Category Archives: Blog

Netherworld and Apex raffle

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fosteronfilm and I went to the opening night of the Netherworld Haunted House yesterday with Patrick and Christie. It was way cool! Okay, I’m a huge wimp when it comes to horror, and I had some major trepidation about going. But it was hella fun!

We went to all three “haunts,” doing the evil clown one (“Dr. Bile’s Freak Pit and Museum of Oddities“) first. That was my least favorite ’cause it was just a smidgen too dark, lightwise, but it was chock full of gibbering evil clowns. You just can’t go wrong with evil clowns. Although my favorite part might have been watching the group behind us. At the end, there’s a chainsaw-wielding scary that lunges out and chases you from the premises, and one of those guys had apparently seen one too many slasher flicks. When Scary-chainsaw Guy came after him, he bolted out the door, launched himself over the stairwell, and tumbled down the embankment, before getting to his feet and pelting off. Goodness. I’m surprised he didn’t hurt himself. Also, he left his female companion in his dust. Mmmf.

Next up was “Cursed,” a more traditional haunt with undead bugaboos, cemetery decor, smoke effects, and shambling ghouls throughout. It was gorgeous! Some of the animatronics were mind-bogglingly impressive: huge, gargoyle-type creatures gesturing and snarling overhead, demonesque monsters flailing and writhing. Wow. I actually wished there’d been fewer monsters lunging out at me so I could just enjoy the spectacle of it without having my heart leaping into my throat at regular intervals. But y’know, gotta keep the adrenalin surging.

And last was “Shock-o-Rama,” a psychedelic, 3D haunt full of fluorescent paint black light effects and twisted/macabre scenes to admire (I especially liked the twisted fairy tales gallery and the dominatrix Snow White with her sub Dwarfs) and a maze of mirrors–the kind you actually get lost in while scary monsters perch in the center stock-still, only to lunge out at you when you turn your back on them.

Tons o’scary fun, and I highly recommend it as a great way to start off the Halloween season.

   


Writing Stuff

Mary Robinette Kowal put together a raffle to help save Apex Digest. Inspired! I donated a signed copy of my chapbook, Inspirations End/Still My Beating Heart, to the cause, as well as my editing services. I’ll edit/critique a story (up to 8k) to the winner. And there’s tons of other great stuff, like autographed books by Brian Keene, Kevin J. Anderson, and Sherrilyn Kenyon; subscriptions to magazines including Dark Discoveries, Shimmer, and Clarkesworld Magazine; original artwork; and sexy outgoing phone messages by voice actor (and Shimmer editor) Mary Robinette Kowal. Go buy a raffle ticket, yo! Only one dollar each, amazing schtuff to be won!

Published:
– Part 1 of my article, “Writing Multicultural Fiction for Children,” is now up at Writing-World.

Fear the Gods of Transportation

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I think the gods of transportation were miffed yesterday.

In the morning, during rush hour, a woman managed to shut down northbound lanes on I-85 and southbound lanes on I-75 when she threatened to jump off an overpass bridge. Also, a cable came loose inside the southbound MARTA tunnel. yukinooruoni‘s train ran over the thing resulting in big sparkage, and I can only assume major slowdowns. In the evening, I noticed that all the electronic notifications (the scrolling marquees that tell you how long until the next train, etc.) were off when I was awaiting a northbound train, and when I got on my train, the onboard television was off with a message warning of an imminent hard drive failure. And then, to cap it off, my train stopped, and the operator announced that there’d been a “medical emergency” at the Civic Center station (I’ve scanned the AJC headlines this morning but haven’t seen any further details). My train was taken out of service, and were instructed to get out and wait for the northbound train coming along on the opposite track.

Of course, that train was jam-packed, standing-room-only.

People were taking the delay and inconvenience with generally good humor. I amused myself by watching my fellow passengers and their seemingly-instinctive body positionings as they attempted not to invade each others’ personal space despite being crammed together. There were a lot of people standing back-to-back in the aisles (personal space boundaries are much smaller behind than in front) and angled so they wouldn’t be pointing directly at any of the people in the seats. And everyone had that blank, unfocused expression people get when they’re desperately trying not to look at anyone or make eye contact.

Also, I saw (and experienced) “sitters guilt,” survivors guilt’s baby cousin twice removed. It’s when someone gets off, and you take their seat, but feel guilty that everyone else still has to strap-hang. Despite being the closest person to the seat, I felt like I’d done something wrong when I plunked myself down. It wasn’t like anyone was glaring at me for taking it, or that there was anyone more in need of it, but I still felt guilty. And I noticed a similar uncomfortable expression of guilt cross the young man’s face who took the next empty seat across from me.

Brains are weird, and watching people on the MARTA is fascinating.

REMINDER: Please subscribe to Apex Digest! Apex needs to bring in 200 new subscriptions or it’ll be forced to close. (More details.)

   


Writing Stuff

The online GrendelSong launch party has commenced! Put on your virtual party hats and head on over:

Published:
– The podcast of “Returning My Sister’s Face” is now up at Pseudopod! It’s read by Stephen Eley who did a fabu job and handled all the Japanese words speckling the tale with amazing aplomb. Go listen, yo!

Asian Five Points Robberies concern

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My senior editor showed me an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that has me fretting a bit:

“Patrols increased after robberies of GSU students

“All four of the Georgia State University students attacked by a band of robbers near the school’s campus in the past month are Asian, police said Wednesday.

“The students, three males and one female, were robbed in three different incidents near the MARTA station in the Five Points area, according to police reports.” (Read the article.)

So yah, aside from the obvious Asian thing, Five Points is the MARTA station that I transfer rail lines at every day. I’m not freaking out because the robberies were around the station, not in it. According to terracinque, the MARTA stations and trains are among the safest places in the Metro Atlanta area, and I can well believe that. The stations are always chock full of security guards and cameras, and the trains seem well-patrolled. Plus I always ride during the daily rush, so there’s always plenty of people around. But it did give me pause for stewing.

   


Writing Stuff

REMINDER: Please subscribe to Apex Digest! Apex needs to bring in 200 new subscriptions or it’ll be forced to close. (More details.)

New Words/Editing:
– Shook out a story that has been waiting for another editing pass or three before going back out to market and am spit-shining it. I wasn’t appalled that it had seen an editor or two, although it did/does need some tightening.

Received:
– A note from GrendelSong‘s editor, Paul Jessup, announcing that tomorrow, GrendelSong is having an online release party at the the GrendelSong website and his blog to celebrate its premiere issue (which will contain my story, “Shim Chung the Lotus Queen,” as well as fiction by Forrest Aguirre, Stephanie Burgis, Samantha Henderson (samhenderson), E. Sedia (squirrel-monkey), and Jay Lake (jaylake), among others). There’ll be a podcast with Jay Lake reading his short story, “The Best of Men, The Best of Times,” and some spiffy images. Couldn’t ask for a better time, except maybe if there was free cake. So be sure to check it out.
– An email from my Cricket editor letting me know that “The Snow Woman’s Daughter” is slated for their Feb. ’07 issue. Shiny!

Subscribe to Apex Digest, YO!

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Apex Digest has just launched an emergency fund/subscription drive. Due to the editor, Jason Sizemore, stoically fording ahead, putting out regular issues and paying his writers and artists like a consummate professional, even when his own personal finances were in flux, the ‘zine is in something of a tenuous position right now. Apex Digest needs 200 new subscriptions in the next two weeks, or its future is in doubt.

Apex is a wonderful publication that has published fabulous fiction by great authors such as Ben Bova, Rhonda Eudaly (reudaly), Angeline Hawkes (angelinehawkes), James P. Hogan, Jennifer Pelland (jenwrites), Tom Piccirilli, Cherie Priest (wicked_wish), Christopher Rowe (uncommonwealth), Steve Saville, Lawrence M. Schoen (klingonguy), Bryn Sparks, Lavie Tidhar, Athena Workman (doc-tower), and yours truly.

Please! If you love science fiction and horror, support it. SUBSCRIBE NOW! And if you already have a subscription, consider surprising your SF/H-loving friend, neighbor, or co-worker with an early Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanza/whatever subscription, or maybe a chapbook, poetry collection, or some Apex Swag.

Spread the word, too!

Generally blah, but in an upbeat way

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Sicking-up skunk, tetchy Internet connection (spork-you, Comcast!), and a sinus headache with no Sudafed.

Blah.

The week has gotten off to something of a rocky start, although I remain fairly upbeat, all things considered. And I have my talisman against rain, my trusty umbrella. It seems a cosmic truth that it never rains when I have the thing. Or perhaps it’s the corollary, that it always rains when I forget it. Either the rain gods love me, or they hate me.

(Note to self: make appropriately soggy sacrifice to rain gods.)

And, oh yeah, happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, me hearties. Yahrr.

   


Writing Stuff

Got the last (I mean it this time) Dragon*Con articles edited and published to the Daily Dragon, including an excellent interview by yukinooruoni and Claire-of-no-LJ (Edit: ooo, she actually has an LJ: esbita) with the Mythbusters Build Team.

New Words/Editing:
– Did a final editing pass on and sent off the story for lynnejamneck‘s anthology. That’s one hamster down.
– 500 words on the collaboration story I’m doing with mtrimm1 and lobbed it back. Another hamster in orbit, although this one will rocket back.
– 400 words on the Japanese Dreams story, which still lacks a title. Juggling juggling juggling.

Received:
– Galley proofs of “Returning My Sister’s Face” for the Best New Fantasy: 2005 anthology edited by oldcharliebrown. It says on the Amazon listing that it came out already (on Sept. 6), but that’s patently not the case. Soon is the buzzword. It promises to be pretty.

Capitol building pix: I work here!

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Feeling better, largely due to an uninterrupted intake of Sudafed, I suspect. Thankfully, Hobkin hasn’t evidenced any more signs of feeling ucky.

I’ve mentioned before how much I love the building I now work in, the Georgia Capitol building. glenn5 and I went sightseeing on the 4th floor during our lunch hour on Friday, and I took pictures. The 4th floor houses a natural history/Georgia history museum, so in addition to being a beautiful feat of architecture, it also has on display some oddities and curiosities, including a two-headed calf.


These are the stairs I take every day to get to my office. Note the bust of James E. Oglethorpe in the lower left corner.


Another picture of the stairs to better spotlight the gorgeous lamps.

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Pull-my-brain-out-and-replace-it-with-a-plush-bear-PLEASE

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While I love the changing seasons, and I really love autumn, I think the incoming (outgoing?) pressure front is doing bad things to everyone at Chez Foster.

Yesterday, I had a pull-my-brain-out-and-replace-it-with-a-plush-bear-PLEASE magnitude headache, so I took a couple Extra Strength Excedrin to quell it. Alas, that did not succeed in alleviating the pain, but it did make me nauseated. Then, due to MARTA-related vagaries, I missed my normal connecting train (the operator forgot to open the doors on the right side of the train, stranding those of us clustered there until the train made “moving on now” sounds and we all bounded out of the left side. Subsequently, I scampered to the northbound platform just in time to see my train pulling out . . .) and had to wait for the next one. By the time the train arrived and I’d reached the North Springs station, I had gotten progressively more ill until I was thoroughly motion sick. Riding the MARTA doesn’t trigger inner ear distress in me usually, so I’m thinking it must’ve been the queasy from the pills compounded by it.

Driving home, it was only through a phenomenal feat of will (and fear since I didn’t see how I could avoid being plowed into by rush hour traffic if I had to stop) that I was not violently sick. I slunk into our house, hoping to find much comfort and pampering, only to discover that fosteronfilm was also suffering from a headache. To his credit, he did indeed do his very best to comfort and pamper me, but, well, nursemaid abilities are limited when the caregiver is also in pain.

Jump to later that night, after dinner–which helped, but I was still feeling pretty blah–and I was crashed out on the couch, mostly asleep. I woke up to Hobkin snuggling under the blankets with me, and Matthew announcing that the lil guy had just sicked up his dinner.

Sigh.

Hobkin and I snuggled for a nap–and major snaps go to my loving hubby for cleaning up the mess all by himself–and then Hobkin wakes me up by leaping out of my arms and pelting to the kitchen. Sure ’nuff, he’s sick again. Although I remain immensely grateful that the fuzzy beast has the courtesy not to be sick on me, the couch, or the carpet.

I’m not sure if Hobkin was stressed from both me and Matthew being sick, or if he’s also getting hit by whatever’s affecting us. But at least he hasn’t sicked up since.

Today, I still have a headache. I think it’s sinus-related. The two Sudafed I took this morning took the edge off, but they were also the sum total of my traveling supply of Sudafed and have worn off. And even if I had more, I don’t know if I’d want to take it. My tummy continues to be unsettled, and I have a MARTA ride home yet to survive.

So yah, I feel like crap.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
– My contrib. copy of the Thou Shalt Not anthology, published by Dark Cloud Press.
– Payment from Pseudopod for their forthcoming podcast of “Returning My Sister’s Face.”

A good mail day to offset the queasy health day.

Mysterious file transpirings

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Patrick and yukinooruoni came over last night to hang out and gab. And yukinooruoni brought me a prezzie: a bottle of dessert wine! I’m thinking I might open it this weekend. Or maybe I’ll save it for a special occasion.

In the course of our chatting, I discovered that there are still apparently a number of Daily Dragon articles floating around somewhere, unedited and unpublished. I thought I’d consolidated all the data onto my personal USB flash drive in the big clean-off-the-computers activity that Monday, but apparently there are still files on the other flash drive that need to be extracted. Oops.

   


Writing Stuff

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but I seem to have lost all the progress I made on the as-yet-untitled Japanese fantasy story yesterday. When I opened up the file this morning, it had reverted back to how it was at the end of Tuesday.

Mystifying and irksome that. I’m not egregiously put out–no hair rending or shrieks of outrage at the cosmos–because yesterday was mostly about research. The primary changes I made consisted of a few hundred words of tightening edits and a bit of scene fleshing out, all fairly straightforward to replicate without overmuch brain strain, not to mention all my research notes were intact. I’d be needing a padded cell right about now if I’d laid down thousands of new words, so it could’ve been much worse.

Still, I’m a bit flummoxed. My best guess is that I didn’t save my file before shutting down for the day, except that’s just not like me. I hit SAVE with almost compulsive regularity–conditioned as I’ve been by a randomly powering down laptop and other fun-and-exciting hardware adventures. And I thought Word did automatic saves at regular intervals anyway? Plus, wouldn’t Word have asked me if I’d wanted to save my changes if I’d closed the file without saving?

I also checked my temp file cache to see if I’d accidentally saved it there, as well as my other folders to see if I’d somehow managed to relocate it. Nope.

Weirdness.

Did I unwittingly offend a computer diety yesterday?

I’m now back to where I was when I shut down yesterday, perhaps minus a scintillating line or two, or with a slightly-more-awkward sentence construction here and there, but those are minor editing issues.

I’m also compulsive about making backups, which all of my experience with these helpful but maddening technological gadgets is further reinforcing . . .

Received:
– Payment from Her Circle Ezine for their reprinting of “Second Daughter” pending a bit of PayPal-related awkwardness.

HCE paid me via debit card to my PayPal account, but it’s a Personal Account, and so it balked at accepting payment without being upgraded. I declined its repeated exhortations to upgrade (no, I don’t want PayPal taking a fee+percentage out of this and all future monies. Yes, I’M SURE, dammit!) and so had to refuse payment. Happily, an email to the editor explaining the situation resulted in a “we’ll send you a money order forthwith.” So it’s all good.

Adventures on MARTA

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On the train home yesterday, there was a guy standing with his mountain bike, playing the flute. It was one of those wooden (bamboo?) instruments that creates an earthy, gentle sound. It was a lovely melody, a bit rambly and a lot sylvan. Created a somewhat surreal, almost eldritch ambiance to the ride. Interesting seeing the expressions on my fellow passengers’ faces: fascination, pleasure, curiosity, disinterest, and annoyance.

Transferring trains, I sat next to the door and witnessed a trio of angry boys jostling each other and shouting threats as they disembarked–obvious chest thumping overlaying an undercurrent of whine, rather than that simmer of true violence. They were young, and I was not at all worried about my safety, although I did have a few moments’ concern that their roughhousing would knock one of them into me, and therefore my laptop (unwarrented, as it turns out). When they exited, a jumble of reactions arose in their wake: laughter, rolled eyes at youthful exuberance, and a few quips at who would end up winning if the altercation did come to blows. A strange camaraderie of entertained commuters.

And this morning on the train, as I was working on the Japanese fantasy, I became aware of the passenger next to me peering furtively at my laptop screen from time to time, apparently curious to see what I was typing. It made me a bit self-conscious, which resulted in some rather clunky dialogue (that I’m going to have to either cut or clean up in my next editing pass), but it also amused me.

Lotso characters and setting inspiration on the train. A fringe benefit.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
– Fan mail! I got an email from a creative writing college student who really liked the interview with Deborah Vetter I did for my September Writing for Young Readers column. She said I was a “true inspiration” and that I encouraged her to “make the most of every day and every writing opportunity.” *Squee!* That’s totally going to have me walking on clouds for a while.
– Payment from the fine folks of Aberrant Dreams for “Nobodies and Somebodies.” $$!

New Words:
– 400 on the Japanese fantasy. And I plotted out the storyline.

Let there be cake! And there was . . . oof.

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One of the folks in my area had a birthday today, and there was ice cream and candles and cake! A lot of cake. Yummy coconut cake, of vast richness and size. Vasty vast richness. And size.

Oof.

I ate too much cake. And there’s still a chunk of cake and a puddle of rapidly-melting ice cream sitting on a plate on my desk.

I think I’ll be skipping dinner tonight . . .

On the non-binging on cake front, Comcast continues to prove that they are eminently deserving of the title “ISP Most in Need of a Vicious Sporking.” We switched over our automatic Comcast payment from our old checking account (from Suntrust, the holder of the “Bank Most in Need of a Vicious Sporking” title) to our new one in July, and Comcast cut off our Internet yesterday because we “hadn’t paid.” Yet, they still have us listed as “automatic payment by check,” and even if the switchover didn’t take, we STILL HAVE our Suntrust account.

Internet is back up now, but Comcast wants to charge us a late fee and/or a re-activation fee, and we do not wish to be charged said fee(s). We’re putting on our Contention Boots, and if that fails, there’s always sporks.

   


Writing Stuff

Discovered via Ralan that Maniac Press has folded, closing all six of its anthology projects. Would’ve been nice if they’d taken the time to inform their contributors of this fact, but I can’t say I’m particularly put out. I didn’t have high expectations for this reprint sale, and lo, even those failed to be met.

New Words:
Whee! I’m writing fiction again!
– 800 words on an urban fantasy inspired by my daily commutes on the MARTA rail.
– 1200 words on a new Japanese fantasy for one of the anthology hamsters I agreed to toss about. This one has a deadline of November, but I was getting a little anxious that I hadn’t started on it. Less anxious now. ‘Course starting a story and finishing it are different hamsters altogether.