemess came back after I posted this, so I’m no longer solitary editor in residence. Whew. …Although apparently he’s rusting…

   


Writing Stuff

I was utterly delighted by the wonderful things James Patrick Kelly said ’bout The Fix in his “On the Net: Son of Gallimaufry” article in the June Asimov’s:

“Luckily for fans of the short form, a new site, The Fix, has arrived on the scene. Andy Cox, of TTA Press, publisher of Interzone and Black Static, and Eugie Foster have created a site that is visually pleasing and intellectually stimulating […] The columns are quite astute—I can particularly recommend James Van Pelt’s The Day Job and Scott Danielson’s Audiobook Fix. The Fix is one of the most promising new sites of 2007.”

*squee!*

Received:
• 7-day (reprint) sale of my nonfiction article, “Writing Multicultural Fiction for Children” (Parts 1 and 2), to Absolute Write. Yay! They’re slated to go up the end of April and beginning of May, respectively.
• Payment from Aeon for “Black Swan, White Swan.” Me likie payment on acceptance.

New Words/Editing:
• An editing pass and 300 words on my pre-session WiP, “Morozko.”

Glargh. The words, they are are not coming easily. And the ones that do come, they suck. Was feeling pretty disheartened by the end of the writing session, so I took out one of my completed (and sold) stories to read—one that I’m particularly fond of—to remind me that I am indeed capable of putting together a reasonable sentence and crafting a readable tale. ‘Cause it sure doesn’t feel like it.

My writing muscle’s gone gimpy.
• 300 words on a new story, something light and silly that came about from a conversation fosteronfilm and I had in the car. Working title (and working title only!), “Cthulhu Editing.”

Amazon/BookSurge’s coup de main on POD publishers

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I survived my second legislative session of the Georgia General Assembly. Woke up feeling pretty upbeat and then got an email which thunked me over the head with the realization that I’ve been living in a cocoon of Georgia legislature-induced isolation for the last three months (also an oblique reminder of the huge backlog of catch-up items on my to-do list).

The American Society of Journalists and Authors sent me a press release/position statement which made my jaw drop in disbelief (and check to see whether I’d received it five days late):

“The American Society of Journalists and Authors, the nation’s trade association for freelance nonfiction writers, is disgusted with Amazon’s announced move requiring that all print-on-demand (POD) books sold on Amazon’s site be printed by their own print-on-demand house, BookSurge.

“As of April 1, Amazon is requiring small publishers to sign a contract agreeing to such demands.”
—Read the whole thing on ASJA’s website

I engaged my Google-fu and immediately discovered Angela Hoy’s report of these Amazon/BookSurge doings at Writers Weekly, which has been corroborated by sources including Publisher’s Weekly and The Wall Street Journal:

“Reports had been trickling in from the POD underground that Amazon/BookSurge representatives have been approaching some Lightning Source customers, first by email introduction and then by phone (nobody at BookSurge seems to want to put anything in writing). When Lightning Source customers speak with the BookSurge representative, the reports say, they are basically told they can either have BookSurge start printing their books or the “buy” button on their Amazon.com book pages will be ‘turned off.’

Writers Weekly has also assembled a compilation of the current and burgeoning uproar of the issue that’s flying through writers websites, forums, and the blogosphere.

After I retrieved my jaw from where it had fallen off and bounced under my desk, I find myself trying to figure out whether this is a desperate bid on Amazon’s part to shore itself up in a time of economic decline or if their hubris is such that they believe they can pull this off without suffering a backlash. This will and is already raining down a huge negative PR storm on Amazon, as well it should. It’s monopoly tactics, and it totally screws independent and small press publishers and authors.

I hope that this is just a very stupid decision on the part of some clueless marketing executive and will be tromped down by clearer heads.