Author Archives: Eugie Foster

Mysterious file transpirings

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Patrick and yukinooruoni came over last night to hang out and gab. And yukinooruoni brought me a prezzie: a bottle of dessert wine! I’m thinking I might open it this weekend. Or maybe I’ll save it for a special occasion.

In the course of our chatting, I discovered that there are still apparently a number of Daily Dragon articles floating around somewhere, unedited and unpublished. I thought I’d consolidated all the data onto my personal USB flash drive in the big clean-off-the-computers activity that Monday, but apparently there are still files on the other flash drive that need to be extracted. Oops.

   


Writing Stuff

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I seem to have lost all the progress I made on the as-yet-untitled Japanese fantasy story yesterday. When I opened up the file this morning, it had reverted back to how it was at the end of Tuesday.

Mystifying and irksome that. I’m not egregiously put out–no hair rending or shrieks of outrage at the cosmos–because yesterday was mostly about research. The primary changes I made consisted of a few hundred words of tightening edits and a bit of scene fleshing out, all fairly straightforward to replicate without overmuch brain strain, not to mention all my research notes were intact. I’d be needing a padded cell right about now if I’d laid down thousands of new words, so it could’ve been much worse.

Still, I’m a bit flummoxed. My best guess is that I didn’t save my file before shutting down for the day, except that’s just not like me. I hit SAVE with almost compulsive regularity–conditioned as I’ve been by a randomly powering down laptop and other fun-and-exciting hardware adventures. And I thought Word did automatic saves at regular intervals anyway? Plus, wouldn’t Word have asked me if I’d wanted to save my changes if I’d closed the file without saving?

I also checked my temp file cache to see if I’d accidentally saved it there, as well as my other folders to see if I’d somehow managed to relocate it. Nope.

Weirdness.

Did I unwittingly offend a computer diety yesterday?

I’m now back to where I was when I shut down yesterday, perhaps minus a scintillating line or two, or with a slightly-more-awkward sentence construction here and there, but those are minor editing issues.

I’m also compulsive about making backups, which all of my experience with these helpful but maddening technological gadgets is further reinforcing . . .

Received:
– Payment from Her Circle Ezine for their reprinting of “Second Daughter” pending a bit of PayPal-related awkwardness.

HCE paid me via debit card to my PayPal account, but it’s a Personal Account, and so it balked at accepting payment without being upgraded. I declined its repeated exhortations to upgrade (no, I don’t want PayPal taking a fee+percentage out of this and all future monies. Yes, I’M SURE, dammit!) and so had to refuse payment. Happily, an email to the editor explaining the situation resulted in a “we’ll send you a money order forthwith.” So it’s all good.

Adventures on MARTA

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On the train home yesterday, there was a guy standing with his mountain bike, playing the flute. It was one of those wooden (bamboo?) instruments that creates an earthy, gentle sound. It was a lovely melody, a bit rambly and a lot sylvan. Created a somewhat surreal, almost eldritch ambiance to the ride. Interesting seeing the expressions on my fellow passengers’ faces: fascination, pleasure, curiosity, disinterest, and annoyance.

Transferring trains, I sat next to the door and witnessed a trio of angry boys jostling each other and shouting threats as they disembarked–obvious chest thumping overlaying an undercurrent of whine, rather than that simmer of true violence. They were young, and I was not at all worried about my safety, although I did have a few moments’ concern that their roughhousing would knock one of them into me, and therefore my laptop (unwarrented, as it turns out). When they exited, a jumble of reactions arose in their wake: laughter, rolled eyes at youthful exuberance, and a few quips at who would end up winning if the altercation did come to blows. A strange camaraderie of entertained commuters.

And this morning on the train, as I was working on the Japanese fantasy, I became aware of the passenger next to me peering furtively at my laptop screen from time to time, apparently curious to see what I was typing. It made me a bit self-conscious, which resulted in some rather clunky dialogue (that I’m going to have to either cut or clean up in my next editing pass), but it also amused me.

Lotso characters and setting inspiration on the train. A fringe benefit.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
– Fan mail! I got an email from a creative writing college student who really liked the interview with Deborah Vetter I did for my September Writing for Young Readers column. She said I was a “true inspiration” and that I encouraged her to “make the most of every day and every writing opportunity.” *Squee!* That’s totally going to have me walking on clouds for a while.
– Payment from the fine folks of Aberrant Dreams for “Nobodies and Somebodies.” $$!

New Words:
– 400 on the Japanese fantasy. And I plotted out the storyline.

Let there be cake! And there was . . . oof.

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One of the folks in my area had a birthday today, and there was ice cream and candles and cake! A lot of cake. Yummy coconut cake, of vast richness and size. Vasty vast richness. And size.

Oof.

I ate too much cake. And there’s still a chunk of cake and a puddle of rapidly-melting ice cream sitting on a plate on my desk.

I think I’ll be skipping dinner tonight . . .

On the non-binging on cake front, Comcast continues to prove that they are eminently deserving of the title “ISP Most in Need of a Vicious Sporking.” We switched over our automatic Comcast payment from our old checking account (from Suntrust, the holder of the “Bank Most in Need of a Vicious Sporking” title) to our new one in July, and Comcast cut off our Internet yesterday because we “hadn’t paid.” Yet, they still have us listed as “automatic payment by check,” and even if the switchover didn’t take, we STILL HAVE our Suntrust account.

Internet is back up now, but Comcast wants to charge us a late fee and/or a re-activation fee, and we do not wish to be charged said fee(s). We’re putting on our Contention Boots, and if that fails, there’s always sporks.

   


Writing Stuff

Discovered via Ralan that Maniac Press has folded, closing all six of its anthology projects. Would’ve been nice if they’d taken the time to inform their contributors of this fact, but I can’t say I’m particularly put out. I didn’t have high expectations for this reprint sale, and lo, even those failed to be met.

New Words:
Whee! I’m writing fiction again!
– 800 words on an urban fantasy inspired by my daily commutes on the MARTA rail.
– 1200 words on a new Japanese fantasy for one of the anthology hamsters I agreed to toss about. This one has a deadline of November, but I was getting a little anxious that I hadn’t started on it. Less anxious now. ‘Course starting a story and finishing it are different hamsters altogether.

Three cheers for an even keel

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Catching up on both sleep and work this weekend. I think I may actually be caught up on Tangent stuff, and I’ve published the remaining Dragon*Con articles I had to the Daily Dragon website.

Fewer hamsters, hurray!

Now I can get back to pumping out ye olde fiction. And editing schtuff for The Town Drunk before britzkrieg shows up on my doorstep with spork in hand . . .

   


Writing Stuff

I just learned that I received three Honorable
Mentions in the 19th Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (edited
by Ellen Datlow, Gavin J. Grant, and Kelly Link) for “The Bunny of Vengeance and Bear of Death” (in Fantasy Magazine #1), “The Tiger Fortune Princess” (in Paradox #7), and “Returning My Sister’s Face” (in Realms of Fantasy Feb ’05). Squeeing and happy dancing to commenceth.

Received:
– Payment from the wonderful Cricket Magazine folks for “The Tax Collector’s Cow” (in June’s Spider). Shiny.
– 3-day lightning fast “no GUD” from GUD. Alas.

MechMuse, iTunes, and Column, Oh My

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Writing Stuff

Published:
– My September Writing for Young Readers column is now up: “An Interview with Deborah Vetter of the Cricket Magazine Group”.
– The audio reprint of “The Storyteller’s Wife” in the Fall ’06 issue of MechMuse is also now live. I’ve been especially excited about this one after I heard their Spring issue, which had great fiction and fantastic production values.

Unfortunately, while MechMuse‘s website is pretty and very professional-looking, I find it unintuitive and awkward to navigate. Even more unfortunate, they’ve changed their delivery method such that it requires iTunes to access their content. I’m not an iTunes user, so I had to download and install it, and then I spent some time wrestling with the iTunes podcast subscription setup–which again, the MechMuse website did not make transparent, unlike Escape Pod‘s, which I find much easier to use and get around in.

But after a plaintive email to the MechMuse folks, I’ve finally had a chance to listen to it (after struggling with iTunes so that it would convert the .M4A file it seems to want to default to into an .MP3 file) and it’s . . . not what I expected.

I think the cover image sums up my feelings. It’s a beautiful, professional illustration of an elven woman–I presume Nicnivin, Queen of Faerie, as per my story. But it’s not at all how I imagined or wrote her:
“Her gleaming hair wreathed her in a froth of night. Wisps of moonlight shifted and roiled in soundless tides at her feet. Her gown was a gauze of mist that swathed her body from neck to ankle, fluctuating from sheer transparency to modest opacity.”

and

“Her eyes were black as jet, deep as midnight, and cold as stone.”

The story itself is read by a male narrator, which took me aback. While I certainly don’t maintain that my stories require a female voice to perform them–on the contrary, I think a male one would suit a number of them–the main character in “The Storyteller’s Wife” is a woman, and when I wrote it, it was a very clear and very female voice that I heard in my head. Also, my story is presented in a rather somber, drammatic tone, which while I could see it being great for, say, War of the Worlds, strikes me as being overdone for “The Storyteller’s Wife.” And finally, the character of “Hobs” is depicted with an English accent; an Irish accent would have been more appropriate, but more, Hobs ends up sounding much more dignified than I think the character should.

Urg. I’m probably just too close to the story, but I have to admit being a bit disappointed with the end production.

Ask Eugie

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airikblade, who obviously was paying attention to the “networking” section of my talk, very kindly provided me with the email addresses of Ann’s Beginner’s Writers Workshop students so I could email them the handout that I was supposed to get to them last Friday.

In an effort to make amends for my egregious lapse, I told them I’d answer any further questions they had about marketing short stories to the best of my ability on my blog. Herein the first of them:

Q: I have a humorous story in the form of a collection of letters with a science fiction twist and a story that is about 18,000 characters that I am working on. Could you suggest the best place to send humor?

A: Most places, except for perhaps those ‘zines which specialize in gritty, dark horror, are delighted to see well-written humor. I’ve frequently heard that F&SF is always on the lookout for good, humorous works, and Realms of Fantasy often publishes tongue-in-cheek tales (although it’s not the place I’d recommend sending science fiction). If your story is appropriate for a YA audience, Cicada is also open to and eager for humor.

For short story markets that specialize in humorous or “lite” speculative fiction, there’s Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and The Town Drunk (of which I’m the Asst. Managing Editor).

Q: I haven’t started checking submission guidelines yet but I’m assuming longer stories do better with online zines.

A: Not necessarily. While it’s true that ezines don’t have the same space constraints that paper publications do, there’s a readability factor. Many people don’t like reading off a monitor and so eschew longer works online.

As it turns out, the “Big Four” print ‘zines have pretty generous maximum word counts. Asimov’s takes up to 15K, Analog takes up to 80K (for serials), F&SF takes up to 25K, and Realms of Fantasy takes up to 10K.

Q: I was also wondering if I had heard you correctly when I thought you said that if you had no credentials yet, it was better to omit a cover letter if none was required by submission guidelines.

A: Yep. If you don’t have anything to say in your cover letter, get out of the way and let your story sell itself. Obviously, if the guidelines ask for one, then provide one.

Dragon*Con recovery

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dude_the went winging back to the Midwest yesterday. Didn’t get a chance to hug him goodbye ‘cause he had to be at the airport before I got home from work. Pook. But he’ll be back for another visit in October. Hurray!

Still dazed from the convention, but a full night’s sleep has helped get a few more neurons firing. Although I seem to be coming down with some Con Crud, dangit. Usually that misses me. Guess I needed to get a little more alcohol in my system. I had all of two sips of “Peach Pie”–a very potent and very yummy alternative to the (in)famous Tech Ops “Pie”–and that wasn’t quite enough to sterlize my system. Alas. *cough cough snog*

We picked up Hobkin from his godmother’s, and the wee fuzzy beastie is glad to be home. He snuggled with me all last night, except for when he was demanding to be fed, of course. I noticed that his coat’s already growing in thick from its summer shed. He’s all soft and fluffy. And round. Very, very round. Hobkin appears to be packing on the weight a bit early this year, and his coat’s gotten lush pretty early too. Wonder if that means it’ll be an early winter? Skunk as barometer. Yep.

   


Writing Stuff

Much catching up to do. There was a slew of hardcopy review material for Tangent waiting for me on the doorstep after we got back from Dragon*Con, which I need to assign to reviewers and sling back out into the postal service thoroughfares. I’m way behind on The Town Drunk work (gah, I hope britzkrieg doesn’t hate me). And I got a rewrite suggestion from my agent on the novel–>picture book manuscript. I also need to finish the review I’m writing for the Jigsaw Nation anthology and write three stories for various anthologies that I’ve committed to before the end of the year. Urk.

Gotta get them hamsters back in the air, pronto!

Published:
– My reprint of “Second Daughter” is now up at Her Circle Ezine.
– My “Ten Myths About Writing for Kids” article is up at Writing-World.com. But hrm, September’s Writing for Young Readers column isn’t up yet. I wonder when in the month that’s slated for . . .
[Edit: It’s up, it’s up! “An Interview with Deborah Vetter of the Cricket Magazine Group”.]

Received:
Oof. I came home to a string of “no”s. Ouch ow owitch.
– 23-day “did make the final review but . . . “ from Apex Digest.
– 127-day kindly “no” from my editor at Cicada. Wah!
– 123-day “dear writer” from Black Warrior Review. Eh, that one was a long shot anyway.

In better news, I got a note from dsnight letting me know that he’s now got a tentative release date from DAW books for Heroes in Training: September 2007. Woo!

Dragon*Con 2006

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Dragon*con happened. Feet hurt. Voice stripped. Brain sloggy. But I had a great time! At least, I’m pretty sure I did . . .

dire_epiphany and astralfire, in their infinite wisdom, ordered me a backup copier for the Daily Dragon, something I could definitely have used last year. And lo, Copier One died an ignominious and dismal death on Saturday during the wee hours of the morning in the middle of the print run. The Copier is dead. Long live the Copier. lord_darkseid got dude_the up; they tinkered with Copier One, declared it moribund, and dude_the made an executive decision to activate Copier Two without further pokings at its defunct predecessor. They moved C2 into place and resumed the run, all without waking me from my comatose slumber. My staff rocks!

In addition to dude_the, who did his usual amazing job as my assistant director, and lord_darkseid who seems to have, once again, lived in Daily Dragon headquarters this year, a huge THANK YOU goes to sfeley for doing the DD podcast, and my sterling reporters: yukinooruoni, canadiansuzanne, reddherring1955, arkhamrefugee, and those folks who don’t have an LJ: Claire, Charlie, and Matt.

On the Eugie-guest front, my short story marketing lecture for Ann Crispin went fabu. I got chuckles in the right places, and her students seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say, as well as glad to have me there to say it. I did, however, totally drop the ball (or hamster as the case may be) on the handout front. I normally email Ann the handout that accompanies my talk, but this time I’d emailed it to her after she’d already left for the con, and therefore she didn’t have it. When I discovered this, I promised her students that I’d print out and bring them copies of it after lunch. But then, after lunch, a few minor crises occurred, and I promptly forget.

Oops.

So, uh, if any of y’all were paying attention to that section on “networking” I was talking about, and actually come visit this LJ, drop me a comment and I’ll email you the handout. Also, Ann said she’d email it.

My panels went great, although I managed to be late to ALL of them. I think my favorite might have been the horror one on Friday, “Shriek! Finding the Horror in Horrible,” that I had with Sherilyn Kenyon, Holly Black (blackholly), and Cherie Priest (wicked_wish). I actually had the foresight to bring my copy of Tithe for Holly to sign. Fangirl squeeing! And oliver_dale popped up afterward to introduce himself and say the nicest things. The fine folks of Aberrant Dreams also came up to say “hi,” as did Jason Sizemore of Apex Digest. And Jason gave me an Apex mug! It is the coolest mug evah! I recommend that everyone get one. I am taking it to work so that I may have my cup of world domination every day.

My “The Power of the Old Stories: Mythology and Folklore in YA” panel was also jam packed with luminaries. Josepha Sherman was there in addition to blackholly again (I think Holly and I were in three panels together). I was on panels with Jo last year, and I absolutely lubs her. Unfortunately, I was very late to that one (I think there’s some sort of time sink between the Marriott and the Hyatt), and scampered in after they’d finished doing intros and were already discussing topics. Urg. I remain mortified. My two YA panels—one for bevlovesbooks YA track, “So You Want to Write a Kid’s Book?”, and one for Nancy Knights Writer’s Track, “YA and Children’s Literature”—went fantastically too. I got to be on a panel with Brad Strickland! Although I always feel sort of inadequate on the “Write a Kid’s Book” one since I don’t actually have a kid’s book, just short story sales. Meep.

My reading, which I stressed and fretted over, went absolutely great. palmerwriter was there for moral support—and I’m rather bummed that I missed his reading–as were j_hotlanta, rigel_kent, and britzkrieg. And ericjamesstone was there, and he brought three things for me to sign: a copy of Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown, an issue of Realms of Fantasy with one of my stories in it, and my Inspirations End/Still My Beating Heart chapbook. *smooches* Eric. That totally made my day.

Other people sightings include Jetse DeVries, who came by Daily Dragon headquarters to say “hi” and drop off some Interzone and TTA Press swag, Keith DeCandido, who I got to help schedule a reading and signing for, and reudaly at her booth in the Marriott selling pretties. While in the exhibitors area, I also got to meet Frank Fradella (newbabel) who totally amazed and flattered me by calling me over to his booth by name! We had a lively chat and shared our Harlan Ellison experiences (his was, by far, more interesting than mine). And he signed and gave me a copy of Valley of Shadows!

On the see-panels front, I wanted to see the Firefly/Serenity folks, but the stars did not align. I also wanted to catch the Junior Mythbusters, and again, it was not fated to be—especially since they had major mechanical difficulties with their plane and arrived to the convention much later than their original ETA. But I did get to try out the Rocket Simulator . . . which I crashed. Whee.

And on the see-people front, I got to hang out with sara1221 and wave at sruna and pleroma as they flitted by between working shifts for fosteronfilm’s Inde Film Track. I also got to take pictures of all the gorgeous costumes of glenn5 and see elemess out of the office environment (he also walked me from the Capitol to the Hyatt on Thursday, after we discovered the MARTA was broken—which was a good thing too as I wouldn’t have any idea how to get to the Hyatt otherwise). And jackzodiac swung by to say “hi,” early on, and invited me to party with him in the Green Room, but I was too busy to party (wah!) and didn’t see him for the rest of the con. Sigh. D*C is so much my working con. But at least I’ll get to party with him at Mobicon. No working there, all play. *nods*

Dragon*Con happened. I sleep now.

Dragon*Con Eeeeee!

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No. More. Schedule changes! Please, please, please. No more, no more. I promise I’ll be good. *whimper*

So yeah, D*C is upon us. dude_the is here, although his plane was massively delayed due to mechanical problems, and after he finally got to ATL, they made all the passengers on his plane sit and wait after they’d touched down because of the lightning. The poor guy didn’t get in until after 1AM.

Had my own bout of transportation woes this morning. The MARTA was also experiencing some mechanical difficulties, and my train, when it finally arrived, was quite late. And unairconditioned.

The convention hasn’t even begun and my eyes feel ready to sear themselves free of my skull. Ugh. Lotso coffee most commenceth.

In less complainy news:
This year, the Daily Dragon is launching a podcast to give con-goers another way to get up-to-date Dragon*Con news during the convention. Stephen Eley, of Escape Pod (escapepodcast), will bring you news, highlights, and his own brand of humor and insight every day.

The first, pre-con podcast for Thursday is now up for download.

Spoke too soon. My dance card explodeth, agh!

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With the pocket program now up, I had a chance to look over my Dragon*Con schedule.

I’m also slated for:
– “Shriek! Finding the Horror in Horrible” (WRIT) at 10PM on Friday with Holly Black (blackholly), Eric Griffin, Sherilyn Kenyon, Cherie Priest (wicked_wish), and Steve Antczak.
– “YA and Children’s Literature” (WRIT) at 11:30AM on Saturday with Diana G. Gallagher, Anthony R. Karnowski, Rebecca Moesta, Brad Strickland, Berta Platas, Eldon Thompson, and Michelle Roper.
and
– A reading on Saturday at 6PM (Williams).

Meep. A reading. My DC2K group was trying to put together a group reading for D*C, and I would’ve been okay with being a part of that, but the prospect of doing a solo has me twitching. A lot.