Author Archives: Eugie Foster

Session 2008 Day 40, T minus 4.25 hours: Sine Die and sale to PodCastle

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Feel totally thrashed. This day has been uber grueling, and there’s still over four hours of it to go. But I got my bunny slippers on and am eating some non-sugary food*, and the pace has slowed way down. We’re mostly in waiting mode as the House and Senate bicker and wrangle their way through their remaining agenda items. And I think my second wind is rounding the bend.

*There’s been donuts, cookies, pie, and cake a-plenty to be had all day, but the only food o’substance was very meat-laden. However, one of the attorneys saw me gazing at the chock-o-meat pizzas with disappointment and felt sorry for me. She gave me a salad and then, over my protestations, made me a cheese sandwich and a big bowl of popcorn—have I mentioned recently that I really love working here with all the fabulous people in my office? I really love my job…even during session when it kicks my ass.

Anyhoo, I didn’t think I was particularly hungry, but after snarfing down the salad and sandwich (and I’m snacking on the popcorn now), the bleary haze in my head is beginning to clear.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
• 55-day pleasant pass from PodCastle on a reprint and
• 255-day reprint sale of “The Tanuki-Kettle” to PodCastle. Woot! It’s been a great week for me for podcasts. Very much looking forward to hearing my story presented by the newest Escape Artists outfit.

Session 2008 Day 39.5: Insomnia, aches and pains, and Matthew on Minnesota Public Radio

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Urg, what a week. Sine die is tomorrow, the end of the 2008 Georgia legislative session, and I am so ready for it to happen. Been having to work a lot of late nights, and by the time I get home, I’m too wired to fall asleep. Last night, when I finally did manage to drop off, I dreamed of editing. Woke at 4AM feeling vaguely distressed about not being able to parse some text. Couldn’t get back to sleep, so I turned on my computer…and commenced doing some editing for The Fix. Sigh.

Also, my immune system has informed me that it is displeased with the liberties I’ve been taking with it. Both knees have ached for the last few days, making it a bit of a chore climbing stairs—which is awkward ’cause the Office of Legislative Counsel spans three floors. We editors are headquartered on the middle floor, and there’s a certain amount of upping and downing required, although we all try to convey each others’ bills to their varied destinations to maximize efficiency and minimize stair slogging.

In other news, fosteronfilm is going to be on Minnesota Public Radio tomorrow! He and another guest speaker, someone from Wired, will be discussing postapocalyptic movies. Haven’t had much chance to talk with the hubby this week ’cause of that whole consumed-by-work thing, so I don’t have any of the details except that it’s slated to air at 11AM (I think). Hope that they podcast or stream it so I can hear it if I can’t listen to it online tomorrow. Shiny coolness.

   


Writing Stuff

Starting to dwell on writing and writing projects for post-session. Went through my submissions and sales logs and sent out some reprint prospects which have been idling on my things-to-do list.

On the words on the page front, I need to finish the Russian fairy tale re-telling for squirrel_monkey‘s anthology that I started back in November, before session began. Fortunately, the deadline got pushed to June as the release date of the first volume in the antho series, Japanese Dreams (which will have my story, “The Tears of My Mother, the Shell of My Father” in it), got postponed until July to coincide with ReaderCon.

I’d also like to come up with a story to send to Cricket. I don’t have anything whatsoever under consideration in their slush pile, and that strikes me as a situation that needs remedying.

And then there’s The Novel. Once again I have set myself the (Sisyphusian) goal of finishing the %&!$#@ thing. I really need to get past this writing hurdle/milestone. It’s turning into one of those fell-off-the-horse-but-didn’t-get-back-on hang-ups.

Session 2008 Day 37: In the homestretch and sale to Pseudopod

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We’re in the final week of Session 2008. The legislature is scheduled to adjourn sine die this Friday, barring something stupid coming up. These next few days promise to be hectic to the extreme, but I’m relieved to be so close to officially surviving my second session. Also, I’m a little nervous now that “writing season” is about to start up again. After being away from it for so long, there’s some performance anxiety about getting back into the habit of putting words on the page. Meep.

   


Writing Stuff

Saw in the Baen’s Universe e-ARC area that “A Thread of Silk” will be in their June 2008 issue. Coolness.

Received:
• Promo copies of Magic in the Mirrorstone to sign. The Mirrorstone Books folks sent several copies that they want to use as promotional giveaways ’round to all of the authors to John Hancock. The instruction letter inside said that they wanted to get the books back before February—the anthology’s release date—but, um, unless their marketing department has a time machine stashed away, that’s not going to happen. Oops. Well, I’m sending them along to the next author tomorrow. At least there are only two stopovers left.
• 60-days to a (reprint) sale of “Caesar’s Ghost” to Pseudopod. Yay!
• Contract from Aeon for “Black Swan, White Swan”…along with a request for an intro. Erg. I have a dickens of a time writing intros or synopses for my stuff. As the author, I want to come off as witty and insightful, but definitely not ostentatious or pretentious, and I want to intrigue the reader with my story’s premise without giving away too much or building false expectations.

Yeah, for my next trick, I’ll turn Kool-Aid into brandy and walk on Jell-O. Much brow furrowed lip-chewing, there. I came up with something and sent it off, but I’d rather write a whole story while aardvarks gnaw on my ankles than a one-paragraph introduction. *twitch*
• Payment from both Drabblecast (for “The Tiger Fortune Princess”) and Pseudopod. Yay²!

Session 2008 Day 34.75: Weird storytellers and Tiger Fortune Princess at Drabblecast

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As part of their 85th anniversary commemoration, Weird Tales conducted a poll to see who their readers considered the weirdest storytellers of the last 85 years, and they posted the Top 85 yesterday on their website*. They specifically asked folks not to limit their nominees to fiction writers, which resulted in such wonderful additions as Jim Henson, the Cirque de Soleil, David Bowie, and M.C. Escher, as well as the writers you’d expect like Tanith Lee, Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman, and H.P. Lovecraft.

It’s a great list. And it started me dwelling on other weird artists. Topping my list of weird-storytellers-not-in-WT‘s-85, I’d have to say is Don Hertzfeldt. While he’s a relative newcomer, I don’t think anyone can argue that his works aren’t sufficiently weird. And, of course, he’s brilliant. Billy’s Balloon needs to be shown alongside The Red Balloon to school kids.

*There’s also an “85 Weirdest Storytellers” article in their 85th anniversary issue (#349).

   


Writing Stuff

The audio podcast of “The Tiger Fortune Princess” is now up at Drabblecast, read by Norm Sherman, who did an absolutely fabu job. *squee!* I lubs hearing my stories read aloud. Go listen, yo!

Session 2008 Day 34.25: a sale to Aeon and annoyance with the USPS homeland security policy

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Had a quiet Easter weekend with fosteronfilm and Hobkin. Stayed in, cuddled a skunk, and watched Donnie Darko. Hey, there was a bunny in it.

The Georgia legislature is in adjournment until Thursday—which will be Day 35 of this session. It’s been relatively quiet at work, giving me a chance to play catch-up, but it seems that as soon as I start making headway in one area, stuff starts piling up in another. I can’t seem to get my email down to less than 50 “needs response” notes, some of which are egregiously late, as I have a terrible habit of responding to email in last-in-first-out order rather than first-in-first-out as I ought. It feels a bit like using a tablespoon to bail out a leaky boat…that’s headed into a waterfall…in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Also, I’m miffed with the USPS. Apparently, a recent homeland security policy of theirs now mandates that all stamped mail which weighs 13oz or more must be dropped off at a post office rather than mailed from a residential mailbox. Because, of course, the folks who work the counter at the post office will have a much better detection system than my local letter carrier when it comes to terrorist mailings of over 13 ounces.

The thing is, I’ve got a no-frills postal scale at home, and my standard operating system is to stock up on various denominations of stamps so that I can disseminate review items for The Fix as I get them*, without having to set aside time to drive back and forth to the post office. But now, I can’t do that with any material that’s heavier than 13oz, like, oh, say, most trade paperbacks and glossy magazines. ARGH!

The only thing that’s saving me from really pulling my hair out is that I’ve been encouraging editors/publishers for the last several years to send me electronic files instead of paper. So now, the majority of the review material I receive is electronic. But I still get enough hard copies that this is going to be a major inconvenience and, with fuel prices being what they are, an annoying expense.

Stupid USPS.

In other news, I’ve migrated my eugiefoster.com website to PHP, specifically WordPress. My experience with webmastering and helming The Fix has really sold me on the application, even though I don’t update my homepage with anything like blog-like frequency. The flexibility of being able to make site-wide changes easily as well as the browser-based admin interface really appeals. Now I can chuck FrontPage—which always inserts gobs of junk into my code that requires clean-up—and not have to worry about learning DreamWeaver. Shiny.

*I also use it for my paper submissions, but there’ve been fewer of those over the years as more and more markets accept submissions via email.

   


Writing Stuff

Hmm. Well, it seems that “Daughter of Botu” is not, as it turns out, going to be in the June issue of Realms of Fantasy. Not a problem, but now I’m wondering which issue it’s slated for. Did I misread my contract and it said June 2009 instead of June 2008? Or was it just bumped to next issue or something? Must remember to check that when I get a chance.

Received:
• 98-day SALE of “Black Swan, White Swan” to Aeon. Woohoo! I’ve been trying to break into these folks since they premiered. Delighted that this story will have such a wonderful home.

But I’m also all fretty. The acceptance email indicated that their contract should have been attached to it, but it wasn’t. I sent a “please resend contract?” email last week, as soon as I got their acceptance, but haven’t heard back, and I even succumbed to my twitchy writerness and sent a follow-up from a different email address yesterday. I’m sure it’s that they’re very busy—and probably not that they’ve changed their minds, seen that it was a brief bout of insanity that prompted them to receive positively something I wrote, and are trying to come up with a kind way of telling me never again to darken their virtual doorstep with my prose—but my on-again/off-again email reliability issues have really ramped up my writerly trepidation and apprehension.
• Note from Drabblecast that their production of “The Tiger Fortune Princess” is scheduled to go up this Wednesday, huzzah! Also that they’re passing on another submission I sent them, pook.
• Email from the editor/publisher of Fantasist Enterprises:

Fantasist Enterprises Needs Your Help

When I started Fantasist Enterprises almost ten years ago, I had three major goals in mind: 1) Create new markets for short fantasy fiction. 2) Help re-grow the popularity of the short story as a literary form. 3) Bring illustrations back to literature in the artistic marriage that the Pre-Raphaelites so championed.

I’ve certainly learned a lot since those early days, in respect to writing and editing, art directing, and running a publishing company. I’ve also met numerous friends, mentors, and students over the years—something that is infinitely valuable. It has been a joy to work with so many talented writers and artists.

Now FE and I need your help. We need to raise awareness of the company and sell more books and art in order to complete our upcoming projects and break exciting new ground in the genre. You can help us reach our goal in many ways.

1) Spread the Word . . .

. . . through your own words: If you have read our books and enjoyed them, please recommend them to your friends. Consider posting reviews on Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, and anywhere else that book reviews are welcome.

. . . with banners: Add a little visual flair to your website, blog, or MySpace/FaceBook page with FE banners. Go to our banners page for directions on how to add them to your page.

. . . by wearing T-Shirts: Want some FE art on your person? Then check out our T-shirts on our swag page

2) Buy a Book or Art

Buy an FE book through your favorite book retailer or direct from us at www.FEBooks.net, where we are running some specials for a limited time (see below). The stunning art found in our books is available exclusively on our website.

DEAL 1: While supplies last, purchase both FANTASTICAL VISIONS I & II for a total of $12.00.

Yes, FE and I were still cutting our teeth on those publications, but there are some memorable stories to be found within their pages. And soon, they’ll be collector’s items!

DEAL 2: Purchase both CLOAKED IN SHADOW & MODERN MAGIC for a total of $24.75.

DEAL 3: BASH DOWN THE DOOR AND SLICE OPEN THE BADGUY is on sale for $12.75.

So yeah, not only do I support small presses, especially ones that publish short fiction, but these folks had the excellent taste to publish “Souls of Living Wood” in their Modern Magic anthology and “Mistress Fortune Favors the Unlucky” in Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy, and they’ll be publishing “Megumi’s Fire” in their forthcoming Paper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel. So buy a book, y’all! Pleeeease?

Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy

Modern Magic

Session 2008 Day 31.5: Atlanta weather and return of the prodigal laptop

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The tornado was a nonevent for us. Didn’t even realize one had ripped through downtown Atlanta until we got calls from fosteronfilm‘s mother worried about our safety. Up north where we are, we got dark skies and thunderstorms, but no twister action. The hail on Saturday was a bit more dramatic, but we seem to have withstood that without any damage, too.

And, my laptop’s back, my laptop’s back! Yay! It languished for over a month in the shop, and in that time my organizational system fell into total disarray. My to-do list reached profoundly scary proportions, and after I finished re-loading my system and trying to sort through my emails, I’d flagged nearly 100 emails as “needs response.”

While I had a back-up system to work on and check email from while my VAIO was gone, it’s a huge behemoth of a machine that I can’t easily transport back and forth on the train. Plus, it doesn’t have the battery life that my ultra-portable VAIO does, making it useless by midday. So I ended up leaving it at home and checking email from a browser interface at work—and therefore not having my address book or sent history or received archives at hand. And without a main system as the hub repository for all my data, I ended up accumulating duplicates and putting off items or having information scattered across multiple systems in different versions. What a mess.

But my laptop’s back home now, and I’ve been wading through the pile-up. As of this morning, I’m down to 60 emails flagged, and my files are more or less synced up. Whew. I’m worried that some stuff may have gotten lost in the cracks; I tried to err on the side of duplication rather than deletion, but then I tried to keep the duplicates manageable and…glargh. I hope to have everything shipshape by the end of this week, legislature obliging, of course.

I missed my little VAIO. A lot.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
• 125-day SALE of “The Better To…” to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, slated for #38—which I believe will be their October issue.
• 91-day very glowing and personal rejection from Space & Time. It got held until the final round, but…sigh.
• Contract from Drabblecast for “The Tiger Fortune Princess.”
• Payment from Realms of Fantasy for “Daugher of Bótù,” which I believe will be coming out in their next (June) issue.

Session 2008 Day 29.5

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We’re in the home stretch. The legislature has established their schedule through Day 38, which will be the 27th of this month. That means they’ll most likely adjourn sine die the first week of April, hopefully April 1 or 2, which is much earlier than last year, with sine die falling on the 20th.

Good thing, too. I’ve switched to taking my Imuran in the A.M. with breakfast instead of at night with dinner because the schedule for my evening meals is all thrown off with session. There have been nights when I’ve had to skip dinner altogether and just make due with snacking at my desk between bills—resulting in me forgetting to take my meds. This brought on a (thankfully very minor*) flare-up last month, and I realized I needed to swap my pill-taking time so it could coincide with what’s left of my daily routine. But taking it in the morning often makes me a bit queasy, which it doesn’t do at night ’cause I usually take it with a hefty meal versus the cup-o-yogurt that I have in the morning.

Trade-offs. Queasy or pained-feverish? Blah.

*It’s been so long since I had a real-for-sure flare-up that I didn’t recognize it at first. I couldn’t figure out why my joints and muscles were aching so much…until the fever and dizziness came.

   


Writing Stuff

I’m in a bit of shock that Speculations and its wonderful Rumor Mill community are gone. While I haven’t been all that active on it, I’ve been a member—subscribed to several threads, checking in on folks’ author topics, etc.—since I began writing seriously in 2000. It was a great resource and a great community, and I’ll miss it.

Finished up my 2007 short fiction readings (yes, I’m behind) and finally got my picks to Chris McKitterick for this year’s Sturgeon Awards. I’ve been honored to be asked to contribute to the nomination process for the last several years, and this year I had to ask for an extension on the deadline as I was so utterly swamped at work and couldn’t get my nominations in on time. But I finally managed to send them off yesterday.

Received:
• 44-day reprint SALE of “The Tiger Fortune Princess” to Drabblecast. Yay! The editor, Norm Sherman, actually solicited this one from me. He’d heard Escape Pod‘s production of “The Snow Woman’s Daughter” and liked it enough to both email his compliments and ask me to send something his way. Much shiny ego-boo.

Session 2008 Day 25

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This week has been incredibly grueling, and it’s not even over yet. fosteronfilm has had to drive me home twice in three days*, and Hobkin was feeling under the weather on Tuesday (he seems fine now; I think he’s stressed because I’ve been away from home so much).

Bad week, no cookie. Need. Weekend.

One of the unlooked-for silver linings of my laptop being in the shop is that I’ve been catching up on my reading on the train. On the nonfiction front, I’m reading Robert Epstein’s The Case Against Adolescence, which expounds upon a subject I’ve been soapboxing in one way or another since I was 13, which is how the infantilization of young adults and the artificial extension of childhood, as well as people’s preoccupation with ensuring that their children are insulated from anything and everything that has even an iota of hazard in the world, is incredibly dysfunctional for both young people and society as a whole.

A fascinating read, although not particularly revolutionary for me, as I already hold to the belief that young adults are much more capable than most people give them credit for. But Epstein puts it together articulately and presents some historical pretext as well as research findings and ethnographic studies that I wasn’t aware of previously. (For more information about Epstein and his book, check out this Psychology Today article.)

As an amusing cosmic synchronicity, fosteronfilm mentioned that he’d heard my advisor in graduate school, Dr. Laura Berk, on NPR the other day but couldn’t remember what the subject matter was. I continue to hold Dr. Berk in the highest of regard and esteem (I’m also co-author with her on a textbook resource on Child Development—my first taste of that oh-so-addictive “name in print” goodness). So I went out to the NPR website and discovered this article, “The Bryant Park Project,” focusing on play and child development, particularly with regard to executive function—of which a central aspect is the ability to self-regulate**. And I thought it most telling that there’s been a marked decrease in childrens’ ability to self-regulate in the last six decades or so. The fanaticism to safeguard children from the world is retarding the natural rate of maturity and creating increasingly incapable young people.

Gripping stuff (to me, at least), even if it paints a rather bleak prognosis for the state of personal accountability, sound judgment, and capability in general for present and future generations.

* We’ve agreed that if I have to stay at work past 9PM that he’ll come get me rather than me taking the train home.
**Executive function and self-regulation is a good predictor of future achievement and well-being. From the article: “Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child’s IQ. Children who are able to manage their feelings and pay attention are better able to learn. As executive function researcher Laura Berk explains, ‘Self-regulation predicts effective development in virtually every domain.'”

   


Writing Stuff

Got a(nother) note from a writer asking me whether a review had been published of his collection yet. Not an unusual occurrence, save that this is the third or so such note I’ve gotten from him. And also that he continues to address me as “Dear Editor.” It’s not hard to find my name on The Fix‘s website. Really, it’s not. But it is hard for me to feel disposed to respond to someone who doesn’t take the trouble to address me by name. Maybe I should reply “Dear Writer”…

Yeah, yeah. I’m feeling snarky. Blah. It’s been a taxing couple weeks.

Received:
• 76-day SALE of “Megumi’s Fire” to the Fantasist Enterprises Paper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel anthology. Woot! I lost count of how many people sent me a heads up when these GLs went up, but thankyouthankyou to each of y’all!

Session 2008 Day 22.5

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Over the halfway mark for Session 2008. 18 more days to go.* I’m getting a wee bit scared about how far behind I’ve gotten with regard to other obligations, but trying to keep my head above water and/or not think about the hamsters I don’t have time to attend to.

But I can see out of the corner of my eye that them hamsters are getting pretty hefty . . .

What’s really exacerbating things is that I had to send in my VAIO laptop for maintenance. It’s just a hardware issue: a loose A/C connection that was requiring me to clip the cord at an odd angle in order to get the battery to charge. But I had to backup the whole drive as I’m sure they’ll wipe it (as it seems to be standard operating procedure at every shop on the planet). And now they’re waiting for an ordered part to get in, so I don’t know when I’ll get it back. Plus when I do get it back, I’ll have to spend several hours reloading it.

The loss of my “cart around everywhere” computer has really hindered my productivity. I can’t reply to emails on the train, can’t do a bit of editing during the commute, etc. I really need that extra hour and a half per day to stay on top of the hamster pile. Wah.

* Don’t ask me whether I’m a “glass half full” or “glass half empty” type. Mostly, I’m a “thirsty now, gimme water” type.

   


Writing Stuff

I’ve put several more stories up at Anthologybuilder.com. All of my cyberpunk-esque Tales from Old Atlanta, including the Phobos award-winning one, “All in My Mind,” which prompted me to write the rest of them: “Oranges, Lemons, and Thou Beside Me,” “Addy in My Mind,” “Only Springtime When She’s Gone,” and “The Few, the Proud, the Leech Corps” (which was already up). I’ve got one more from that world, “The Music Company,” which I planned to submit this weekend, but never got a chance to.

I’ve also got several stories up for sale at the Sony eBook Store through a contract with Tekno: “All in My Mind” (again), “The Tiger Fortune Princess,” “Returning My Sister’s Face,” “Honor is a Game Mortals Play,” “The Bunny of Vengeance and the Bear of Death,” “The Wizard of Eternal Watch,” and “The Storyteller’s Wife.”

Much buying goodness!

Received:
• Payment from Baen’s Universe for “A Thread of Silk,” which helped offset some of the debt from Christmas.

New Words:
In the midst of the chaos of last week, I was bowled over by the urge to do some writing. Novel writing, even. I’m not sure which I’d rather have, no time but plenty of inspiration or plenty of time but no inspiration. They’re both exercises in frustration and thwarted creativity. Actually, come to think of it, the latter is worse. I did manage to crank out a little over 300 words. I’ll take that over grinding my gears, staring at a blank page, any day. But it still leaves me twitchy and irked.