Ooops. Semagic chewed up today’s entry and burped. See HERE for today’s LJ post.
Available
Short Story Collections
-
Short Fiction eBooks
Fiction
Nonfiction
Noteworthy
Search
Category Archives: LJ
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (no spoilers)
fosteronfilm and I went to a matinee showing of Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit yesterday. I’ve been a huge Wallace and Gromit fan since I saw “A Close Shave” years and years ago broadcast on the big screens as filler before the Masquerade at Dragon*Con. (And yes, I am quite distressed about the recent studio fire.) My hubby and I ran out to rent The Incredible Adventures of Wallace and Gromit after the convention and subsequently bought the DVD. But I was disappointed with both Chicken Run and the Cracking Contraptions collection, the follow-up projects from Aardman Studies. Both were enjoyable, but lacked the same visceral charm and belly laugh genius of the first W&G shorts. But hey, something wonderful runs its course and subsequent incarnations lack the magic of the original; it happens. They were still fun, even if they weren’t as inspired as the previous works. So it was with lowered expectations that I sat down to see The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Boy, was I wrong! It was fantabunnifirous! I spent the whole time while the film was going either giggling, laughing out loud, or squeeing at the screen. They nailed it–the humor, the charm, the whimsy. Brilliant! Absolutely the best animated film of the year. I am surfeited on cuteness, and the claymation bunnies totally stole the scenes they were in. I promised no spoilers, so I’ll stop there. But I just wanna say: GO SEE IT!
After we got back from the movie, I took a two-hour nap. Obviously, 10mg of Adderall is insufficient to keep me alert for a full day. Back to 20mg today. I’m strongly leaning toward calling my p-doc and asking for a 15mg prescription. Going to give 20mg another day or two and see how it goes.
Writing Stuff
For the record: The opinions, statements, and viewpoints expressed by the founder of Tangent are not those of its managing editor. Just had to get that off my chest.
Received:
– 26-day “tbttth” from speculative.ca
– 16-day “uh uh” from Wee Small Hours.
Well, snartleblast.
Did a pair of editing passes on the Korean folktale. Still running stats on my Critters crits, but I should have it at final draft stage in another day or so.
Adventures with Adderall: Day 2
I’ve noticed Adderall makes me more interested in the world in general. It’s like I’ve suddenly re-discovered having fun doing stuff I knew I enjoyed but hadn’t had the time or motivation to follow-up with anymore–nothing major, things like being more eager to take an interest in socializing and current events without the sense of forcing myself through the motions. I’m more inclined to put the energy into delving into my “now what’s that all about?” impulses which are what initially drew me to Psychology and the sciences. It makes me feel . . . younger. I think I’ve forgotten how much energy I used to have, how it used to be when I wasn’t tired all the time. Seems a shame that I need a drug in order to recapture that vitality and enthusiasm. Stupid deteriorating human suit.
Still having cycles of the sleepies. I do think the peaks and lows may be due to the “time release” effect. Took my 20MG XR dose at 9AM yesterday. Got feeling pretty energetic and peppy for several hours, then at around 11:30 had an onset of the yawns. Not a total crash, but definitely a surge of tiredness. Perked right back up about ten minutes later, though. Also continuing to maintain a sensation of hyper-clarity which isn’t unpleasant, but isn’t completely benign either. It feels like I’m being . . . stretched, is the best way I can describe it. Going to drop back down to 10mg today. It might turn out that 15mg is the ideal dosage, which would be irksome ’cause I can’t split the 10mg XR capsules.
Writing Stuff
I got an email from Jason Sizemore, the editor of Apex, forwarding on the comments and the illustrations of “Oranges, Lemons, and Thou Beside Me” (slated for issue #4) from the artist, Augie Wiedemann. Get this, the artist liked my story so much, he donated an extra illustration for it! When I read that, my jaw fell off, bounced across the room, and rolled under the table. An artist was so inspired by my writing that he was moved to create artwork above and beyond what he was contracted for! It totally made my day. I can’t display the illustrations without the author’s permission, but take my word for it, they absolutely rawk.
New Words: +100 – 100
Did editing passes on “The Better To . . .” while I re-think what I want to do with the ending. What I’ve got is tighter and cleaner, but still not at zero draft. There’s a definite teeth-pulling feel to this one.
Adventures with Adderall
My doc prescribed a daily extended release dose of 10mg, but an hour after I took my first pill yesterday, I was overcome by the sleepies and took a several hour nap. Profoundly unimpressed by the effects of 10mg, I took another 10mg. (I’m not just futzing with my dosage on a whim; the doc said I could up the dose to 20mg if 10mg wasn’t sufficient.) And yes, that did the trick. An hour after I took the second capsule, I sat down to write. Three hours later, Matthew drags me away from the computer and makes me eat dinner. After dinner I return to the computer and write for another two hours.
I stopped only when the waves of drowsies started. When the first one hit, I had to force my eyes open and was a mere pillow and blankie away from a nap. But the first was the worst, and it passed. I’m betting it was due to the gap in effective time between when I took the first capsule and the second. Back on the upswing I started being capable of productiveness again, but feeling decidedly tired and less alert. I also noticed that my ability to compose sentences nose-dived at this point. The story ideas were still there, but my brain was reduced to lizard-speak: Bob hungry now. Bob run. Bob scared. Not scintillating prose.
I also had problems sleeping last night. I tossed fitfully for a couple hours, then gave up and sat with my laptop for a while–catching up on emails and fiddling with some bookkeeping. Dozed off with Hobkin on the couch at around 4AM, and he promptly woke me up at 7 for breakfast, and here I am, profoundly not tired. The insomnia effect sucks goat feet. I blame the second, afternoon dose, I took. I’m going to see how two 10mg XR capsules taken at the same time will work out and then decide if I want to stick with 10mg or 20mg daily. No jitters, although there was a certain hyper-clarity which I usually equate with an excess of caffeine. Not a bad thing, but a little surreal.
After day one of Adventures with Adderall, I’m cautiously optimistic.
And also, everyone please welcome dream_wind to LJ-land. She’s been putting off and putting off getting herself bloggified, and now she’s finally gone and done it. 
Writing Stuff
No mail yesterday. Stupid Columbus Day government holiday. I did hear from the assistant editor/slush reader of Realms of Fantasy. I’ve had several stories languishing there in various stages of slushy limbo so I finally bit the bullet and emailed a query to Shawna McCarthy. She passed on the query for her slush reader to reply to. Outcome:
– One story utterly and completely lost in the depths of the abyss. Invited to submit it again since there’s no trace of it. 235 days.
– One story rejected by default as it wasn’t one of those bought in the batch that was passed up to Shawna. Ergo, “Rejection probably lost in the mail,” which does not fill me with great confidence. Total time waiting on this one: 139 days.
– One story somehow falling between several slush cracks–old and new regime transition pains–and is slated to be passed up to Shawna at the next slush transfer. Days out and counting: 280.
WAH!
In more positive news, I did a Critters critique to keep my numbers up, and I’m definitely happy with the quality of my writing time yesterday.
New Words: 300 – 360
Did a major editing pass on “The Better to . . . ” and chopped out nearly four hundred words. Also made some good headway into the climax. Apparently, muse is a masochist. Must consider flogging muse more often. Or she’s a speed junkie. Or both.
|
I think 6.5K for the whole thing was an underestimate, but I ought to be able to keep it under 7K. And there’s still the possibility of more judicious cutting.
500/day
78
Mushroom stew and psychotropic cocktail
We put up our Halloween decorations yesterday. Glowy pumpkins and strings of spiders. It feels like October. We also celebrated the beginning of the All Hallows season with homemade vegan mushroom stew (three types of mushrooms and red bell pepper in a wine sauce) and cherry cobbler for dessert. Yum! My folks brought a huge box of dried shitake mushrooms for us from China, and we tossed several into the stew. I offered Hobkin a sliver, but he was dubious and after nosing it around, decided it couldn’t possibly be food. He likes button mushrooms well enough, and, of course, he loves red bell peppers. He didn’t get any cherry cobbler, though.
Had my p-doc follow-up this morning. Asked him if I could try Provigil to combat the incredible sleepies and exhaustion I’ve been feeling. He was game, but it’s not on The List of meds preferred by my HMO, so I’d have to pay for the whole thing out-of-pocket. AGH! Too rich for my mental disequilibrium. So we decided to go a different course. He prescribed me Adderall. Well, cool. That works too, although I’d rather not be on an amphetamine, but if it gives me too much of the jitters, we can then switch me to Provigil and have it HMO-covered ’cause well, we tried the preferred one and that didn’t work . . .
I feel like there’s a certain slapdash approach to the makeup of my pharmacological cocktail, but at least I’ve got some input with what the bartender puts into the shaker.
Writing Stuff
New Words: 300+100
New words on “The Better to . . . ” and a couple editing passes on “Shim Chung.” Flow is not happening. My muse needs to be beaten with a stick, the hussy.
|
Skunk flights of fancy
fosteronfilm and I have odd chats. Mostly, I think my husband humors me, but he also has a delightfully whimsical streak which I love. Yesterday, I took it into my head to teach Hobkin how to “sit.” Erm. I’ve had better ideas. Anyway, in the ensuing discussion I had with my hubby, I then suggested I might try teaching Hobkin how to trot and canter. That obviously led to the subject of Hobkin as a mount . . . for a very, very small rider, like say a pixie or a sprite. Consequently, I spent some time watching Hobkin trundling about the house. He’s got short, stumpy legs, which results in a pronounced rolling gait. I can’t imagine that would be a very comfortable ride. Probably a lot of dizzying rocking back and forth and bumpiting, but on the other hand, he’d be very very soft to sit on. I went so far as to suggest out loud that I tie a stuffed animal or paper doll onto Hobkin’s back to see how they would ride. Wiser minds (fosteronfilm‘s) stepped in and nixed that idea. But he did go on to say that a sprite would probably be the best rider for Hobkin because their wings could serve as sort of a stabilizer against the worst of Hobkin’s trundling–assuming, of course, that they could avoid being eaten by their erstwhile mount. At that point, I dissolved into giggles.
Not a riding animal:
Writing Stuff
Received:
14-day rejection from Fictitious Force after making the second round of readings.
129-day “I have held onto this tale based upon the strength of your writing. However . . . ” from Shadowed Realms with invite to submit again.
Fooie.
In better news, I published a Tangent review written by sartorias for Paradox #7 and she had lovely things to say about my “The Tiger Fortune Princess”:
“Foster writes with a graceful, easy touch, with just the right images, making the story into a tapestry. We’ve already seen the whole from the beginning, but that in no way takes away from the pleasure of going over it bit by bit in order to savor the details.”
–Sherwood Smith, Tangent
IgNobel and City of If
Haven’t had a drop of alcohol, but my wingstubs were bugging me, so I took a Clonazepam. Now I am loopy. When I try to walk, I stagger and stumble about with my balance all wonkified, and fosteronfilm informs me my speech is slurring. And there’s a certain mild euphoria going on. Wheeeee!
For something completely different: science is sometimes less than lofty. Check out the IgNobel awards. At last, recognition for the uninspired, pointless, and possibly profoundly underfunded scientific research studies. I’m especially amused by the Biology (“A Survey of Frog Odorous Secretions”) and Fluid Dynamics (“Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh”) winners.
Writing Stuff
I’m waiting on pins and needles for a couple responses from editors, and as I did my little mailbox pilgrimages yesterday, I was thinking about a a great invention: a mailbox sensor that triggers a buzzer inside the house when a delivery happens. If I had one of those, I wouldn’t have to keep running back and forth between the window and the couch (if I’m lucky and have something outgoing) to see if the flag’s been dropped, or worse, making several fruitless trips to the mailbox and undoubtedly being perceived by my neighbors as the crazy mailbox lady*. This nifty device would ensure that I’d always know exactly when the mail carrier arrived.
That’s just sad, isn’t it? And I’d probably end up like one of Pavlov’s dog and start drooling every time the buzzer went off. Yes, my patience is fractured beyond the telling of it. That muscle don’t work so good.
Thanks to this post of tiellan‘s, I applied for a fantasy writing contract job. Had a phone interview for it yesterday (I cannot stress how very much I suck at phone interviews; written correspondence or face-to-face, it’s all good, on the phone, I fall apart) and I appear to have lined myself up a tentative contract gig. Details to be hammered out in the nearish future, but the plan is that I’ll be doing 6-8 weeks of essentially work-for-hire in Dec/Jan, writing 1-2K word chapters every week for The City of If–an interactive, online RPG gaming site. There’s potential for longer-term contract work if the initial stint goes well. I’m pretty jazzed.
Thanks to a French Critter, I was able to determine that my French reprint of “The Storyteller’s Wife” is either out, or about to come out in the October 2005, (#19) issue of Faeries. On an amusing note, I’m sharing a ToC with Darrell Schweitzer. The cover art:
* Most days I’m too lazy to put on sunscreen to go check the mail because I’m outside for all of half a minute. But exposing myself to the full-on noontime sunny day Georgia UV rays, even for half a minute, is a no-no, putting me at risk for a Lupus flare-up. To solve this conundrum of laziness, I often use a (bright yellow) parasol to shade me during my extremely brief mail outings. I, in my scruffy Resident Evil t-shirt, jammy pants, and parasol, undoubtedly present a curious sight to the neighbors.
Wingstubs and Joss Whedon, no relation
Wingstubs giving me grief. Not sure why as I haven’t been keyboarding that vigorously lately, but my arms ache. Ow.
If you’re a Browncoat, clickie to see more proof that Joss Whedon is a directing god (link ganked from tomaqmar). By the sheer miracle of knowing what he’s doing, Joss saved money and time while shooting Serenity in Hollywood.
And, the official geek question of the hour: If Buffy and River were to duke it out, who would win?
Writing Stuff
Received:
– A form rejection from Guideposts for Kids. This was a long shot anyway. G4K is a Christian ‘zine and the story I subbed really . . . wasn’t.
– Also got a personal rejection from Escape Pod. Stephen requested to see more, actually asked to see a couple stories by name based on their title (from the bibliography on my website). Well, cool. I believe in giving editors what they want, so sent off one of them.
– Sale of “Kawaa, Naagan, and the Queen’s Diamond Necklace” to Dragonfly Spirit, a lovely new startup children’s ‘zine. My story is due out in their March 2006 issue. The editor is a fellow Critter and we’ve exchanged some friendly correspondence in the past so I’m quite pleased to be working with her.
– Two more Critters crits of my Korean folktale. It continues to be a crowd pleaser. Well, good.
Five idiosyncratic things about me
I’ve been posting an unusually large (for me) number of memes recently–this is the third (fourth if you count the Shakespeare and Firefly ones as separate) in the last week. This isn’t a trend, really! I just thought the recent fads making the rounds were more interesting than the typical quizzes and memes that usually circulate.
So:
Continue reading
Writing Writing Writing
Got a shiny payment into my PayPal account from jinzi for “In Suffering Lies Salvation” which is due to be published in the Lent(ish) issue of anaisdotmfk.com. Suhweet! jinzi utterly rawks as an editor/publisher.
And hey, on that note, anyone out there get Chronicle, the DNA Publications industry ‘zine? The June issue mentions anaisdotmfk.com and I’m trying to scrounge up what they said. Anyone? Anyone?
Also wrote and published a review of this week’s SCI FICTION story, “The Canadian Who Came Almost All the Way Home From the Stars” by jaylake and specficrider to Tangent.
And after my mini I’m-so-overworked-and-over-stressed Tangent rant I got an email from someone interested in being a reviewer. Huzzah. The universe humors me sometimes.
New Words: 700
On “The Better to . . . ” I’ve got the remaining scenes sketched out in my head, but they seem resistant to being born onto the page. Grumf. Not sure if I can wrap this up in the next 1K. We’ll see.
|
500/day
77
