Category Archives: LJ

Transcriptase: author response to Helix controvery

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So yeah, extended radio silence here. My bad. I guess “been busy” doesn’t quite cover it.

Among the other projects I’ve been frantically plugging away at, I’ve been putting a lot of my time into Transcriptase, which is a group response to the recent Helix controversy from a number of the authors published there (including Elizabeth Barrette, Beth Bernobich, Maya Bohnhoff, Sara Genge, Samantha Henderson, Janis Ian, N.K. Jemisin, Vylar Kaftan, Ann Leckie, Yoon Ha Lee, Margaret Ronald, Jennifer Pelland, Vaughan Stanger, and Rachel Swirsky). Kudos belong to vylar-kaftan for bringing us together.

If you’re not familiar with what’s been happening, we’ve put together a statement and history, and several authors have written their own individual statements. Transcriptase also hosts our fiction and poetry originally published at Helix.

Go read.

   


Writing Stuff

New Words:
• 18K on the Stupid Novel in the last three weeks. Total words: 24.4K. And actually, it’s a different Stupid Novel. I’m taking “Honor is a Game Mortals Play,” my short story published in the DAW anthology Heroes in Training, and extending it into a novel. My muse, she is galvanized. The words and ideas are flowing so fast and furious, I can’t type them fast enough. I wonder if there’s any chance I can get this into zero draft by Dragon*Con? Probably not, but I’m trying.

I’m always the most prolific and inspired when I have too many things on my plate. fosteronfilm and I have been speculating that my creativity is hardwired to my stress center.

Stupid brain.

Club 100 for Writers: 34

Elephant oven mitt and review by Lois Tilton of “A Thread of Silk” in IROSF

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Thanks to amysisson‘s advice to try eBay in my quest for animal oven mitts, I purchased a new elephant-shaped oven mitt to replace the killer whale ones who we’ve retired. Just in time, too. fosteronfilm has been braving the dense and thorny hazards of our backyard to pick the wild blackberries that grow there. Last year’s drought decimated our harvest, and we barely had enough for a single pie. This year’s, though not as bountiful as previous years, is going to be much better. We’ve already got enough for one blackberry pie, possibly two, and the season’s nowhere near over.


*squee!* Although I don’t recall elephants having such fierce looking canines.

   


Writing Stuff

A new issue of IROSF came out yesterday, and I was happy-giddy to see that Lois Tilton had given a “Recommended” review to “A Thread of Silk”:

“While this tale is grounded in the well-known story of Taira no Masakado, Foster skillfully slips this variation in between the cracks of the historical account and the subsequent legends, warping it in a different direction. The ending of the frame story delivers a strong final twist”

! Read the whole thing here.

New Words:
• 200 on the Sudanese Pied Piper story. Not my most productive day.

Club 100 for Writers: 14

Wall-E, Planetary Stories/Pulp Spirit

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Went to see WALL•E on Sunday. I was worried that it wouldn’t hold up to all the hype and that I would be disappointed, but it was an utterly charming, clever, and visually lush movie. Loved it. The homages to 2001 had me hooting. And I’m both awed and impressed by how much personality and humor they managed to squeeze into animated ‘droids. I mean, I’m extremely easy when it comes to anthropomorphic empathy*, but they evoked an extraordinary amount of emotion and character with only a pair of eyes and “body” language in both Eve and Wall•E, not to mention the host of supporting cast of ‘bots which didn’t always even have eyes.

Definitely one of the top Pixar productions in my book (and I’m a huge fan of Pixar), up there with The Incredibles and Ratatouille. I’ve heard a couple critics say that they think the environmental message was delivered too heavily, but I don’t agree. Yes, it was blatant and upfront, but at the same time, it didn’t feel preachy. ‘Course I’m pretty green, so I think concern for the environment is a good attitude for kids (and everyone else for that matter) to internalize.

(As an addendum, I also really enjoyed the short, “Presto,” which ran before it, too. Humor a la classic Looney Toons with stepped up Pixar animation and a clever conceit.)

Roger Ebert said in his review of WALL•E:
“This story told in a different style and with a realistic look could have been a great science-fiction film. For that matter, maybe it is.”

I definitely think WALL•E qualifies as great science fiction.

As a tangential segue, I find it interesting that there’s an attitude which assumes that animated works somehow have less merit or meaning purely due to their being animated and/or that relegates them to the sole province of children’s entertainment. I’m not saying Ebert is doing that here, although I’m not saying he’s not either. But I’ve noticed with fosteronfilm‘s mom that she can’t seem to accept the notion that animated works are suitable entertainment fare for adults. She loves musicals and has a decided ’50s sensibility and taste in movies, and we’ve thought that a lot of the modern animated features would appeal to her. We’ve tried to turn her on to some of them, like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin—titles which have great songs as well as solid and classic storytelling—but she’s never been interested in them. Makes me wonder if it’s an age/generational thing.

*We’ve got a couple “retired” killer whale-shaped oven mitts which are singed, stained, and worn through in places that I can’t conceive of ever throwing out. Over the years, fosteronfilm and I have imbued them with so much personality—they used to complain about their jobs, screaming and ouching when we used them to pull things from the oven, and suchlike—that it feels wrong to even consider just dumping them in the garbage. I figure they’ve earned a lazy retirement in the towel drawer.

   


Writing Stuff

I met Jerry Page back in early 2006 at the Aberrant Dreams signing, and we’ve been corresponding since. (I’ve also managed to persuade him to write reviews for The Fix.) He edits the fanzine Pulp Spirit which is a companion publication to Planetary Stories. Anyhoo, we were emailing back and forth, and I commented about a column he wrote and the general contents of the last issue of Planetary Stories/Pulp Spirit. Jerry asked whether he could print my remarks in their letter column, “From the Vibrating Ether.” Of course I said he could, but I didn’t realize that they also had an ongoing “best letter to the editor” contest. Hee. My letter won. I’m getting an original, signed Mark Fults illustration (#1 at the bottom of the contest page). Sweet.

Received:
• 25-day personal pass from Podcastle from Rachel (velourmane) on a reprint accompanied by a request for me to submit a different story for them to consider which she read and liked. Works for me! Crossing my fingers that the rest of their slush committee likes it too.
• 61-day kindly pass from Withersin with invite to submit again.

New Words:
• 1000 on the SF WiP.
• 2000 on a new story, sort of a Pied Piper retelling inspired by the Lost Boys of Sudan.

Yeah, I’m all fragmented with what feels like half a dozen WiPs hanging about with none of them completed. I’ve been focusing on getting the writing gears in working order again, getting words on the page, no matter what those words are or whether I finish something. I felt like I needed to get back in the habit of regular writing before I could re-establish a “must finish story” routine. But I think it’s time to roll up my sleeves and get to “The End” on something. Preferably several somethings.

Club 100 for Writers: 13

Poll results and SFWA public service announcement: Fraudulant writing contest

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Thanks to everyone who responded to my “What Generation are You?” poll. As I figured, most folks who read my LJ appear to be Gen Xers (83 responses) with only a few Boomers (4), but I was interested to see that there were more Jonesers (32) than Millenials (17). Inteerezzting.

Now for something completely different, a public service announcement from the SFWA:

A bogus contest has been advertised on craigslist and elsewhere which is supposedly being run by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. SFWA has nothing to do with it, and it has all the earmarks of fraud.

In response to a cease and desist letter, this person has apologized and says that the posts will be removed from craigslist but he/she doesn’t know how to remove them from flixer. He/she claims that he will never do it again. SFWA and Writer Beware are monitoring the situation.

SFWA never runs writing contests of this sort, and is not associated with this contest in any way. If you find any other instances of this solicitation, please contact Michael Capobianco, the President of SFWA (email address can be found at the link above).

See the press release from the SFWA for more information, and also, Victoria Strauss has blogged about this contest on the Writers Beware blog.

While most of the places advertising this have taken down the ad, it’s likely that there are still many writers who haven’t gotten the news and, attracted by the promise of big money prizes and the prospect of publication in a prestigious anthology, may be intending to submit. Please spread the word so that folks don’t get taken by this scam.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
• Galleys of “A Nose for Magic” from the Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction and “The Life and Times of Penguin” from the Triangulation: Taking Flight anthology.
• Payment from Cricket for “The Raven’s Brocade” in their December issue and from Drabblecast for “The Wiggly People.”

New Words:
• 1150 on the SF WiP.

Club 100 for Writers: 6

“What generation are you?” poll and “The Wiggly People” at Drabblecast.

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Doing research for a new story which was inspired in part by some articles and studies on Generation X (born approximately between 1965-1980), Generation Y/the Millennials (born ~1981-1997), the Baby Boomers (born ~1946-1964), and Generation Jones—a sort of between generation wedged between late Boomers and early Xers containing folks born ~1954-1964 who share a lot of sociocultural traits with Gen X but who fall within the demographic of Boomers and who also share some cultural influences and hallmarks with them.

The perception is that bloggers and folks who read blogs tend to be Gen Yers/Millennials, “digital natives” who’ve had the benefits of and been around digital technology and the Internet for their whole lives. It made me curious to see where y’all fell.

So herein my completely unscientific poll:

   


Writing Stuff

I realized that I’ve dropped all my writing hamsters, and they’ve scampered to parts unknown. The only fiction I’ve completed this year is the story I started last year for Russian Winters, and I suspect the only reason I managed to wring “the end” out of it is because I had a deadline—which was extended three months, to boot. Session ended two months ago; I’ve wasted a lot of time when I should have been writing angsting about not writing. So I’m taking a leaf from my own book to remind myself that One Hamster is Still Juggling, and I’m starting up Club 100 for Writers again:
Ergo: 3

New Words:
• 800 on new SF story, working title “NANI.” It’s been a while since I did science fiction; I was pretty exclusively focused on fantasy last year. It feels good to stretch my science-geek writerly muscles, although I’m chagrined at how weak and flabby they are. This story will be grounded in social and developmental psychology, which very much plays to my academic background, but I’m finding I have to look up some really basic stuff ’cause I can only remember shadowy concepts and vague theories, and I’m needing specifics. It’s a bit distressing to realize how much information I used to have readily available for speedy retrieval and how little remains accessible without some massive joggling. My brain needs a better indexing system.

Received:
• Fan mail from a couple Cricket readers (forwarded to me by the fabu folks of Carus Publishing) for “When Shakko Did Not Lie” and “The Tanuki-Kettle.”

The first, from a 10-year-old girl, said:
“I have been getting this magazine for two years. I think it is the best magazine ever!!!!…My favorite story was ‘The Tanuki Kettle’ (July 2007). I also liked ‘When Shakko Did Not Lie’…I really like stories about nature and animals.”

And the second, from a boy (no age specified), said:
“I think you mag is better than any T.V. show or magazine I’ve ever heard of. Also in the January 2008 issue the story ‘When Shakko Did Not Lie’ is an excellent choice for Cricket. I would like it if you put more of that kind of story in your mag.”

I think I melted into a big pile of “awww!” after reading those. And to top it off, the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Cricket, Marianne Carus, scribbled a line at the bottom of the second letter: “Those were great stories! My favorites, too.”

*squee!*

Published:
• “The Wiggly People” (audio reprint) in Drabblecast. Well, it’s not up yet, actually, but Norm Sherman, the editor/publisher dropped me a note on Monday saying it would go up today, so I’ve been hanging around the site, hitting F5 compulsively.

[Edit: It’s up now! Go listen!]

Hot skunk, “A Thread of Silk,” Part 2 of “Writing Multicultural Fiction for Children”

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Hobkin doesn’t like the heat. It makes him grumpy and stompy and prone to tearing about the house huffing at things. We were hoping to be able to hold off on turning on the air conditioning for a little while longer, but ended up switching it on this weekend. I feel sorry for the little guy, after all he’s got a fur coat on, and I don’t think he can tolerate as much heat as we can—especially since he doesn’t drink water.

We’ve now switched ISPs, and not only is our connection speed noticeably faster, but part of the package deal was switching from our Dish TV to AT&T’s cable—with a DVR thrown in. Really loving the DVR! I can record cartoons (from my computer, even!) and save them up to watch on weekend mornings. Rah!

   


Writing Stuff

Published:
• Part 2 of “Writing Multicultural Fiction for Children” (nonfiction reprint) is now up at Absolute Write.
• “A Thread of Silk” is now up in the June, 2008, issue of Baen’s Universe with illustrations by Anthony Hochrein.


I’ve waited a looong time for this one to see print. I subbed this right before Baen’s was taking an extended slush holiday, resulting in unusually long RTs. But the wait was worth it.

Writers for Relief 2, Daughter of Bótù, Caesar’s Ghost, Manny the Mailmobile

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*REMINDER: We’re switching ISPs. My Comcast email address will be defunct as of tomorrow. Please use my eugiefoster.com or gmail addresses from now on!

Over the 4-day (!) Memorial Day weekend (yay 4×10!*), we resolved a couple hardware issues:
• Fixed the hibernation problem my laptop was having after I upgraded my RAM. A bit of research showed me that the glitch seemed to be a common one in XP machines with over 1GB of RAM. Just had to download and install XP Service Pack 3, and voilà, all good.
• Replaced the battery in my car. Y’know, I find it to be a very strange thing to discover that one’s car won’t start when the temperature’s above 70 degrees F. I’m accustomed to it happening in the subzero season in the Midwest, but I guess I don’t expect it here in Georgia in summer. Didn’t even leave the headlights on or the overhead or anything.

We took it to the Honda dealership on the off chance that it was the alternator and not just the battery. Just the battery, though, thank goodness; apparently one of the cells went bad.

They also wanted to hit us up for a 90-mile service and a routine maintenance/oil-change/check-up (since we’re overdue). The former would’ve included changing the timing belt, which braced fosteronfilm, at least, for a scary-shock estimate. But even so, the bottom line they trotted up made both of us go bug-eyed: $1500. $1K for the 90-mile-timing-belt-service and $500 for the routine maintenance, etc.

So yeah, we told them “no can do, just the battery, please.” We’ll take it to a lube-n-go place for the oil change, and I’m fully prepared to use the old timing belt until it dies, thank-you-very-much. The only thing I’m a little worried about is that my SRS (the airbag system) warning light has been on for a while, and I’d like to have the sensor checked. If it’s the seatbelt, both the check and fix would be covered under Honda’s warranty. But if it’s the SRS system, it’s not, and we’d have to eat the $190 appraisal as well as whatever it’d cost to get it fixed. It’s rather a lot to gamble on warranty vs. no warranty, but at the same time, the airbag wouldn’t deploy right now in an accident, which really makes me nervous.

I really don’t get along well with hardware stuff. It’s expensive, capricious, and baffling. Sigh.

*Another benefit from my new 4×10 workweek: In addition to not having to make the drive to the train station and back on my day off and thereby saving on my overall gasoline use, since I’m leaving earlier in the morning and coming back later in the evening, the traffic is better—much better in the morning and slightly better in the evening. I don’t have enough data points to know for sure exactly how much time I’m shaving off my daily commute, but I’d estimate right now that it’s something like half an hour. Sweet.

   


Writing Stuff

New Words:
• -250. Yes, that’s a negative number. There was a lot of cutting and tightening. But the fork’s in, and “Morozko,” retitled to “Beautiful Winter,” is done done done and sent off to market. Huzzah.

Uber thanks go to marshall-payne for the speedy and thorough crit.

Published:
• “Caesar’s Ghost” (audio reprint) in Pseudopod. catrambo read it, and I think she did a stellar job. Go listen! There are ferrets.

Received:
• Contrib. copies of the Aug. 2008 Realms of Fantasy with my story, “Daughter of Bótù,” in it. Shiny!
• 40-day SALE of “The Adventures of Manny the Mailmobile” (audio reprint) to the Clonepod podcast. Woot!
• A note from daveybeaucham that Writers for Relief 2 (with my story, “Running on Two Legs”) is now available for pre-order. This is the second in his charity anthology series, this one to benefit the Bay Area Food Bank (the first was to benefit the survivors of Hurricane Katrina). Other contributors include Todd McCaffrey, A.C. Crispin and Christie Golden, Elizabeth Blue, David Drake, Mur Lafferty, Tony Ruggiero, and many others. Great fiction for a great cause!

Comcast kicked to the curb

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So we’re finally switching our ISP from Comcrap.

Between the appallingly bad customer service, the increasingly slow connection speeds, the frequent outages, and their throttling/blocking of peer-to-peer traffic, not to mention the premium rates they charge for this shoddy service, I’ve been ready to kick them to the curb for ages. But we’ve been holding off because 1. We wanted to ensure that the ISP we switch to will have broadband speeds comparable to what we’re getting now (easier and easier to achieve as our connection speeds continued to decay to near-dial-up slowness) 2. We were hoping to take advantage of a juicy “switch to us!” incentive deal and 3. It’s a ginormous pain to change email addresses, and we’ve wanted to gradually migrate away from our ISP email accounts.

The stars aligned, the cosmos gave its nod of approval, and lo, our new ISP destiny is now. Or rather, the end of this month.

Ergo, anyone who’s still using my old Comcast email address, it’s going to be deactivated in a week. Please update your address books accordingly and send all future emails to either my eugiefoster.com domain email or my gmail address.

   


Writing Stuff

I’m absolutely loving my new 4×10 work hours. Not only am I pleased as punch to have an extra day off each week, but I’m also tickled to have the extra hours per day at work. I can get so much more done! I’ve written more this week than I have since session ended, which means this is the most productive I’ve been all year.

New Words:
• It’s hard to say. There was a lot of cutting, furious typing, and then more cutting. But I’ve got a handle on the WiP (the Russian folktale) where before I was vaguely unsatisfied with it. It’s currently at 6,250 words, and I anticipate hitting zero draft today or tomorrow. Huzzah.

Received/Published:
• Fan mail from school children in China (!) for “The Tax Collector’s Cow” in the June, 2006, Spider, forwarded along to me by the good folks of Carus Publishing. Utterly squee-some. I love getting fan mail, of course, but I especially love hearing from my young readers.
• Contrib. copy of The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 2: Provocative essays on feminism, race, revolution, and the future. velourmane invited me to contribute my thoughts on dealing with racist and sexist material in writers workshops for this project last year, which of course I was delighted to do, and I’d completely forgotten about it. I also didn’t realize (or had totally forgotten) that it would be a gorgeous trade paperback and that I’d be getting a contrib. copy. Receiving an unexpected contrib. copy is like finding candy, a special surprise treat.
• Note from the folks at Aberrant Dreams asking me if they could buy audio rights for “Nobodies and Somebodies” (which they published in Summer, 2006, in issue #8) for a new audio venture they’re putting together. Of course I said “yes.” A sale out of the blue is even better than found candy!

Twiddling about this week

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Still floating high about selling Returning My Sister’s Face to Norilana. Thanks for the deluge of congrats!

Things I’ve done this week:

• Sold my flash story “The Wiggly People” (audio reprint) to Drabblecast.
• Seen part 1 of my article, “Writing Multicultural Fiction for Children,” reprinted at Absolute Write.
• Decided that I will try out the new flexible work hours being implemented at work. Starting next week, I’m going 4×10 (10-hour days, 4-day weeks). I used to work 9×80 at my previous job (three-day weekend every other week), which was nice, but I’m wondering if a 10-hour workday might be a bit long.
• Received, signed, and sent back contracts from Norilana, the Triangulation: Taking Flight anthology, and Drabblecast and looked over galleys from the Killers anthology and Baen’s Universe.
• Broke then fixed the Daily Dragon website, giving myself a crash course in PHPMyAdmin in the process.
• Added 1 GB of RAM to my VAIO laptop, upgrading it from its original 512 MB to 1.5 GB. Very stressful, and in the end, I needed fosteronfilm to seat it properly for me; I don’t get along well with hardware. But my laptop is speedy-fast now…although the hibernation function keeps going wonky.
• Joined Facebook (friend me if you’ve got an account!).

Things I haven’t done this week:

• Write.

So yeah, not a productive week…

Norilana Books buys Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice

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Got the most incredible, fabulous, wonderful news! Norilana Books—founded and owned by the talented and lovely Vera Nazarian (norilana) is buying my short story collection, Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice.

The collection will contain a selection of my Far Eastern fantasy stories originally published in venues including Realms of Fantasy, Paradox, and Baen’s Universe and will be released in both hard cover and trade paperback. The tentative hard cover release date is first quarter 2009 with the trade paperback to follow three months after.

*squee!*

A bit of blurbage to whet the appetite:

Enchantment, peril, and romance pervade the shadowy Far East, from the elegant throne room of the emperor’s palace to the humble tea house of a peasant village. These are stories of adventure and magic from the Orient: the maiden who encounters an oni demon in the forest, the bride who discovers her mother-in-law is a fox woman, the samurai who must appease his sister’s angry ghost. Where luck can be found in a jade locket, and dark and light are two sides of harmony, therein lies the stuff of legend.