Category Archives: Blog

Hobkin’s Not-so-big Adventure and Nov-Dec Cricket

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It’s that time of the year again for flu shots, so yesterday on my day off, fosteronfilm and I bopped down to the K-P clinic. While there, I also had my bimonthly test tubes of blood extracted*. The phlebotomist was competent, but I still ended up bruising, and I’m also achy from the flu shot. Meh. I don’t have a problem with needles, but it was a bit of a pincushiony sort of day.

But, for the first time ever, we accidentally left the gate to Hobkin’s area open when we went out. When one of us is home to supervise—which is most of the time—he gets free run, but when we’re out, we lock him in his rover gated area.

We came home to discover that not only had we forgotten to lock the gate, we’d also left the doors to the master bathroom+walk-in closet open—two places where he’s not allowed to go ’cause of the various high potential skunk-induced mischief/danger items therein.

After confirming Hobkin’s whereabouts (napping peacefully in his usual place) and that he wasn’t in any distress, I began a mad-thorough search, checking to see if he’d gotten into anything scary: the sundry meds or first-aid supplies in the cabinet under the sink, the “do not injest” packets of desiccant in shoe boxes, the dental floss in the trash can, etc. And it seems that while he did indeed tip the trash can over, which fortunately had nothing more hazardous in it than a couple tissues, he didn’t riffle through anything else. He didn’t open any of the cabinets or de-box any shoes or anything. Huh. What a good boy! I mean he knows he’s not allowed in those rooms, and it’s obvious he did check them out, but he didn’t get into any of the Eugie-heart-attack-causing mayhem that he could have.

Relief-amazement-relief-amusement-relief.

*I take the immunosuppressant Imuran to keep my lupus/MCTD at bay, and it can cause a drop in white blood count as well as liver toxicity, so I have regular blood tests done to monitor those.

   


Writing Stuff

New Words:
• around 1.7K on The Stupid Novel. Momentum? What momentum?

Received:
• Payment from Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Mangazine for “The Better To…”

Seems that the world’s economy is catching up to the badness of the U.S.’s. When I first made the sale, the same payment amount (in AUD) would’ve netted me about $10 USD more than it did yesterday. But that was when the U.S. dollar was tanking and other currencies were still holding steady. It seems the currency exchange rates between AUD and USD have now equalized out to close to their usual rates. Drat.

I suspect that will also be the case for whenever I get payment from Interzone (paid in GBP) for “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast.” Double drat. Although I’m gun-jumping there, as the story hasn’t even come out yet.
• Shiny contrib. copies of the Nov-Dec ’08 issue of Cricket:

There was much squeeage when I discovered that “Cuhiya’s Husband” is the lead story! As always, the Cricket folks put together a gorgeous product. Absolutely lovely.

The Fix’s 1-Year Anniversary and 2 Reviews of Triangulation: Taking Flight.

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Yesterday marked the 1-year anniversary of launching The Fix online. I wanted to commemorate this milestone with something insightful, stirring, and inspiring, but I ended up cobbling together an unremarkable and stock year-in-review editorial instead.

Not for lack of trying. I made several rewrite passes on it, as I wanted to convey my appreciation for The Fix’s writers and editorial staff who work so hard and with such dedication as well as express how heartened I was by the obvious shared love that these folks have for short form works—not to mention how honored I am to be entrusted with the efforts and contributions of such talented writers—but I ended up rambling and sounding like an award acceptance speech—one of those which gets cut short by the cued music. So I red-lined it to bare bones. Grumf.

   


Writing Stuff

“The Life and Times of Penguin” in Triangulation: Taking Flight received some nice commentary in a pair of reviews:

“The final story ‘Life And Times Of Penguin’ by Eugie Foster about self-aware toys in the hands of a destructive child is both touching and uplifting”
—Geoff Willmetts, SF Crowsnest

“Told from the point of view of a balloon animal penguin, the toy’s brief but eventful life manages to jam in enough existential angst to give Kierkegaard indigestion, an astonishing emotional depth, and yet fully embrace the essentially absurd nature of her story.”
—Martin McGrath, The Fix

Martin also described it as “Toy Story meets Voltaire’s Candide,” which tickled me when I read it, as “Penguin” is my homage to Candide which I wrote not too long after having seen Toy Story for the first time. Candide is one of my favorite satires, managing to deliver its message with humor and wit and, impressively, brevity. Rock on, Voltaire.

Received:
• Shiny contrib. copy of #37 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine:

I have essentially transitioned to reading nearly everything from a computer screen, as I encourage all the editors and publishers who send me review material to provide me with electronic files—faster, cheaper, and greener for all to disseminate. But I still get a visceral thrill from holding a print copy of a publication with one of my stories in it. Go fig.

“The Tanuki-Kettle” now up at PodCastle and “Daughter of Botu” forthcoming

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Received a note from velourmane that my story, “The Tanuki-Kettle,” is now up at Podcastle.

Go listen, yo! mkhobson provides a fabu and funny introduction, and it’s read by the mellifluous tinaconnolly. All hail Podcastle!

Rachel also said that she’d like to buy “Daughter of Bótù” for more podcasting goodness. Happy squeeage all around!

Observations on MARTA this morning

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Normally during my daily commute on MARTA’s rail service, I’m head-down-eyes-on-laptop-screen, as I typically use that time to edit, write, or catch up on email. But this morning, Outlook crashed, as it sometimes does, and I needed to reboot in order to restore it. I love my itty-teeny Sony VAIO ultraportable, but even with its RAM upgraded to maximum capacity, it boots sloooow. So I sighed, CTRL-ALT-DELed, and settled down to wait.

I need to remember that occasionally, it can be amusing to look up.

I think the line I take goes by some private high school or academy; now and then I see uniform-wearing young people, always in groups and clusters. During this morning’s commute, I shared my car with three female students, two of them on one seat and a third that went darting down the aisle after the train had commenced moving in order to hover by her classmates, trying to entreat them to move to where she had been sitting so that they could all sit together (the two seemed disinclined).

The movement and the entreaty caught my eye, and I glanced over. My interest in their exchange was short-lived, and I looked away after a second or two. But then I saw that another passenger, an older woman, was scrutinizing them intently. This did pique my interest, as her fixated attention made me wonder what she found so fascinating. But, as I didn’t want to be rude and stare at her, I used the darkened—and therefore highly reflective—windows to obliquely watch her (and the trio of students). I subsequently noticed that someone else, a middle-aged man, was also watching the girls and the older woman via the mirror-like windows.

Yep, watchers-watching-watcher—very spy-versus-spy—and it made me grin. Intrigue and conspiracy aboard the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. *Snerk*

I never did figure out what the older woman watcher was so riveted by, as my laptop finished rebooting, and I got sucked back into my work. But that’s probably for the better. There’s definitely a story there, but I suspect the true story is pretty mundane, and I’m better off letting my imagination indulge in the less likely and more lurid scenarios.

Digging My Way Out of an Unplanned 5-day Weekend and 2 Honorable Mentions in YBFH 2008

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Ended up taking Monday off from work as well due to the fuel shortage afflicting the Southeast. But happily, fosteronfilm went out during the early afternoon on Monday to brave the gas queues so that I might be able to get to work on Tuesday—and he waited for over an hour and was only able to purchase enough for half a tank due to rationing limits. But half a tank should last through this week, and every day that passes brings us closer to the end of this annoying situation.

So yup, five-day weekend. At least I only ended up taking a single vacation day for it; Friday was my scheduled 4×10 day off, and I took Monday as my 4×10 day for this week. But it was still not happy making, and I got very little accomplished.

For some reason, when I was sans day job, all my time at home was work time. If I was awake, I was in my library office working or on the couch working or brewing tea in order to stay awake so I could work more. That essentially meant I customarily worked 14+ hours a day, seven days a week—which isn’t as terrible and sweatshop as it sounds, as I’ve come to accept and embrace my workaholism.

But gradually, now that I’m solidly past my 2nd anniversary at the OLC, I’ve noticed that I’ve been reverting back to how I was during my cubicle monkey days. That is, when I’m home, I’m “off.” My motivation and drive to get anything done bottoms out, whether that work is writing, editing The Fix or the Daily Dragon, keeping up with various correspondences, or just about anything at all that isn’t fluff-recreational reading, brainless surfing, or vacuous movie/television watching. So five days at home is essentially five utterly unproductive days. I actually woke up in a cold sweat Tuesday, freaked out about how many hamsters had gotten fat, bitey, and dropped on my foot in those five days.

Grumf.

   


Writing Stuff

Received a note from mroctober sharing the kudos for So Fey* from Kelly Link and Gavin Grant in their write-up in the recently published The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 2008:

“Steve Berman’s So Fey: Queer Fairy Fictions (Haworth) was one of the stronger themed anthologies of the year. Favorite stories include Holly Black’s heartbreaking ‘The Coat of Stars’ and Eugie Foster’s ‘Year of the Fox,’ as well as work by Craig Laurence Gidney and Laurie J. Marks.”

Of course, I immediately (well, after some delighted squeeing) surfed off to check out whether “Year of the Fox”** had gotten an Honorable Mention (in addition to being mentioned, um, honorably) and was ecstatic to see that yes it had, and also, so had “The Music Company” (published in issue #26 of Hub).

Verily, there was more squeeing.

* The first print run of So Fey from Haworth Press sold out, and the anthology is being reprinted by Prime Books—which reprint, according to Amazon.com, is due out late November.
** “Year of the Fox” will also be in my forthcoming collection from Norilana, Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, coming out in March.

No Gasoline in Atlanta and How My Brain is Stupid

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So this week I’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of folks taking MARTA. On Monday, I wondered if there was some convention or event happening in town. But now I’m pretty sure it’s because of the statewide gasoline shortage. Interesting that folks only consider public transportation as an option when their ready fuel supply is threatened. I wonder how many of them will consider continuing to take the train once this “gas crisis” resolves.

On a personal note, things are a wee bit anxious with our gas gauges. I had been planning on fueling up my car the day before the prices jacked up a week+ ago. Bad timing that, but no biggie. I figured I could wait until they came back down to reasonable levels and switched to driving fosteronfilm‘s car, which had about a half tank.

This week, not only haven’t the prices gone down, but it’s getting hard to find a station which hasn’t been drained dry. And the ones which do have gas are also sporting some pretty long queues. I think letting my car idle in line waiting to fill up is a poor use of a scarce resource, so I haven’t braved the stations.

I believe there’s enough in the hubby’s car to make it through this week (and only because I’m working 4×10 hours), but it’s going to be close. Been really easing up on the gas pedal, decreasing my speed overall, and trying to coast to a gentle stop rather than have to brake hard. Making a minor change to my driving habits seems to have had a pretty dramatic effect on how much fuel I’m using—assuming each marker on the quasi-digital fuel level display indicates an equivalent amount, which may not be the case.

Just need to make it home today and to the MARTA station and back tomorrow. I’m expecting things to be back to normal come next week. I hope.

   


Writing Stuff

Was muchly miffed with myself for not getting any new words on the page over the weekend+Monday even though I had plenty of time and opportunity to write. (I did, however, bake a blackberry pie; whenever I engage in activity of a domestic nature, it’s typically indication that I’m deep into writing-procrastination mode.)

Frustrated with muse and brain, I decided to do a lil (nonscientific) experiment. I intentionally let my other hamsters—editing The Fix, various professional correspondences, etc.—run amok until I am once again verily behind on everything, thereby ramping up my stress level and decreasing the amount of time I’ve got free to commit to writing.

My theory is that in addition to my creativity being hardwired to my stress center, my desire to write will rise in disproportionate measure to the amount of time I’ve got free and clear to do so.

And lo the results:

New Words:
• 2.5K+ words on The Stupid Novel yesterday with ideas pelting me every time I stopped to do something like eat or sleep.
• 1K words on The Stupid Novel this morning (so far) upon awakening at 4AM with a scene that I had to get down.

Yup. It seems that the more my to do list snowballs out of control, the more my desire to write kicks in.

My brain is stupid and I hates it.

“Daughter of Bótù”: Story of the Week pick and Locus review

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jimhines totally made me squee the other day when he pointed me over to the Fantastic Reviews Blog where Aaron Hughes recommended my “Daughter of Bótù” (in the Aug. 2008 Realms of Fantasy) as his Story of the Week pick:

“‘Daughter of Bótù’ is a fairy tale with an Eastern flavor. It is the tale of An-ying, a rabbit transformed into a young woman, who quickly falls in love with a prince. The premise may sound routine but it soon turns into something memorable, thanks to Eugie Foster’s gorgeous prose and to the twists the story takes as the love between An-ying and her prince becomes rather complicated.”

Hungry for more reader/reviewer commentary, I engaged my Google-fu and discovered (courtesy slushmaster) that Rich Horton (ecbatan) had also given my story—as well as Jim’s fabulous “Light of a Thousand Suns”—snaps in Locus:

“Realms of Fantasy’s August issue has several nice, challenging, stories, including a rather shocking look at sacrifice from James Van Pelt, ‘Light of a Thousand Suns,’ and a bittersweet Japanese fantasy, complete with fox and rabbit women, Eugie Foster’s ‘Daughter of Bótù.'”

And lo, there was verily much squeeing.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
• Contract and proof of “The Better To…” which is forthcoming in issue #37 of ASIM.

New Words:
• Around 200 on The Stupid Novel.

Tried to get back into the words-on-the-page swing by doing a read-through/editing pass on what has gone before and managed to get too bogged down in the rewriting/editing. Sigh. Hoping to regain my steam this week. Maybe this year, Dragon*Con will have only derailed me for two weeks instead of the customary month.

Been doing a lot of supplementary reading and immersive muse coaxing, particularly of translated works from Japanese manga and anime. And I think it’s done something unexpected. All this year, I feel like I’ve been stuck in writerly first gear. Even when I achieved flow, I never revved up to that easy cadence of words and imagery that punctuated some of the best stuff I’ve written to date, although the story was battering at me with the ferocity of a thousand hamsters.

I’d grasp and grope for the right word or turn of phrase, often resorting to my thesaurus when I simply couldn’t come up with the words. In the end, I had to plop down some awful, clunky prose just to get the story on the page; consoling myself that, after all, it’s hella easier to rewrite, polish, and edit than it is to create new wordage. I figured I was just getting old, that my lexical recall abilities were beginning to erode along with some other cognitive functions that I’ve noticed aren’t as acute as they were when I was fifteen. Frustrating but less than dire, big picture-wise. But as I was going through The Stupid Novel again, the words were coming back, and I was replacing the clumsy uck I had before with better words, better phrases.

I think reading the oftentimes broken translations, punctuated by some mind-blowingly lyrical-but-peculiar phrases, have helped to jostle me out of first gear. Hope it lasts. The trick is to keep from dropping back into first (or throwing a rod) and then revving up to third.

Vrooom.

Dragon*Con 2008: Other aftereffects and “A Nose for Magic”

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Something I neglected mentioning in my D*C08 write-up is that I had two, possibly three, Daily Dragon staff members come down with what they thought was food poisoning. They were out for a shift but came back within a day, shaky but determined not to miss anymore of Dragon*Con or another of their assigned desk shifts.

When I hear “food poisoning,” I tend to figure I’m pretty safe as I don’t eat meat, and most such poisoning episodes can be attributed to meat consumption. What I didn’t add to the equation is that the daughter of another of my Daily Dragon staff was recovering from the flu and that there’s been a lot of flu making the rounds this last month—also that this year the flu shots were pretty ineffective, missing the major strains.

I no longer believe the distress afflicting my staff was due to food poisoning. Rather, my main circle of convention interaction seems instead to have been plague-ridden. And, because my immune system is the stupidest immune system in the world, a fairly mild ailment which knocks regular folks out for a day flattened me for three. (*grumble* stupid human suit *grumble*)

So yeah, I had an uncomfortable weekend, and I’m still a bit wobbly. Also, my voice hasn’t come back yet, although my co-editors and husband assure me that I sound much less like a toad than I did last week. However, it means I got absolutely nothing accomplished all weekend. Ergo, I am playing catch up on my efforts to catch up from Dragon*Con.

Wah!

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
• Contrib. copies of The Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction: 13 Prize Winning Tales with my story, “A Nose for Magic.” Shiny cover:

“A Nose for Magic” is one I’m particularly fond of as it was directly inspired by Hobkin. After reading this newest one (he read it in zero draft, but I tend not to subject him to the final versions as I figure he’s already doing “above and beyond” duty as my eternal first reader) fosteronfilm said that I should have a collection of skunk stories published. I laughed, ‘cuz who would want to buy a collection of skunk-inspired short stories? Also, I didn’t think I had written enough of them to fill a collection. But actually, when I opened up my story logs spreadsheet, I think I actually may. But I’m still left with the question, would anyone actually want to buy a collection of skunk and skunk-inspired stories? Hmmm.

Dragon*Con 2008

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Dragon*Con happened. My voice is stripped (again), I seem to have left a passel of brain cells at the Hyatt, I’m still in a sleep deprived fugue state, and I’m trying not to think too hard about everything on my “to do” list. But it was good.

Things that stick out of the blur:

• My talk for Ann: I’ve done better; I’ve done worse. I think I went too fast, but I don’t remember seeing too many glazed-over/bored faces. And I sold out of the books I’d brought with me afterwards, yay!

• My Sunday panel wasn’t what I expected. The panel was publisher-heavy, which tended to veer the discussion more towards marketing, post-publication, and less towards selling to markets (pre-publication). As such, I had less meaningful to say on the topic but found it interesting to listen to the discussion of my fellow panelists.

• I got to meet and powwow with Stephen Segal (Weird Tales‘s Editorial/creative director) over lunch—which he also very graciously treated me to—meet Edmund R. Schubert, at long last—my IGMS editor—and catch up with Josepha Sherman, who I haven’t seen since Launch Pad last year.

• My Daily Dragon staff was fabulous. I decided this year to recruit some editorial assistance. In past years, I’ve focused on getting reporters and therefore looked for folks with writing skills. This year, I actively sought some editorial experience, too (which included recruiting my co-editor at the OLC, full_fathom5), so I could delegate more of my editing responsibilities. That worked out GREAT. I should have done it years ago.

Also, we got a new copier which didn’t jam and which cranked out the print copy in half the time the old one used to, so I could let my graveyard shift leave early, and every morning by the time I came down to the DD room, the print edition was already on delivery rounds. Very nice.

• Got to hang out and spend large chunks of time with several of my DC2K writers group—especially canadiansuzanne, reddherring1955, and Debbie—who were on my staff.

I think I’ll need another week to recover and get caught up (possibly a couple weeks), but all-in-all, I’m pretty pleased with this year’s D*C. Much better than last year’s which was too chaotic and stressful.

   


Writing Stuff

Newly published:
• “The Adventures of Manny the Mailmobile” (audio reprint) in Clonepod.

Hamsters at the Gates

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Yes, there has been a dearth of posts. The hamsters are at the gates, and they are bitey.

Dragon*Con is this week (GAH!), and the schedule changes—O the schedule changes. (Did I mention, “GAH!”?) Busy does not begin to describe it. I’ve let The Fix pretty much fall by the wayside this week and last. I’m hoping to publish a glut of reviews this week before the convention starts, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to squeeze in the time.

Various updates:

Hobkin is better, although he still has a bit of a limp. We’ve noticed that he limps less after walking around, so we’ve been trying to encourage him to move more—which is about as effective as one might expect. But he’s much better, which is a great relief.

dude_the flew in this weekend, and fosteronfilm immediately put him to work putting together bumpers, intros, and clips for the D*C Independent Film Festival. They were up all night and were still working when I woke up this morning (@5AM) trying to get aspect ratios to behave—and making various groaning and swearing noises. Poor Paul actually fell asleep wedged between two couch cushions with his laptop still encoding a clip.

Matthew’s birthday was last Friday. It was pretty low key. I made him a chocolate cream pie (his favorite) and got him a teragigabyte external hard drive, which he immediately put to film festival use.

I’ve got far fewer guest duties at Dragon*Con than last year, which is intentional; last year I was so busy and stressed out, I didn’t really enjoy the convention. I decided this year I wouldn’t over-schedule myself unto oblivion so I could try to have a little fun.

My schedule:
•Fri (8/29) Noon: Reprising my guest lecture for Ann Crispin’s Beginner Writers Workshop, “Marketing Short Fiction” Marietta (Hyatt).
•Sun (8/31) 5:30PM: “Writing for Small Presses and Magazines” with Mur Lafferty, Deborah Smith, and Lee Martindale, Manila/Singapore/Hong Kong (Hyatt).

And that’s it. Hallelujah! If anyone wants to swing by to say “hi,” I’ll likely be chained to my desk at Daily Dragon Headquarters. This year, we’ve moved to Chicago C-F (Exhibit Level) in the Hyatt.

   


Writing Stuff

New Words:
• Managed to get around 3K more words on Taijiya before I had to stop and devote myself to Dragon*Con prep, bringing my total count to 30.5K. Definitely not at zero draft, but at least I hit the 30K mark.

Received:
• 5-day Sale of “A Box of Spoons” to a new anthology project edited by Lee Harris (editor of Hub). Lee emailed me about a month ago inviting me to submit to one of two anthologies he’s editing that are coming out next year (in January and July). The publisher is a major one, although the specifics are still under wraps, and the pay is pro, so I’m verily stoked.
• Edits from Aeon of “Black Swan, White Swan” with a few requested tweaks. Last week. In the midst of Dragon*Con chaos. Somehow I managed to squeeze in the (very) minor rewrites and sent it off on Saturday. Very much looking forward to issue #15, which is due out any day now.