Category Archives: Blog

Four-day Weekend: Hobkin and Housewarming

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Back from a four-day weekend with less to show for it than I would’ve liked.

Went to check out elemess‘s new house on Saturday and worked on a website commission, but otherwise the last four days were decidedly unproductive.

Results came back from the vet’s and they found white blood cells but no bacteria from Hobkin’s urine sample. The lil guy is on Amoxycillan—which when given with a dollop of whipped cream is, thankfully, a nummy treat—and is on the mend. I think we caught his UTI much earlier this time around than the one last February. He never really got sick this time, just out of sorts. Wish I knew what was causing these, though.

He is also a very silly beastie. When he sleeps with me, sometimes his fangs puncture the blanket where he’s resting his head. His fangs are quite pointy; they’re long and protrude from his mouth, so when he lays his head flat, they dig into whatever surface he’s resting on (which I experience first-hand when he uses me as a pillow). Last night, they pierced the blanket (again) but in his half-asleep state, he thought the blanket had trapped him.

I woke up to a flailing fuzzy animal at my side, pawing at the blanket attached to his tooth. Bemused, I tugged the blanket off his fang, freeing him from the scary blanket-monster. Was Hobkin grateful? Of course not. He huffed at me and trundled off as though it were my fault.

I tell myself he probably felt embarrassed.

Drabblecast Mega-Beast Deathmatch Season 3 at Dragon*Con: YouTube Footage

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Norm Sherman of Drabblecast (also now the co-host of Escape Pod) very graciously came to my signing on Saturday at Dragon*Con. During our chat, he introduced me to the ongoing Mega-Beast Death Match debate (which is currently in its third season), whereupon their experts and aficionados deliberate—typically after generous applications of alcohol—on the merits and combat prowess of various Drabblecast-nouveau kaiju and vote on which of the “scientifically altered bestial battlers” would win if they threw down.

While at Dragon*Con, Norm invited various attendees to contribute their thoughts on the death match contestants and immortalized their responses on video for their podcast.

And yes, he asked me.

The podcast footage is now up at Drabblecast and also on YouTube in four parts (along with some great footage of the parade). I’m in part 2 (after the parade section):

(Clickie for part 1, part 3, and part 4.)

 

Creative Cleaning Strategies

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My mom and step-dad are visiting us from China this weekend. A mad flurry of cleaning has ensued. I thought it wasn’t possible, but we do indeed have too many books. I’ve started stowing them under the couch and randomly shoving them into drawers.

We need to look into acquiring more shelving and bookcases. Desperately.

Tuesday Recap, a Review from The Fix, and Author’s Notes for “Beautiful Winter”

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So recapping yesterday: insomnia, oversleeping, driving to the MARTA station and having the power windows on my car die—driver-side fully down.

So, bleary from sleep deprivation, I had to figure out what to do with my car: leave it at the train station in one of the highest crime-rate cities in the nation* or drive home and switch to the hubby’s car and end up very, very late for work.

I ended up leaving it at the station, gambling that I could awaken Matthew via cell phone and have him swap cars before someone either hotwired my car or stole everything out of it. As it turned out, I couldn’t wake up the hubby, who is an astoundingly sound sleeper, until noon (his usual waking time) despite ringing him every fifteen minutes or so. But those spirits and deities who watch over flustered, harried insomniacs were vigilant, and my car was neither jacked nor targeted by opportunistic thieves.

Whew.

But I’m now looking at a $450+ repair bill to fix my @#$!% power windows. Sigh. The cosmos is not exactly smiling upon my save-money-to-fly-to-Singapore endeavors.

   


Writing Stuff

In other news, I’m still digging myself out of the Dragon*Con catch-up hole, ergo I’m only now catching up on various writing news. After discovering the review of Returning My Sister’s Face at Cabinet Des Fées yesterday, I went on to find a couple more items that went up while I was focused solely upon Dragon*Con and therefore looking away from the Internet:

• My author’s notes for “Beautiful Winter,” published in issue #13 of OSC’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, are now up at Editor Edmund Schubert’s blog.

• “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” in Apex Magazine was reviewed by Kimberly Lundstrom in The Fix:

“Eugie Foster’s stunning novelette, ‘Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast’ [originally published in Interzone] is the highlight of Apex Magazine’s August 2009 issue…Foster paints this uniquely imagined society in vivid hues, by turns beautiful and terrifying. She draws the reader in with lush descriptions and holds her by doling out tantalizing morsels just as the reader craves them. From its intriguing beginning to its shocking end, ‘Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast’ is a gem not to be missed.”

* Technically, the North Springs station is not in Atlanta proper. Also, it bears mentioning that the MARTA rail areas are some of the safest places in metro Atlanta.