Category Archives: LJ

Session 2008 Day 34.25: a sale to Aeon and annoyance with the USPS homeland security policy

By | |
12 Comments

Had a quiet Easter weekend with fosteronfilm and Hobkin. Stayed in, cuddled a skunk, and watched Donnie Darko. Hey, there was a bunny in it.

The Georgia legislature is in adjournment until Thursday—which will be Day 35 of this session. It’s been relatively quiet at work, giving me a chance to play catch-up, but it seems that as soon as I start making headway in one area, stuff starts piling up in another. I can’t seem to get my email down to less than 50 “needs response” notes, some of which are egregiously late, as I have a terrible habit of responding to email in last-in-first-out order rather than first-in-first-out as I ought. It feels a bit like using a tablespoon to bail out a leaky boat…that’s headed into a waterfall…in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Also, I’m miffed with the USPS. Apparently, a recent homeland security policy of theirs now mandates that all stamped mail which weighs 13oz or more must be dropped off at a post office rather than mailed from a residential mailbox. Because, of course, the folks who work the counter at the post office will have a much better detection system than my local letter carrier when it comes to terrorist mailings of over 13 ounces.

The thing is, I’ve got a no-frills postal scale at home, and my standard operating system is to stock up on various denominations of stamps so that I can disseminate review items for The Fix as I get them*, without having to set aside time to drive back and forth to the post office. But now, I can’t do that with any material that’s heavier than 13oz, like, oh, say, most trade paperbacks and glossy magazines. ARGH!

The only thing that’s saving me from really pulling my hair out is that I’ve been encouraging editors/publishers for the last several years to send me electronic files instead of paper. So now, the majority of the review material I receive is electronic. But I still get enough hard copies that this is going to be a major inconvenience and, with fuel prices being what they are, an annoying expense.

Stupid USPS.

In other news, I’ve migrated my eugiefoster.com website to PHP, specifically WordPress. My experience with webmastering and helming The Fix has really sold me on the application, even though I don’t update my homepage with anything like blog-like frequency. The flexibility of being able to make site-wide changes easily as well as the browser-based admin interface really appeals. Now I can chuck FrontPage—which always inserts gobs of junk into my code that requires clean-up—and not have to worry about learning DreamWeaver. Shiny.

*I also use it for my paper submissions, but there’ve been fewer of those over the years as more and more markets accept submissions via email.

   


Writing Stuff

Hmm. Well, it seems that “Daughter of Botu” is not, as it turns out, going to be in the June issue of Realms of Fantasy. Not a problem, but now I’m wondering which issue it’s slated for. Did I misread my contract and it said June 2009 instead of June 2008? Or was it just bumped to next issue or something? Must remember to check that when I get a chance.

Received:
• 98-day SALE of “Black Swan, White Swan” to Aeon. Woohoo! I’ve been trying to break into these folks since they premiered. Delighted that this story will have such a wonderful home.

But I’m also all fretty. The acceptance email indicated that their contract should have been attached to it, but it wasn’t. I sent a “please resend contract?” email last week, as soon as I got their acceptance, but haven’t heard back, and I even succumbed to my twitchy writerness and sent a follow-up from a different email address yesterday. I’m sure it’s that they’re very busy—and probably not that they’ve changed their minds, seen that it was a brief bout of insanity that prompted them to receive positively something I wrote, and are trying to come up with a kind way of telling me never again to darken their virtual doorstep with my prose—but my on-again/off-again email reliability issues have really ramped up my writerly trepidation and apprehension.
• Note from Drabblecast that their production of “The Tiger Fortune Princess” is scheduled to go up this Wednesday, huzzah! Also that they’re passing on another submission I sent them, pook.
• Email from the editor/publisher of Fantasist Enterprises:

Fantasist Enterprises Needs Your Help

When I started Fantasist Enterprises almost ten years ago, I had three major goals in mind: 1) Create new markets for short fantasy fiction. 2) Help re-grow the popularity of the short story as a literary form. 3) Bring illustrations back to literature in the artistic marriage that the Pre-Raphaelites so championed.

I’ve certainly learned a lot since those early days, in respect to writing and editing, art directing, and running a publishing company. I’ve also met numerous friends, mentors, and students over the years—something that is infinitely valuable. It has been a joy to work with so many talented writers and artists.

Now FE and I need your help. We need to raise awareness of the company and sell more books and art in order to complete our upcoming projects and break exciting new ground in the genre. You can help us reach our goal in many ways.

1) Spread the Word . . .

. . . through your own words: If you have read our books and enjoyed them, please recommend them to your friends. Consider posting reviews on Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, and anywhere else that book reviews are welcome.

. . . with banners: Add a little visual flair to your website, blog, or MySpace/FaceBook page with FE banners. Go to our banners page for directions on how to add them to your page.

. . . by wearing T-Shirts: Want some FE art on your person? Then check out our T-shirts on our swag page

2) Buy a Book or Art

Buy an FE book through your favorite book retailer or direct from us at www.FEBooks.net, where we are running some specials for a limited time (see below). The stunning art found in our books is available exclusively on our website.

DEAL 1: While supplies last, purchase both FANTASTICAL VISIONS I & II for a total of $12.00.

Yes, FE and I were still cutting our teeth on those publications, but there are some memorable stories to be found within their pages. And soon, they’ll be collector’s items!

DEAL 2: Purchase both CLOAKED IN SHADOW & MODERN MAGIC for a total of $24.75.

DEAL 3: BASH DOWN THE DOOR AND SLICE OPEN THE BADGUY is on sale for $12.75.

So yeah, not only do I support small presses, especially ones that publish short fiction, but these folks had the excellent taste to publish “Souls of Living Wood” in their Modern Magic anthology and “Mistress Fortune Favors the Unlucky” in Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy, and they’ll be publishing “Megumi’s Fire” in their forthcoming Paper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel. So buy a book, y’all! Pleeeease?

Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy

Modern Magic

Session 2008 Day 31.5: Atlanta weather and return of the prodigal laptop

By | |
4 Comments

The tornado was a nonevent for us. Didn’t even realize one had ripped through downtown Atlanta until we got calls from fosteronfilm‘s mother worried about our safety. Up north where we are, we got dark skies and thunderstorms, but no twister action. The hail on Saturday was a bit more dramatic, but we seem to have withstood that without any damage, too.

And, my laptop’s back, my laptop’s back! Yay! It languished for over a month in the shop, and in that time my organizational system fell into total disarray. My to-do list reached profoundly scary proportions, and after I finished re-loading my system and trying to sort through my emails, I’d flagged nearly 100 emails as “needs response.”

While I had a back-up system to work on and check email from while my VAIO was gone, it’s a huge behemoth of a machine that I can’t easily transport back and forth on the train. Plus, it doesn’t have the battery life that my ultra-portable VAIO does, making it useless by midday. So I ended up leaving it at home and checking email from a browser interface at work—and therefore not having my address book or sent history or received archives at hand. And without a main system as the hub repository for all my data, I ended up accumulating duplicates and putting off items or having information scattered across multiple systems in different versions. What a mess.

But my laptop’s back home now, and I’ve been wading through the pile-up. As of this morning, I’m down to 60 emails flagged, and my files are more or less synced up. Whew. I’m worried that some stuff may have gotten lost in the cracks; I tried to err on the side of duplication rather than deletion, but then I tried to keep the duplicates manageable and…glargh. I hope to have everything shipshape by the end of this week, legislature obliging, of course.

I missed my little VAIO. A lot.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
• 125-day SALE of “The Better To…” to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, slated for #38—which I believe will be their October issue.
• 91-day very glowing and personal rejection from Space & Time. It got held until the final round, but…sigh.
• Contract from Drabblecast for “The Tiger Fortune Princess.”
• Payment from Realms of Fantasy for “Daugher of Bótù,” which I believe will be coming out in their next (June) issue.

Session 2008 Day 29.5

By | |
2 Comments

We’re in the home stretch. The legislature has established their schedule through Day 38, which will be the 27th of this month. That means they’ll most likely adjourn sine die the first week of April, hopefully April 1 or 2, which is much earlier than last year, with sine die falling on the 20th.

Good thing, too. I’ve switched to taking my Imuran in the A.M. with breakfast instead of at night with dinner because the schedule for my evening meals is all thrown off with session. There have been nights when I’ve had to skip dinner altogether and just make due with snacking at my desk between bills—resulting in me forgetting to take my meds. This brought on a (thankfully very minor*) flare-up last month, and I realized I needed to swap my pill-taking time so it could coincide with what’s left of my daily routine. But taking it in the morning often makes me a bit queasy, which it doesn’t do at night ’cause I usually take it with a hefty meal versus the cup-o-yogurt that I have in the morning.

Trade-offs. Queasy or pained-feverish? Blah.

*It’s been so long since I had a real-for-sure flare-up that I didn’t recognize it at first. I couldn’t figure out why my joints and muscles were aching so much…until the fever and dizziness came.

   


Writing Stuff

I’m in a bit of shock that Speculations and its wonderful Rumor Mill community are gone. While I haven’t been all that active on it, I’ve been a member—subscribed to several threads, checking in on folks’ author topics, etc.—since I began writing seriously in 2000. It was a great resource and a great community, and I’ll miss it.

Finished up my 2007 short fiction readings (yes, I’m behind) and finally got my picks to Chris McKitterick for this year’s Sturgeon Awards. I’ve been honored to be asked to contribute to the nomination process for the last several years, and this year I had to ask for an extension on the deadline as I was so utterly swamped at work and couldn’t get my nominations in on time. But I finally managed to send them off yesterday.

Received:
• 44-day reprint SALE of “The Tiger Fortune Princess” to Drabblecast. Yay! The editor, Norm Sherman, actually solicited this one from me. He’d heard Escape Pod‘s production of “The Snow Woman’s Daughter” and liked it enough to both email his compliments and ask me to send something his way. Much shiny ego-boo.

Session 2008 Day 25

By | |
9 Comments

This week has been incredibly grueling, and it’s not even over yet. fosteronfilm has had to drive me home twice in three days*, and Hobkin was feeling under the weather on Tuesday (he seems fine now; I think he’s stressed because I’ve been away from home so much).

Bad week, no cookie. Need. Weekend.

One of the unlooked-for silver linings of my laptop being in the shop is that I’ve been catching up on my reading on the train. On the nonfiction front, I’m reading Robert Epstein’s The Case Against Adolescence, which expounds upon a subject I’ve been soapboxing in one way or another since I was 13, which is how the infantilization of young adults and the artificial extension of childhood, as well as people’s preoccupation with ensuring that their children are insulated from anything and everything that has even an iota of hazard in the world, is incredibly dysfunctional for both young people and society as a whole.

A fascinating read, although not particularly revolutionary for me, as I already hold to the belief that young adults are much more capable than most people give them credit for. But Epstein puts it together articulately and presents some historical pretext as well as research findings and ethnographic studies that I wasn’t aware of previously. (For more information about Epstein and his book, check out this Psychology Today article.)

As an amusing cosmic synchronicity, fosteronfilm mentioned that he’d heard my advisor in graduate school, Dr. Laura Berk, on NPR the other day but couldn’t remember what the subject matter was. I continue to hold Dr. Berk in the highest of regard and esteem (I’m also co-author with her on a textbook resource on Child Development—my first taste of that oh-so-addictive “name in print” goodness). So I went out to the NPR website and discovered this article, “The Bryant Park Project,” focusing on play and child development, particularly with regard to executive function—of which a central aspect is the ability to self-regulate**. And I thought it most telling that there’s been a marked decrease in childrens’ ability to self-regulate in the last six decades or so. The fanaticism to safeguard children from the world is retarding the natural rate of maturity and creating increasingly incapable young people.

Gripping stuff (to me, at least), even if it paints a rather bleak prognosis for the state of personal accountability, sound judgment, and capability in general for present and future generations.

* We’ve agreed that if I have to stay at work past 9PM that he’ll come get me rather than me taking the train home.
**Executive function and self-regulation is a good predictor of future achievement and well-being. From the article: “Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child’s IQ. Children who are able to manage their feelings and pay attention are better able to learn. As executive function researcher Laura Berk explains, ‘Self-regulation predicts effective development in virtually every domain.'”

   


Writing Stuff

Got a(nother) note from a writer asking me whether a review had been published of his collection yet. Not an unusual occurrence, save that this is the third or so such note I’ve gotten from him. And also that he continues to address me as “Dear Editor.” It’s not hard to find my name on The Fix‘s website. Really, it’s not. But it is hard for me to feel disposed to respond to someone who doesn’t take the trouble to address me by name. Maybe I should reply “Dear Writer”…

Yeah, yeah. I’m feeling snarky. Blah. It’s been a taxing couple weeks.

Received:
• 76-day SALE of “Megumi’s Fire” to the Fantasist Enterprises Paper Blossoms, Sharpened Steel anthology. Woot! I lost count of how many people sent me a heads up when these GLs went up, but thankyouthankyou to each of y’all!

Session 2008 Day 22.5

By | |
Leave a comment

Over the halfway mark for Session 2008. 18 more days to go.* I’m getting a wee bit scared about how far behind I’ve gotten with regard to other obligations, but trying to keep my head above water and/or not think about the hamsters I don’t have time to attend to.

But I can see out of the corner of my eye that them hamsters are getting pretty hefty . . .

What’s really exacerbating things is that I had to send in my VAIO laptop for maintenance. It’s just a hardware issue: a loose A/C connection that was requiring me to clip the cord at an odd angle in order to get the battery to charge. But I had to backup the whole drive as I’m sure they’ll wipe it (as it seems to be standard operating procedure at every shop on the planet). And now they’re waiting for an ordered part to get in, so I don’t know when I’ll get it back. Plus when I do get it back, I’ll have to spend several hours reloading it.

The loss of my “cart around everywhere” computer has really hindered my productivity. I can’t reply to emails on the train, can’t do a bit of editing during the commute, etc. I really need that extra hour and a half per day to stay on top of the hamster pile. Wah.

* Don’t ask me whether I’m a “glass half full” or “glass half empty” type. Mostly, I’m a “thirsty now, gimme water” type.

   


Writing Stuff

I’ve put several more stories up at Anthologybuilder.com. All of my cyberpunk-esque Tales from Old Atlanta, including the Phobos award-winning one, “All in My Mind,” which prompted me to write the rest of them: “Oranges, Lemons, and Thou Beside Me,” “Addy in My Mind,” “Only Springtime When She’s Gone,” and “The Few, the Proud, the Leech Corps” (which was already up). I’ve got one more from that world, “The Music Company,” which I planned to submit this weekend, but never got a chance to.

I’ve also got several stories up for sale at the Sony eBook Store through a contract with Tekno: “All in My Mind” (again), “The Tiger Fortune Princess,” “Returning My Sister’s Face,” “Honor is a Game Mortals Play,” “The Bunny of Vengeance and the Bear of Death,” “The Wizard of Eternal Watch,” and “The Storyteller’s Wife.”

Much buying goodness!

Received:
• Payment from Baen’s Universe for “A Thread of Silk,” which helped offset some of the debt from Christmas.

New Words:
In the midst of the chaos of last week, I was bowled over by the urge to do some writing. Novel writing, even. I’m not sure which I’d rather have, no time but plenty of inspiration or plenty of time but no inspiration. They’re both exercises in frustration and thwarted creativity. Actually, come to think of it, the latter is worse. I did manage to crank out a little over 300 words. I’ll take that over grinding my gears, staring at a blank page, any day. But it still leaves me twitchy and irked.

Session 2008: Day 12

By | |
10 Comments

Observations made this morning during my commute: The prevalence of cell phones, and especially itty-bitty Bluetooth phone headsets, makes it tricky telling who’s nutters and who’s actually talking to a real person these days.

Then again, who hasn’t mumbled to themselves on the train for giggles and guffaws?

Session 2008: Day 11

By | |
3 Comments

Got up extra early this morning to vote. I voted. A less exciting undertaking in practice than theory.

So, yeah, my life = blurred frenetic haze of legislative editing punctuated by non-legislative editing for The Fix.

I’m finding the editing mindset a bit hard to break out of…in an OCD sort of way. dude_the was here* for our annual Superbowl shindig (the only football game I watch), and we were out doing the Saturday beer run at the Wine Shop. Not being much of an alcohol drinker (or buyer), I amused myself by reading the wine descriptions. Three sentences in, I found myself with pen in hand, busily adding in the missing serial commas. fosteronfilm dragged me away before I could finish (or attract the ire of the shopkeeps). *twitch*

But we’re now on Day 11, over one-quarter of the way through Session 2008. Rah.

*Actually, dude_the is still here, as his flight was cancelled last night, but I’m not sure if I’ll get to see him off from his extended stay—or at all—as I’ll probably have to work late again tonight. A bummer, as he got back from his wranglings with Hartsfield-Jackson airport last night after my bedtime.

   


Writing Stuff

Rich Horton (ecbatan) singled out my story, “Honor is a Game Mortals Play,” as one of the best in the DAW anthologies from 2007. *Squee!* (Thanks to jimhines for the heads up!)

Received:
• 23-day reprint SALE of “The Life and Times of Penguin” to the Triangulation: Taking flight anthology. My first sale of the year! And it came with an exceedingly complimentary acceptance letter from the editor, Pete Butler. It was his first acceptance letter (written) of the year, too. Hee!
• 44-day personal “not right for us” from Weird Tales with an invite to submit again. The sale gods giveth and they smacketh. Sigh.
• Payment from Llewellyn for “A Nose for Magic” after a bit of worrisome email straying. Seems they sent me a request for a W-9 for tax purposes which they wanted me to send back before they could cut my check, but I never got the email—I suspect an overzealous spam filter, paired with the lack of a subject in the original email, was the culprit, as I do check my spam folder regularly for misfiled correspondences. It was purely by luck that I saw the follow-up, recognized the “Llewellyn” in the return email addy, and fished it out.
• Note from palmerwriter letting me know that Voices for the Cure (the charity anthology to benefit the American Diabetes Association with my story, “An Interesting Week for Emmy,” in it) is now available through White Rocket Books, which means it’ll soon be available at Amazon.com and B&N.com, too. Yay!

Session 2008: first casualty. Paper ow.

By | |
1 Comment

Paper cuts = occupational hazard. Stupid resolution got me right between the fingers in the webbing, too. Grumpf.

Had to work on Monday on the MLK, Jr., holiday. Spent over five hours on one bill. Head spinny foomp, but overtimey goodness.

   


Writing Stuff

Got a (group) email from the Magic in the Mirrorstone anthology publicity folks (Mirrorstone is an imprint of Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro, hence they have publicity folks . . .ooo). They’re wanting to hold a book signing in May or April. Alas, in New York, so I can’t make it.

Actually, I was surprised to see how many writers responded who thought they’d be able to attend. I thought that the time of New York-as-writing-nexus had passed such that it wasn’t particularly important for writers to be located in New York anymore (unlike, say, actors, who really need to be in L.A. in order to get work) but I guess New York is still an undisputed hub of publishing activity. And folks still gravitate to where the moving and shaking happens.

Received:
• 15-day cordial pass with brief comments and invite to submit again from a new market, Wrong World. They’ve got an interesting point-based submission/rejection system. An attempt to quantify a qualitatively subjective process. . .

And I have yet to make my first sale of 2008. Snargleblast.

Session 2008

By | |
3 Comments

And so it begins. The Georgia Legislative Session 2008 has convened. Cue ominous music.

The gods of transportation and commuting doth smiteth me. I languished for over an hour getting to the MARTA station yesterday morning due to an accident on 400, then experienced further delays as the eastbound rail line dealt with some technical difficulties, making me late to work. And after the not-quite-as-nightmarish-but-still-awful drive down 400 this morning, I’m speculating as to whether I will need to set my alarm an extra 15 minutes earlier in order to get to work on time due to the increased congestion on 400. Glargh.

   


Writing Stuff

Joined up with anthologybuilder.com this weekend. The site is a new concept (masterminded by Nancy Fulda) where writers can market their previously published work. In a nutshell, readers can construct and buy their own, customized hard copy (trade paperback) anthology by selecting from the offered short stories on the site. Writers earn royalties and get a chance to get out-of-print stories back into circulation. Shiny, huh?

I sent over a quartet of vampire stories: “The Few, the Proud, the Leech Corps,” originally published in the now-defunct Oceans of the Mind; “Ascendancy of Blood,” my first Scrybe Press chapbook; and “Still My Beating Heart” and “Inspirations End,” my second Scrybe Press chapbook–both chapbooks now being officially out of print as I’ve severed my contract with Scrybe.

Dwelling on what other stories I might want to send to anthologybuilder.com, but if anyone wants a hard copy collection of those four vampire tales, they’re available.

Going into Session ’08 and Rich Horton’s end-of-year summary

By | |
3 Comments

The legislature convenes on the 14th, but work’s been ramping up already, even had to do some overtime last week. And I expect to have to work next weekend. It means I haven’t had as much time to write as I’d hoped.

Still, I’m looking forward to session starting. There’s a certain single-mindedness about it that’s restful, even while the work is stressful and exhausting. I mean, while session is incredibly intense, it’s also simple. The only thing I’m able to worry about during session is getting through it. I haven’t the time or energy to do anything else but throw myself into the work, so I can’t dwell on or fret about anything else.

Makes me realize that I always have a lot on my mind: that WiP I should be working on, the @#%$^% novel I haven’t written, various deadlines, projects, professional correspondences, submissions and markets, and other hamsters I’m perpetually juggling. During session, all of that has to take a distant second place, and it’s . . . liberating.

Yep, the workings of my psyche are weird and contradictory.

   


Writing Stuff

Rich Horton (ecbatan), regular reviewer for Locus and Year’s Best editor, is doing a year-end summary on his LJ of many of the publications from 2007, and I was delighted to see that he gave snaps to several of my stories that were published last year: “Beauty’s Folly” in OSC’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, “End of the Universe” in Darker Matter, and particularly “Close to Death” in Shiny, of which he says:

From the first issue my favorite was Eugie Foster’s “Close to Death”, a lighthearted piece about a literal encounter with Death on an Atlanta freeway.

Happy squeeage!

Received:
• Payment for “Beautiful Summer” in forthcoming anthology, Killers.

New Words:
• An editing pass and around 100 words on “Morozko.” Going to try to finish the final scene this week and put a fork in this one.