Released from Jury Duty and Novel First Draft (Almost)

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So I was not selected for a trial yesterday. Thank Jeebus. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be when they asked if I had State Farm insurance or any other affiliation with State Farm. I figure eleven years working at their corporate headquarters would qualify as an “affiliation” and was crossing my fingers that it would put me out of the running. Looks like it did.

Now I’m curious what the case is about but really, really glad I wasn’t selected for it. The only thing more boring than insurance law is tax law, and I will see plenty of both in just a couple months. I absolutely don’t need a jump start.

In other news, I got Matthew’s feedback on Demon Queller. He liked it! Whew. Yeah, yeah, family opinion and all, but I know he’ll be honest with me if something sucks, and I trust his instincts. It’s why he’s my eternal first reader. Also, he’s legally obligated to keep speaking to me regardless of how bad a manuscript might be that I force him to read.

Got some tweaks, minor edits, and a little rewriting to do based on his crit, and then it’ll be officially at first draft and ready to send to critiquers.

Also started on a short story, the one I’m writing for the DAW anthology. 800 words. Working title, “Kiyohime.”

My Jury Duty Nightmare Continues

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In the so-sad-it’s-funny category, after my 2-month long ordeal serving on the grand jury in July-Aug, I’ve been summoned for jury duty again–this time trial jury.

So I am once again at the courthouse, waiting to do my civic duty. The only saving grace is that I’m a standby juror so I have a better chance of not being assigned to a trial. I hope.

Sigh.

Returning My Sister’s Face E-book Due Nov. 25 and Locus Review of the Dragon and the Stars

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Got an email from Vera of Norilana. Looks like we’re aiming for November 25th as the release date of Returning My Sister’s Face in e-book format. Just in time for Christmas shopping :).

Also saw that The Dragon and the Stars was reviewed in Locus by Gardner Dozois:

[T]he fact that all the stories draw upon “the rich cultural heritage of China” to tell stories of the fantastic makes it interesting, and gives us some milieus not commonly used, making almost all the stories worth reading…The best stories here are by Tony Pi, Emily Mah, Brenda Clough, Eugie Foster, Shelly Li, and Eric Choi

Finished the last zero draft editing pass on Taijiya and it’s now being first-readered by Matthew. Commencing nail biting.

And heard from the editor of the DAW anthology I was invited to submit to. Seems the publication date got bumped up by a month and therefore so did the deadline. I love deadlines, the way they stress me out and make me sweat. Sad thing, I actually mean that.

“Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest” now in Czech in the Oct. 2010 issue of Pevnost

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Just got my contrib. copies of the October ’10 issue of Pevnost with “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest” reprinted in Czech:

Pevnost Oct. 2010 issue

This marks my first Czech language publication, and I learned something interesting.  Female and male surnames take different forms, and they modify foreign female surnames by appending them with “ová.”  So my byline in Pevnost is “Eugie Fosterová.”

When I first saw it, I thought they’d misspelled my name. But then I noticed that Stephanie Meyer was listed as “Stephanie Meyerová,” and a bit of Googling showed that they refer to the U.S. Secretary of State as Hilary Clintonová and the First Lady as Michelle Obamaová.

I’m not sure how I feel about having my name modified. On the one hand, it’s an integral part of the Czech language. But on the other, it’s my name, my byline, my trademark, y’know?

Editing Pass on Taijiya Zero Draft Done!

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Finished my editing pass on the zero draft of the not-brainy-but-no-longer-stupid novel, a.k.a. Taijiya, last night. Made my November 1 deadline! *woot*

Ended up adding something like 1,400 words. Funny thing, when I do editing passes on short works, I tend to cut-cut-cut.  Most of the content edits I did on Taijiya involved fleshing out scenes.

Also thinking of changing the title to Demon Queller, which is actually what “taijiya” means. Not sure which conveys “medieval fantasy set in Japan” better. Kinda feeling that it’s a toss-up between, “Taijiya? What in heck is that about? Pass.” And “Demon Queller? Isn’t that horror? Pass.” Or maybe I should throw my Scrabble tiles back into the bag and pick a new batch…

Still want to do another read-through/edit of certain sections, check some continuity issues, massage a scene transition that seemed rough but couldn’t put my finger on why—that sort of thing. Then I’m foisting it on critiquers.

“Only Springtime When She’s Gone” Up at Escape Pod

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Gah! I’ve been so immersed in working on the novel that I managed to miss when Escape Pod published my “Only Springtime When She’s Gone” (read by Jason Adams)! Haven’t listened to it yet but really looking forward to it–when I come to a good breaking place on my editing pass (on chapter 20, making excellent progress, can’t stop, clown will eat me).

Also saw that the EP website has had an overhaul and that they’re upping their pay scale to SFWA pro rates. I love the Escape Artists podcasts, I do.

Editing Editing Editing and an Anthology Invite

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Immersed once again in editing Taijiya. There’s a certain déjà vu feeling to it. At least this editing pass is going a bit faster than the last one–as it should–but there’s still huge swathes of clean-up and twiddle-some rewriting needed. Made it to chapter 9 today (out of 43). Wonder if I can finish this edit before November 1.

In other news, I got invited to submit a story to another DAW anthology. Yay! Of course I replied “yes!” The theme is wicked intriguing but, uh, I don’t think I’m supposed to say what it is.

The editor wants my idea pitched to her by mid-November with the deadline being mid-February of next year. Hoping the short story writing gears aren’t all creaky and awry, as I’ll need to get most, if not all, of my story written by the beginning of January since I can’t count on being able to do any writing once the 2011 legislative session begins.

Gah! Where did this year go??

Novel Progress: Not There Yet But Oh-So-Close and Ruminating About the Nature of Chapters

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Did not manage to make it to zero draft on Taijiya yesterday, but gods-monkeys-and-nematodes I’m close. There were more loose ends than I realized, and the denouement turned into the last chapter.

Funny thing about chapters, don’t really use them much in short works. It’s been a learning curve just sorting out where to start and end them for Taijiya. I figured they’d be where the scenes break–where I stick the little “#” in short works–and to some extent that’s true. But there’ve also been a slew of times when I’ve realized, “Oh, I should’ve started a new chapter here,” when I’m still in the same scene but I’ve had a break in pacing. To use a role-playing geek metaphor, it’s like coming to the end of an encounter but you’re still in the dungeon surrounded by baddies.

Put down 600 new words and did much cleanup of the 2.2K from Monday. Going to try to hammer out the rest of the chapter today. Never has a road to zero draft been longer.

Sick Tech and Novel Progress: New Working Title

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Lost the weekend battling really annoying tech issues. My laptop got infected by some malware that, as its main obvious symptom, blocked my computer from getting to anti-virus sites and forums. It also wouldn’t let me download/install security patches and wiped out all my system checkpoints so I couldn’t do a rollback and restore. Glad I had my Droid or I would’ve been murderous-daikaiju-on-the-warpath-apoplectic. As it was, I was spitting mad.

My anti-virus program (Avast!) caught the infecting files after a full scan followed by a boot scan—which took overnight-plus-morning to run—but missed the deeper, DNS registry infection. Thought I might have to do a complete wipe and reload of my laptop (aaaghh!), so I started making a complete data and settings backup, which took huge swaths of time in and of itself, but fortunately I managed to stumble upon a forum thread that set me on the right track to hunting down and fixing the problem. Finally installed an anti-malware program from malwarebytes.org which cleaned up the registry, but I had to load it from a thumb drive from Matthew’s computer and rename the executable before I could run it because the $@!& malware blocked the site and wouldn’t let the program run otherwise. So very, very maddening.

But my laptop is now clean, backed up, and up-to-date. *snarl*

Writing Stuff

In better news, I made up for the utter loss of the weekend by putting down 2.2K words on the novel yesterday. I’m now past the scene I couldn’t write three+ weeks ago and only the denouement away from zero draft.

Holy Jeebus. I might actually hit zero draft today.

To mark the occasion, I’m going to stop referring to the WiP as The Stupid Novel and give it a proper working title: Taijiya.

Probably high time, anyway. One of my co-workers who reads my updates asked me the other day if my novel was indeed going to be titled “The Stupid Novel” and seemed disappointed when I ‘splained, “Um, no.” 😳