Received a note from velourmane that my story, “The Tanuki-Kettle,” is now up at Podcastle.
Go listen, yo! mkhobson provides a fabu and funny introduction, and it’s read by the mellifluous tinaconnolly. All hail Podcastle!
Rachel also said that she’d like to buy “Daughter of Bótù” for more podcasting goodness. Happy squeeage all around!
Normally during my daily commute on MARTA’s rail service, I’m head-down-eyes-on-laptop-screen, as I typically use that time to edit, write, or catch up on email. But this morning, Outlook crashed, as it sometimes does, and I needed to reboot in order to restore it. I love my itty-teeny Sony VAIO ultraportable, but even with its RAM upgraded to maximum capacity, it boots sloooow. So I sighed, CTRL-ALT-DELed, and settled down to wait.
I need to remember that occasionally, it can be amusing to look up.
I think the line I take goes by some private high school or academy; now and then I see uniform-wearing young people, always in groups and clusters. During this morning’s commute, I shared my car with three female students, two of them on one seat and a third that went darting down the aisle after the train had commenced moving in order to hover by her classmates, trying to entreat them to move to where she had been sitting so that they could all sit together (the two seemed disinclined).
The movement and the entreaty caught my eye, and I glanced over. My interest in their exchange was short-lived, and I looked away after a second or two. But then I saw that another passenger, an older woman, was scrutinizing them intently. This did pique my interest, as her fixated attention made me wonder what she found so fascinating. But, as I didn’t want to be rude and stare at her, I used the darkened—and therefore highly reflective—windows to obliquely watch her (and the trio of students). I subsequently noticed that someone else, a middle-aged man, was also watching the girls and the older woman via the mirror-like windows.
Yep, watchers-watching-watcher—very spy-versus-spy—and it made me grin. Intrigue and conspiracy aboard the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. *Snerk*
I never did figure out what the older woman watcher was so riveted by, as my laptop finished rebooting, and I got sucked back into my work. But that’s probably for the better. There’s definitely a story there, but I suspect the true story is pretty mundane, and I’m better off letting my imagination indulge in the less likely and more lurid scenarios.
Ended up taking Monday off from work as well due to the fuel shortage afflicting the Southeast. But happily, fosteronfilm went out during the early afternoon on Monday to brave the gas queues so that I might be able to get to work on Tuesday—and he waited for over an hour and was only able to purchase enough for half a tank due to rationing limits. But half a tank should last through this week, and every day that passes brings us closer to the end of this annoying situation.
So yup, five-day weekend. At least I only ended up taking a single vacation day for it; Friday was my scheduled 4×10 day off, and I took Monday as my 4×10 day for this week. But it was still not happy making, and I got very little accomplished.
For some reason, when I was sans day job, all my time at home was work time. If I was awake, I was in my library office working or on the couch working or brewing tea in order to stay awake so I could work more. That essentially meant I customarily worked 14+ hours a day, seven days a week—which isn’t as terrible and sweatshop as it sounds, as I’ve come to accept and embrace my workaholism.
But gradually, now that I’m solidly past my 2nd anniversary at the OLC, I’ve noticed that I’ve been reverting back to how I was during my cubicle monkey days. That is, when I’m home, I’m “off.” My motivation and drive to get anything done bottoms out, whether that work is writing, editing The Fix or the Daily Dragon, keeping up with various correspondences, or just about anything at all that isn’t fluff-recreational reading, brainless surfing, or vacuous movie/television watching. So five days at home is essentially five utterly unproductive days. I actually woke up in a cold sweat Tuesday, freaked out about how many hamsters had gotten fat, bitey, and dropped on my foot in those five days.
Grumf.
Received a note from mroctober sharing the kudos for So Fey* from Kelly Link and Gavin Grant in their write-up in the recently published The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008:
“Steve Berman’s So Fey: Queer Fairy Fictions (Haworth) was one of the stronger themed anthologies of the year. Favorite stories include Holly Black’s heartbreaking ‘The Coat of Stars’ and Eugie Foster’s ‘Year of the Fox,’ as well as work by Craig Laurence Gidney and Laurie J. Marks.”
Of course, I immediately (well, after some delighted squeeing) surfed off to check out whether “Year of the Fox”** had gotten an Honorable Mention (in addition to being mentioned, um, honorably) and was ecstatic to see that yes it had, and also, so had “The Music Company” (published in issue #26 of Hub).
Verily, there was more squeeing.
* The first print run of So Fey from Haworth Press sold out, and the anthology is being reprinted by Prime Books—which reprint, according to Amazon.com, is due out late November.
** “Year of the Fox” will also be in my forthcoming collection from Norilana, Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, coming out in March.
So this week I’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of folks taking MARTA. On Monday, I wondered if there was some convention or event happening in town. But now I’m pretty sure it’s because of the statewide gasoline shortage. Interesting that folks only consider public transportation as an option when their ready fuel supply is threatened. I wonder how many of them will consider continuing to take the train once this “gas crisis” resolves.
On a personal note, things are a wee bit anxious with our gas gauges. I had been planning on fueling up my car the day before the prices jacked up a week+ ago. Bad timing that, but no biggie. I figured I could wait until they came back down to reasonable levels and switched to driving fosteronfilm‘s car, which had about a half tank.
This week, not only haven’t the prices gone down, but it’s getting hard to find a station which hasn’t been drained dry. And the ones which do have gas are also sporting some pretty long queues. I think letting my car idle in line waiting to fill up is a poor use of a scarce resource, so I haven’t braved the stations.
I believe there’s enough in the hubby’s car to make it through this week (and only because I’m working 4×10 hours), but it’s going to be close. Been really easing up on the gas pedal, decreasing my speed overall, and trying to coast to a gentle stop rather than have to brake hard. Making a minor change to my driving habits seems to have had a pretty dramatic effect on how much fuel I’m using—assuming each marker on the quasi-digital fuel level display indicates an equivalent amount, which may not be the case.
Just need to make it home today and to the MARTA station and back tomorrow. I’m expecting things to be back to normal come next week. I hope.
Frustrated with muse and brain, I decided to do a lil (nonscientific) experiment. I intentionally let my other hamsters—editing The Fix, various professional correspondences, etc.—run amok until I am once again verily behind on everything, thereby ramping up my stress level and decreasing the amount of time I’ve got free to commit to writing.
My theory is that in addition to my creativity being hardwired to my stress center, my desire to write will rise in disproportionate measure to the amount of time I’ve got free and clear to do so.
And lo the results:
New Words:
• 2.5K+ words on The Stupid Novel yesterday with ideas pelting me every time I stopped to do something like eat or sleep.
• 1K words on The Stupid Novel this morning (so far) upon awakening at 4AM with a scene that I had to get down.
Yup. It seems that the more my to do list snowballs out of control, the more my desire to write kicks in.
My brain is stupid and I hates it.
jimhines totally made me squee the other day when he pointed me over to the Fantastic Reviews Blog where Aaron Hughes recommended my “Daughter of Bótù” (in the Aug. 2008 Realms of Fantasy) as his Story of the Week pick:
“‘Daughter of Bótù’ is a fairy tale with an Eastern flavor. It is the tale of An-ying, a rabbit transformed into a young woman, who quickly falls in love with a prince. The premise may sound routine but it soon turns into something memorable, thanks to Eugie Foster’s gorgeous prose and to the twists the story takes as the love between An-ying and her prince becomes rather complicated.”
Hungry for more reader/reviewer commentary, I engaged my Google-fu and discovered (courtesy slushmaster) that Rich Horton (ecbatan) had also given my story—as well as Jim’s fabulous “Light of a Thousand Suns”—snaps in Locus:
“Realms of Fantasy’s August issue has several nice, challenging, stories, including a rather shocking look at sacrifice from James Van Pelt, ‘Light of a Thousand Suns,’ and a bittersweet Japanese fantasy, complete with fox and rabbit women, Eugie Foster’s ‘Daughter of Bótù.'”
And lo, there was verily much squeeing.
Received:
• Contract and proof of “The Better To…” which is forthcoming in issue #37 of ASIM.
New Words:
• Around 200 on The Stupid Novel.
Tried to get back into the words-on-the-page swing by doing a read-through/editing pass on what has gone before and managed to get too bogged down in the rewriting/editing. Sigh. Hoping to regain my steam this week. Maybe this year, Dragon*Con will have only derailed me for two weeks instead of the customary month.
Been doing a lot of supplementary reading and immersive muse coaxing, particularly of translated works from Japanese manga and anime. And I think it’s done something unexpected. All this year, I feel like I’ve been stuck in writerly first gear. Even when I achieved flow, I never revved up to that easy cadence of words and imagery that punctuated some of the best stuff I’ve written to date, although the story was battering at me with the ferocity of a thousand hamsters.
I’d grasp and grope for the right word or turn of phrase, often resorting to my thesaurus when I simply couldn’t come up with the words. In the end, I had to plop down some awful, clunky prose just to get the story on the page; consoling myself that, after all, it’s hella easier to rewrite, polish, and edit than it is to create new wordage. I figured I was just getting old, that my lexical recall abilities were beginning to erode along with some other cognitive functions that I’ve noticed aren’t as acute as they were when I was fifteen. Frustrating but less than dire, big picture-wise. But as I was going through The Stupid Novel again, the words were coming back, and I was replacing the clumsy uck I had before with better words, better phrases.
I think reading the oftentimes broken translations, punctuated by some mind-blowingly lyrical-but-peculiar phrases, have helped to jostle me out of first gear. Hope it lasts. The trick is to keep from dropping back into first (or throwing a rod) and then revving up to third.
Vrooom.
Something I neglected mentioning in my D*C08 write-up is that I had two, possibly three, Daily Dragon staff members come down with what they thought was food poisoning. They were out for a shift but came back within a day, shaky but determined not to miss anymore of Dragon*Con or another of their assigned desk shifts.
When I hear “food poisoning,” I tend to figure I’m pretty safe as I don’t eat meat, and most such poisoning episodes can be attributed to meat consumption. What I didn’t add to the equation is that the daughter of another of my Daily Dragon staff was recovering from the flu and that there’s been a lot of flu making the rounds this last month—also that this year the flu shots were pretty ineffective, missing the major strains.
I no longer believe the distress afflicting my staff was due to food poisoning. Rather, my main circle of convention interaction seems instead to have been plague-ridden. And, because my immune system is the stupidest immune system in the world, a fairly mild ailment which knocks regular folks out for a day flattened me for three. (*grumble* stupid human suit *grumble*)
So yeah, I had an uncomfortable weekend, and I’m still a bit wobbly. Also, my voice hasn’t come back yet, although my co-editors and husband assure me that I sound much less like a toad than I did last week. However, it means I got absolutely nothing accomplished all weekend. Ergo, I am playing catch up on my efforts to catch up from Dragon*Con.
Wah!
Received:
• Contrib. copies of The Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction: 13 Prize Winning Tales with my story, “A Nose for Magic.” Shiny cover:
“A Nose for Magic” is one I’m particularly fond of as it was directly inspired by Hobkin. After reading this newest one (he read it in zero draft, but I tend not to subject him to the final versions as I figure he’s already doing “above and beyond” duty as my eternal first reader) fosteronfilm said that I should have a collection of skunk stories published. I laughed, ‘cuz who would want to buy a collection of skunk-inspired short stories? Also, I didn’t think I had written enough of them to fill a collection. But actually, when I opened up my story logs spreadsheet, I think I actually may. But I’m still left with the question, would anyone actually want to buy a collection of skunk and skunk-inspired stories? Hmmm.
Dragon*Con happened. My voice is stripped (again), I seem to have left a passel of brain cells at the Hyatt, I’m still in a sleep deprived fugue state, and I’m trying not to think too hard about everything on my “to do” list. But it was good.
Things that stick out of the blur:
• My talk for Ann: I’ve done better; I’ve done worse. I think I went too fast, but I don’t remember seeing too many glazed-over/bored faces. And I sold out of the books I’d brought with me afterwards, yay!
• My Sunday panel wasn’t what I expected. The panel was publisher-heavy, which tended to veer the discussion more towards marketing, post-publication, and less towards selling to markets (pre-publication). As such, I had less meaningful to say on the topic but found it interesting to listen to the discussion of my fellow panelists.
• I got to meet and powwow with Stephen Segal (Weird Tales‘s Editorial/creative director) over lunch—which he also very graciously treated me to—meet Edmund R. Schubert, at long last—my IGMS editor—and catch up with Josepha Sherman, who I haven’t seen since Launch Pad last year.
• My Daily Dragon staff was fabulous. I decided this year to recruit some editorial assistance. In past years, I’ve focused on getting reporters and therefore looked for folks with writing skills. This year, I actively sought some editorial experience, too (which included recruiting my co-editor at the OLC, full_fathom5), so I could delegate more of my editing responsibilities. That worked out GREAT. I should have done it years ago.
Also, we got a new copier which didn’t jam and which cranked out the print copy in half the time the old one used to, so I could let my graveyard shift leave early, and every morning by the time I came down to the DD room, the print edition was already on delivery rounds. Very nice.
• Got to hang out and spend large chunks of time with several of my DC2K writers group—especially canadiansuzanne, reddherring1955, and Debbie—who were on my staff.
I think I’ll need another week to recover and get caught up (possibly a couple weeks), but all-in-all, I’m pretty pleased with this year’s D*C. Much better than last year’s which was too chaotic and stressful.
Newly published:
• “The Adventures of Manny the Mailmobile” (audio reprint) in Clonepod.
Yes, there has been a dearth of posts. The hamsters are at the gates, and they are bitey.
Dragon*Con is this week (GAH!), and the schedule changes—O the schedule changes. (Did I mention, “GAH!”?) Busy does not begin to describe it. I’ve let The Fix pretty much fall by the wayside this week and last. I’m hoping to publish a glut of reviews this week before the convention starts, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to squeeze in the time.
Various updates:
Hobkin is better, although he still has a bit of a limp. We’ve noticed that he limps less after walking around, so we’ve been trying to encourage him to move more—which is about as effective as one might expect. But he’s much better, which is a great relief.
dude_the flew in this weekend, and fosteronfilm immediately put him to work putting together bumpers, intros, and clips for the D*C Independent Film Festival. They were up all night and were still working when I woke up this morning (@5AM) trying to get aspect ratios to behave—and making various groaning and swearing noises. Poor Paul actually fell asleep wedged between two couch cushions with his laptop still encoding a clip.
Matthew’s birthday was last Friday. It was pretty low key. I made him a chocolate cream pie (his favorite) and got him a teragigabyte external hard drive, which he immediately put to film festival use.
I’ve got far fewer guest duties at Dragon*Con than last year, which is intentional; last year I was so busy and stressed out, I didn’t really enjoy the convention. I decided this year I wouldn’t over-schedule myself unto oblivion so I could try to have a little fun.
My schedule:
•Fri (8/29) Noon: Reprising my guest lecture for Ann Crispin’s Beginner Writers Workshop, “Marketing Short Fiction” Marietta (Hyatt).
•Sun (8/31) 5:30PM: “Writing for Small Presses and Magazines” with Mur Lafferty, Deborah Smith, and Lee Martindale, Manila/Singapore/Hong Kong (Hyatt).
And that’s it. Hallelujah! If anyone wants to swing by to say “hi,” I’ll likely be chained to my desk at Daily Dragon Headquarters. This year, we’ve moved to Chicago C-F (Exhibit Level) in the Hyatt.
New Words:
• Managed to get around 3K more words on Taijiya before I had to stop and devote myself to Dragon*Con prep, bringing my total count to 30.5K. Definitely not at zero draft, but at least I hit the 30K mark.
Received:
• 5-day Sale of “A Box of Spoons” to a new anthology project edited by Lee Harris (editor of Hub). Lee emailed me about a month ago inviting me to submit to one of two anthologies he’s editing that are coming out next year (in January and July). The publisher is a major one, although the specifics are still under wraps, and the pay is pro, so I’m verily stoked.
• Edits from Aeon of “Black Swan, White Swan” with a few requested tweaks. Last week. In the midst of Dragon*Con chaos. Somehow I managed to squeeze in the (very) minor rewrites and sent it off on Saturday. Very much looking forward to issue #15, which is due out any day now.
Thanks to everyone who expressed concern and well-wishes about Hobkin. He’s still limping, but both fosteronfilm and I think he’s better today than he was on Tuesday. We didn’t end up taking him to the vet, as what they’d probably want to do is take an x-ray, and I’m pretty sure it’s a soft tissue injury, and the x-ray procedure (the whole vet experience, actually) would undoubtedly agitate him which would risk aggrevating his injury. But we did call his godmother—the person he stays with when we’re out of town or at Dragon*Con—and got some suggestions for treatment.
It seems that a lot of domesticated skunks suffer from hip dysplasia, which is not surprising considering that most of them are from a single place which is undoubtedly causing some inbreeding issues. Although Hobkin is notably not from there, so I’m hoping that this isn’t hip dysplasia manifesting.
I do think it’s likely that this might be a sign of arthritis—although I don’t believe it’s the sole culprit, here. Hobkin is six years old, officially classified as a “senior” skunk, and I’ve noticed particularly with this season’s coat blowing* that there’s a lot more white around his muzzle and paws than a couple years ago. It sort of freaks me out thinking of our little guy as being “old.” I’m clinging to the hope that he’ll be one of the pet skunks who live a couple decades, but I know that’s unlikely. I also know that it’s inevitable that one day he will break my heart—the unavoidable consequence of loving someone who has a significantly shorter life expectancy than we do. It’s something I try not to dwell upon much, but this (baffling) injury has sort of brought that to the forefront of my mind.
Going to continue trying not to dwell upon that now . . .
*My GAWD there’s skunk fur everywhere! My car is coated in skunk fur, and that was only from one back and forth to his godmother’s last week. I’m worried that our vacuum cleaner is going to belly up from choking on skunk fur!
New Words:
• around 200 on Taijiya. Did some clean-up, a bit of bridging, and some culling of words, so was a bit more productive than that count shows. Total words: 27.1K.
Received:
• Contrib. copies of Triangulation: Taking Flight with my (reprint) story, “The Life and Times of Penguin.”
Shiny cover:
So Hobkin started limping last night. He was curled up next to me on the couch napping after dinner, he hopped down to use the litter pan–and by “hopped” I mean he casually crawled down the “doggie” steps–and fosteronfilm called me over ’cause he saw that Hobkin was wobbling and unsteady. After some anxious observation, we determined that he’s favoring his left hind leg. We think. It’s hard to gauge with 100% certainty exactly which side is the culprit on a critter with such stumpy legs. But I also tried to do a check of his “resistance” strength on both hind legs by picking him up and getting him to push at my hand with each paw, and his left was much weaker than his right. I also checked to see if anything seemed broken or dislocated, and I think we’re okay on that front, too.
We’re not sure what happened. Someone’s with him just about 24×7, so it’s unlikely that he injured himself earlier yesterday without us seeing. And he was fine when he climbed up beside me. I wasn’t watching him when he left to use the bathroom, but he didn’t make any noise or give any sign of hurting himself as he was leaving; I would have noticed that. The only thing we can figure is that he injured his hind leg while he was asleep . . . which is rather baffling.
Unsurprisingly, I was totally and utterly freaking out last night. When we had ferrets, one of the first overt signs of the onset of neurological or other major medical problems was weak hind legs. But Hobkin’s appetite is fine. He’s using the litter pan fine; actually, I’m pretty amazed at how good he’s being on that front, considering he’s limping. And he doesn’t appear to be in pain. Although it’s hard to evaluate pain in a skunk. Hobkin’s almost completely silent, except for a couple notable occasions when he’s been either frightened or angry. I don’t know if skunks vocalize when they’re in distress like a dog or keep quiet like a cat. I’m inclined to bet the latter.
Going to see how he does today, and if he doesn’t show improvement or looks to be getting worse, then it’s off to the vet’s. He was still limping this morning when he got up for breakfast, and I had to stifle an impulse to rush him to the vet today. But the vet is always a traumatic experience for the little guy, and if he’s strained or pulled a muscle, it’s possible he’ll hurt himself worse from vet-related agitation.
Poor Hobkin! Wah!
Was up north visiting the mom-in-law last week. Didn’t get nearly as much done as I had planned to (I never do; I don’t know why I keep expecting to be productive when I’m there). And got zero words down on the novel. @%&^*! Well, I did edit a load of Dragon*Con guest bios for the program book. And, with the much appreciated editorial assistance of elemess, full_fathom5, and terracinque, we finished all 400+ of them. So I did get some stuff done.
New Words:
• 2.5K on The Stupid Novel since we got back from Illinois. Working title: Taijiya. Total words: 26.9K.
It is now officially the most words I’ve managed to get down on a single work of fiction. It’s unlikely that I’ll be able to make zero draft as I’m rapidly hitting the point where I’m going to have to drop everything that isn’t Dragon*Con-related. But I’d like to make 30K. 40K, of course, would be better. . .
Received:
• Notice from the fine folks at Aeon that my story, “Black Swan, White Swan,” will be in the upcoming issue, #15. Also, they listed me on the cover (*squee!*):
