Category Archives: LJ

Frozen Editor and Galleys of Returning My Sister’s Face

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So cold. So very, very cold.

The office at work is freezing. I’m downing hot tea, wearing my coat and gloves, and I still can’t get warm. I haven’t turned on the space heater under my desk yet, ’cause it always dries out my contacts. And I can’t edit if I can’t see. But I’m nearing the point of not caring about my eyes anymore. Plus, I can’t edit if I can’t feel my fingers either.

*shiver shiver*

   


Writing Stuff

New Words:
• 350 on The Stupid Novel. Must. Get. To. Zero draft.

Received:
• Galley proofs of Returning My Sister’s Face from norilana. I’m very pleased with the layout; it’s elegant and readable. I can’t wait to hold the finished product in my eager little hands.

Y’know, it’s not like I haven’t received tons of proofs before, but I can’t seem to wipe the silly grin off my face as I review this one. Every stage of getting this collection ready for publication gives me the same sense of excitement and glee as I used to get when I first started making sales.

And somewhat disturbingly, Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” is now playing through my head. Umm…

Twitterpated

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Mostly at the instigation of dude_the, I have gotten myself a Twitter account. I was pretty uncertain about it until I found that Twitter and Facebook have an application which facilitates cross-platform updates so I can update my status in Facebook and have it automatically go to Twitter (or vice versa—not sure which platform the app. originates from). Shiny geekiness.

So if you Twitter, add me and I’ll add you so we can follow each others’ 140-character or less status updates .

Back From Weekend 1 of 2 and Patricia A. McKillip Cover Blurb

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Had a dentist appointment on Monday AM so I came into the office late, Veterans Day holiday on Tuesday, and I opted to take my 4×10 day off yesterday. Feels like I’ve been home more this week than at work. Oh, wait, that’s because I have!

However, life is returning to its normal routine—as normal as it gets. dude_the flew back home on Sunday, the presidential elections are over*, and I’m now taking stock of my plate of hamsters. And verily, my hamsters are surly, nippy, and fat.

Y’know, I should quit saying that I’m trying to “catch up” and simply accept that it is my lot to perpetually be in a state of hamster overflow.

*This is the first time in a very long while that I’ve dared to feel optimistic about the political outlook for America. Not to mention proud of my country. I actually got rather weepy-faced when I watched Obama’s victory speech. That man’s a moving and powerful speaker.

   


Writing Stuff

And in the giddy-unto-hyperventilating news, Patricia A. McKillip, the Locus, World Fantasy Best Novel, and World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award-winning author—a writer I’ve admired and idolized for, like, ever—gave me the most fabulous cover blurb for my Returning My Sister’s Face collection:

“The tales are beautifully written, elegant, passionate, funny and moving. The entire collection is a delightful, magical bridge across cultures. I hope many readers find their way to it.”

I am squeeful beyond the telling of it.

New Words:
• Around 300 on The Stupid Novel. I really need to get my butt in gear if I’m going to get it to zero draft before end of year (and, more to the point, before the beginning of Georgia’s legislative session).

Go Vote! And “A Box of Spoons” up at Hub

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If you’re a Yank 18 years of age or older and you haven’t yet, go vote!

Don’t take your constitutional right to participate in America’s democratic process for granted. Make your opinion count. Cast your ballot today.

   


Writing Stuff

Newly published:
• “A Box of Spoons” is now up at Hub (issue #68). Free fiction; go read, yo! (After you vote.)

Voting, Hardware Failure, and Honorable Mention in Year’s Best SF: 25th Annual Collection

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Hope everyone had a fabulous Halloween!

We stood in line for three hours to vote. Three hours. Although it wasn’t that onerous. The atmosphere was pretty upbeat throughout. There was a certain shared, whoa-can-you-believe-this-three-hours!-wow consternation, but it was good-natured and conducive to camaraderie rather than conflict.

On the very bad, craptacularly wah-some front, one of our external drives died. 250 GBs bit it. Hard. It stopped being detected by fosteronfilm‘s VAIO desktop computer, so we tried it on dude_the‘s Macbook. No go. Then Paul noticed it was making a softly ominous “click-click” noise instead of the gentle “whirr” it’s supposed to make. Very not good.

That drive has a lot of Matthew’s film data on it, and we’re not sure how much of it was backed up or is otherwise replaceable. The hubby was still trying to determine the full contents of that drive when he essentially passed out from exhaustion last night/early this AM.

Unfortunately, while I have computer geek proclivities, they lie, in total, in the area of software. When it comes to hardware, I’m easily confounded, flustered, and distressed—to the point of having to ask for help to plug in a USB thumb drive in one of my not-finer moments at Dragon*Con a couple years back. Yes, I am utterly lame when it comes to cords, plugs, cards, cables, and peripherals.

Paul’s thinking it might be the casing and connection which have belly-upped, so wants to extract the drive from the case and insert it into the computer to see if it’ll register as an internal drive. ‘Course the case appears to be solid-state and will need to be pried open. If that doesn’t work, I guess we have the option of taking it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy to see if they can recover the data. No idea how much that’ll cost or what the chances are of them being able to rescue the contents.

Matthew, understandably, is quite upset.

   


Writing Stuff

In a belated “OMG, REALLY??” I discovered that “The Center of the Universe” received an Honorable Mention from The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, which come out last July. How did I miss that?? Um, well, late squeeing is still squeeing. *squee!*

Nobodies and Somebodies

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This month has sped by way faster than I’m equipped to deal with. I’m not ready for it to be November next week!

dude_the is flying in today for his traditional Halloween visit, and the house is messy beyond messiness. Fortunately, he tends to find our domestic dishevel amusing rather than appalling.

Tomorrow, fosteronfilm and I are planning to vote, as it’s my 4×10 day off. It slipped my mind until today that our planned voting day also happens to be Halloween. I mentioned that this month seems to have gotten away from me, didn’t I?

I wonder if it would be deemed inappropriate if I went to our polling place in costume. I suppose that probably depends on what costume I wear…which brings up another distressing dilemma of the “how can it be the end of October already?” variety. I have no idea what I wanna be for Halloween.

   


Writing Stuff

Newly published:
• “Nobodies and Somebodies” is now up at the Aberrant Dreams Podcast, beautifully read by Cori Samuel, who has a way sexy accent. Yes, I’m a total sucker for accents. Go listen, yo!

Vonda N. McIntyre introducing Returning My Sister’s Face

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So I can now announce that the fabulous Vonda N. McIntyre will be writing the introduction for Returning My Sister’s Face!

I met Vonda at the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop which we both attended last year. I’ve been a huge fan of hers since I first read Dreamsnake when I was in high school, and I was all fangirl-a’twitter when I learned she was going to be attending Launch Pad, too. I’m honored and thrilled beyond belief that she agreed to pen the intro. for my collection.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
• Note from Andy Cox that “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” will not be in issue #219 of Interzone as I’d hoped, dangit. But it will be in #220. Yay!
• Contract for “Daughter of Bótù” from Podcastle.
• Actually learned about this a week or so ago but kept forgetting to mention it. It seems that Prime Books is dropping their world mythology anthology series project due to the economic climate and general state of the industry, so the story I wrote that was slated for the second one, Russian Winters, is now orphaned. Fooie. But Japanese Dreams is still a go—at least it was last I heard.

Returning My Sister’s Face cover art

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Got the confirm from norilana that we’re using my first choice of cover art—”Kitsune” by the very talented artist, Ahyicodae—for my collection, Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice:

Isn’t it gorgeous? I fell in love with this piece the moment I saw it. I’m inexpressibly delighted to have it for the cover art. Happiness and hurrays!

Hobkin’s Not-so-big Adventure and Nov-Dec Cricket

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It’s that time of the year again for flu shots, so yesterday on my day off, fosteronfilm and I bopped down to the K-P clinic. While there, I also had my bimonthly test tubes of blood extracted*. The phlebotomist was competent, but I still ended up bruising, and I’m also achy from the flu shot. Meh. I don’t have a problem with needles, but it was a bit of a pincushiony sort of day.

But, for the first time ever, we accidentally left the gate to Hobkin’s area open when we went out. When one of us is home to supervise—which is most of the time—he gets free run, but when we’re out, we lock him in his rover gated area.

We came home to discover that not only had we forgotten to lock the gate, we’d also left the doors to the master bathroom+walk-in closet open—two places where he’s not allowed to go ’cause of the various high potential skunk-induced mischief/danger items therein.

After confirming Hobkin’s whereabouts (napping peacefully in his usual place) and that he wasn’t in any distress, I began a mad-thorough search, checking to see if he’d gotten into anything scary: the sundry meds or first-aid supplies in the cabinet under the sink, the “do not injest” packets of desiccant in shoe boxes, the dental floss in the trash can, etc. And it seems that while he did indeed tip the trash can over, which fortunately had nothing more hazardous in it than a couple tissues, he didn’t riffle through anything else. He didn’t open any of the cabinets or de-box any shoes or anything. Huh. What a good boy! I mean he knows he’s not allowed in those rooms, and it’s obvious he did check them out, but he didn’t get into any of the Eugie-heart-attack-causing mayhem that he could have.

Relief-amazement-relief-amusement-relief.

*I take the immunosuppressant Imuran to keep my lupus/MCTD at bay, and it can cause a drop in white blood count as well as liver toxicity, so I have regular blood tests done to monitor those.

   


Writing Stuff

New Words:
• around 1.7K on The Stupid Novel. Momentum? What momentum?

Received:
• Payment from Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Mangazine for “The Better To…”

Seems that the world’s economy is catching up to the badness of the U.S.’s. When I first made the sale, the same payment amount (in AUD) would’ve netted me about $10 USD more than it did yesterday. But that was when the U.S. dollar was tanking and other currencies were still holding steady. It seems the currency exchange rates between AUD and USD have now equalized out to close to their usual rates. Drat.

I suspect that will also be the case for whenever I get payment from Interzone (paid in GBP) for “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast.” Double drat. Although I’m gun-jumping there, as the story hasn’t even come out yet.
• Shiny contrib. copies of the Nov-Dec ’08 issue of Cricket:

There was much squeeage when I discovered that “Cuhiya’s Husband” is the lead story! As always, the Cricket folks put together a gorgeous product. Absolutely lovely.

The Fix’s 1-Year Anniversary and 2 Reviews of Triangulation: Taking Flight.

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Yesterday marked the 1-year anniversary of launching The Fix online. I wanted to commemorate this milestone with something insightful, stirring, and inspiring, but I ended up cobbling together an unremarkable and stock year-in-review editorial instead.

Not for lack of trying. I made several rewrite passes on it, as I wanted to convey my appreciation for The Fix’s writers and editorial staff who work so hard and with such dedication as well as express how heartened I was by the obvious shared love that these folks have for short form works—not to mention how honored I am to be entrusted with the efforts and contributions of such talented writers—but I ended up rambling and sounding like an award acceptance speech—one of those which gets cut short by the cued music. So I red-lined it to bare bones. Grumf.

   


Writing Stuff

“The Life and Times of Penguin” in Triangulation: Taking Flight received some nice commentary in a pair of reviews:

“The final story ‘Life And Times Of Penguin’ by Eugie Foster about self-aware toys in the hands of a destructive child is both touching and uplifting”
—Geoff Willmetts, SF Crowsnest

“Told from the point of view of a balloon animal penguin, the toy’s brief but eventful life manages to jam in enough existential angst to give Kierkegaard indigestion, an astonishing emotional depth, and yet fully embrace the essentially absurd nature of her story.”
—Martin McGrath, The Fix

Martin also described it as “Toy Story meets Voltaire’s Candide,” which tickled me when I read it, as “Penguin” is my homage to Candide which I wrote not too long after having seen Toy Story for the first time. Candide is one of my favorite satires, managing to deliver its message with humor and wit and, impressively, brevity. Rock on, Voltaire.

Received:
• Shiny contrib. copy of #37 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine:

I have essentially transitioned to reading nearly everything from a computer screen, as I encourage all the editors and publishers who send me review material to provide me with electronic files—faster, cheaper, and greener for all to disseminate. But I still get a visceral thrill from holding a print copy of a publication with one of my stories in it. Go fig.