Category Archives: Blog

Convention Schedules: Faerie Escape Atlanta and Dragon*Con

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Got my schedules for both Faerie Escape Atlanta, which is this weekend, and Dragon*Con (Sept. 3 – 6):

Faerie Escape

  • Friday 8/13, 7:00 PM – “Gathering of the Summer Court” in the hotel lobby.
  • Saturday 8/14, 4:30 PM – “Seeing Through Enchanted Eyes” How do you awaken your imagination into another world? How do you bring a world to life through paint, film, photography or words? With John Bridges, Orion Foxwood, Stu Jenks, and Lisa Stock in Piedmond.
  • Sunday 8/15, 1:00 PM – “Servitude, Kidnapping and Adventure: Into the Other Place” When do people enter into Faerie and why? Once they do, what awaits them? With Bill Bridges, Ellen Kushner, Larissa Niec, and Delia Sherman in Chastain.

Dragon*Con

  • Friday 9/3, Noon: Guest lecture for Ann Crispin’s Beginner Writers Workshop, “Marketing Short Fiction.”
  • Saturday 9/4, 1:00 PM – “Outside Our Shores” There are lots of influences on SF and fantasy these days, not just American/Western. Greenbriar (Hyatt).
  • Sunday 9/5, 6:00 AM – “Live Hugo Awards Breakfast” Join Hugo Award nominees at Kafe Köbenhavn to listen to the results come in live, direct from the Hugo Ceremony in Melbourne, Australia*.
  • Sunday 9/5, 11:30 AM – “What Women Want” What women want to see in their genre reading. Greenbriar (Hyatt)

Hope to see folks!

And, now that I’m swamped to my eyeballs, I’ve decided to rev up The Stupid Novel effort again. Yep, I only seem to be able to write when I’ve got too many hamsters in the air. My brain hates me, and my muse is a sadistic harlot.

*Yes, that’s 6 o’clock in the morning. The time zone difference between Atlanta and Australia is going to slay me. But it’s not like I’d be able to sleep then anyway. Hell, I’m already losing sleep now, twitching about the Hugos.

New Film Festival Website, End of the Rainbow, and Interview

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Can’t believe July is almost over. Sort of freaking out about it, actually. The @#$! grand jury duty isn’t helping, either. It’s become a tired refrain, but I’m so behind on everything I wanted to get done. Y’know, I’m really sucking at time management, or I still have too many hamsters on my plate. Or both.

Well, I did lob off one more hamster. Just finished overhauling fosteronfilm‘s Dragon*Con Independent Film Festival website. (Shiny?) And we did accomplish a couple major homeowner to-do items: ripped the carpet out of the half-bathroom (I have hated that carpeting since we bought the house almost ten years ago; who carpets a bathroom?) and replaced it with linoleum and had our poor, laboring air conditioner checked over and cleaned. But I never get much satisfaction out of accomplishing domestic stuff. More like a sense of relief to have it done and out of the way.
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Back in the Office

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Back in the office after a two-week expected-but-sudden holiday. It’s the longest I’ve been out of the office since I started here, and it’s a bit weird. All of the routines I’d established—what applications I launch and in what order when my computer boots, how much cream I put in my office mug, etc.—are a little rusty.

Didn’t get any work done while I was out, of course. Way behind on all my correspondences. Didn’t get any writing done either. So today will be all about playing catch-up. Whee.

Droid X, Multitouch Keyboard, and Swype Beta

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So Motorola, Verizon, and Google announced yesterday that the Droid X will be coming out next month, and units have been pre-released to the media.

The Droid X looks impressive—faster processer, 8MP camera, HDMI output port, Adobe Flash, and a bunch of other shiny features. It also has a 4.3-inch screen (compared to the Droid’s 3.7-inch). Thing is, I actually prefer the smaller profile of my Droid. My hands and fingers are small, and I don’t like the idea of possibly having to strain to single-hand commands. Also, the Droid X doesn’t have a physical keyboard, which an hour ago was a definite deal breaker for me. But now I’m less adament. Why the sudden position wobbling, you ask? Continue reading →

Breaking Radio Silence: Refinancing and Sinner reprint sale(s)

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I know it’s been a while since I posted. Partly I was trying to avoid exacerbating my wing stubs so as to give them a chance to heal—which seems to have worked; let’s hear it for not being in perpetual pain—and partly it’s been insane-busy these last couple weeks.

The Georgia code page proofs are starting to come in at work, which curtails big chunks of my footloose and fancy freetime. Was utterly mowed down by the granddaddy of lingering sinus headaches. Days and days of “ow my head hurts, ow my arms hurt, ow ow OW.” This is also the busiest time of year for fosteronfilm. He’s making his final selections for the Dragon*Con Independent Film Festival, and he’s also still putting in hours as a census worker. And, for the evil icing on the cupcake-o-overwhelmed, we decided this was the time to refinance our mortgage. Did the math—historically low interest rates and all—and realized refinancing would go leaps and bounds towards offsetting this year’s financial hemorrhage.

So, while I was feeling pitiful and pained, and Matthew was stressing over his film festival spreadsheet and evaluating second cut (or third cut in a couple cases) film submissions, we were also filling out refinancing forms, reviewing and assembling piles of paperwork, making varied and sundry phone calls, and comparing and contrasting the bids we got. If I hadn’t already had a headache, the paperwork alone would’ve brought one on.

We ended up opting to do a short lock on our refinancing application, resulting in a much shorter time-frame between initial application to closing. We did it to lock in a lower interest rate when it looked like they were starting to creep back up, although as it turns out, they crept back down to the rate we locked in, so we didn’t really need to. However, assuming no eleventh-hour monkey wrenches, we close and finalize tomorrow. Rah.

But my head still hurts. Continue reading →

New Story Started. New Story Done.

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In a fit of “I hate this novelette, dammit, but I’ve got this other idea—” I started writing a new story this morning: “The Priestess, the Baku, and the Emperor.” Four hours and 1,200 words later, it’s done.

Huh.

When I began it, the concept was significantly longer, with the opening intended to serve as something of a prologue. But when I finished the prologue, I thought, “Hey, this could be a complete story if I just add that bit I was saving for the next scene and wrap up the foreshadowing here…”

So I did, and it is. I think. At 1.2K words, it feels a little wispy and also falls outside most categories of flash, but I suspect it’s too somber to be well-received at children’s markets. On the other hand, wispy sorta works.

Guess I’ll just keep open the possibility of returning to my original concept and making this a longer work, at least until I get fosteronfilm to first-reader it.

Wingstubs and Insomnia Make Eugie an Unhappy Girl

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Having a bad wingstub flare-up, so bad that it’s making it difficult to sleep. It got bad enough that I took a Tramadol last night, which in the past has always been more than sufficient both to blunt the pain and KO me straight to sleepy-time land. In the past. This time, it barely made a dent in the pain, didn’t cure my insomnia, but did make me too foggy-headed to do anything useful or distracting, like read or write, so I was left lying in bed, going “ow ow ouchie, gee, I wish I could fall asleep, ow ouch ow” for several hours.

Not. A. Good. Night.

I haven’t taken Tramadol in quite a while as I usually consider it the Big Guns and haven’t felt the need for it. Now I’m wondering if my pills have expired. Didn’t think to examine the bottle last night, but I’ll be checking the date after I get home today.

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Writing Stuff

Completed the rewrite of “Rampion,” (tentatively) retitled “Rose Window, Black Door, White Tower.” Doing one more editing pass before foisting it upon fosteronfilm to first-reader.

It’s currently a whooping 15.2K words, which strikes me as being overlong, but I thought the same thing while doing the rewrite—with an eye towards doing some trimming and all—and instead managed to increase the word count. Hrmph.

Back in Atlanta, Spanish Sale of “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest”

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Back in Atlanta after visiting the in-laws in Illinois. There’s a dead zone smack dab in the middle of Kentucky where I can get cell reception but no GPS or data connectivity, either 3G or 1X, on my Droid. Weird. I thought data and GPS rode on the cell signal, so I was rather baffled to find that I had full cell service but nothing else. My Droid found it confusing too and rebooted itself a couple times until I told it to quit already.

Didn’t get nearly as much done over the holiday as I’d hoped, of course, but in what might be a first, I did manage to get some writing done. Being able to take out my phone—and not have to boot my laptop—to write a paragraph here or there, really ups the convenience factor. Droid win.

Managed 1Kish new words on the editing pass/massive rewrite of “Rampion.” I’d say I’m in the final stretch, but I sort of feel I’ve been there for so long that I’ve lost touch with the meaning of that term.

And sold Spanish language reprint of “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” to Cuásar, slated for their special edition issue #50. Spanish is another new language that my work will appear in—making it the fourth for this story and my seventh overall. Coolio.