The good news is that my joints don’t ache, so I’m likely not having a flare-up. The bad news is that everything sinus-related hurts or is otherwise nonfunctional: head, eyes, face, nose. But the upshot is that I’m not contagious (probably), and with the application of a veritable pharmacopoeia of meds, I can still function. Sort of.

Managed around 700 words on the “Kiyohime” short story. Also decided to give in and began writing the sequel to Demon Queller. It feels like the height of presumption (and folly) to start work on book 2 when book 1 isn’t even at the “ready to market” stage, but it also feels wrong to smother the craving to put words on the page. Ergo, 2K words on Dragon Queller.

My muse, she is a skanky crack whore. I know it. She knows it. We’re way beyond rehab.

Just heard from Vera of Norilana that the University of California-Davis will be using Returning My Sister’s Face for their ASA 189B course, “Asian American Literature, Popular Fiction, and Racial Representation.” Really loving this university textbook trend!

Managed 1.5K on the “Kiyohime” short story yesterday. It’s coming along well. Think I’m around the halfway point. Got the whole story outlined and plotted out, including the twisty bit which was annoying the heck outta me, and getting close to the climax scene. At this rate, I might have it at zero draft before month’s end.

It’s a little weird working on a whole new story after slaving away at the novel for so long. Having to reset my story/character head-space to get it out of my novel’s world. And I keep having the itch to return to my novel’s characters and continue their story.

That’s a brand new, shiny novelty for me. I’m accustomed to feeling done with a world and characters after finishing a short story. I’ve had folks ask me whether I was going to expand some of my short work into novels, and I had a hard time seeing the appeal of that. I mean, I told their tale, that’s it, the end. (‘Course, having said that, Demon Queller began life as the short story “Honor is a Game Mortals Play.” )

But I intentionally left room for continuation in the novel, and now I want to continue it. I see the virtue of being a novelist with an ongoing series. The characters and their world become fundamentally ingrained in your creative consciousness, and you don’t need to be constantly rebuilding new worlds and new people–although, don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of appeal in that too.

‘K, I get it. Writerly revelation, la. And I thought I was past those. Hah. The cosmos calls “hubris” on me yet again.

So I spent the weekend not writing. Instead, I researched.

I really, really try to only do ad hoc research for stories because I know that if I start doing preemptive/preliminary/preparatory research, it will eat my soul–and my time, which is more valuable. But I started looking up a fairly, or so I thought, simple detail about Buddhism as practiced in Japan, and that led to the Meiji Restoration, which led to some interesting things about Shintoism…and, well, soul-eating was had.

And now I’m behind where I want to be on the short story. Sigh. Stupid inquisitive, obsessive-compulsive brain.

Finished my last zero draft pass on the novel. In these several zero draft passes, I ended up adding approximately 1.8K words. The novel is now officially at first draft and ready for critique. Yay!

However, our trooper of a printer gave up the ghost several months back, and we’ve been limping along with a backup printer–accommodated somewhat by the cosmos which has not required us to print out many documents recently. But now, as I discovered after printing out the first thirty pages of Demon Queller, the backup printer is officially kaput as well.

Sigh. Time to buy a new printer.

Guess I should be grateful that our primary printer, an Epson Stylus inkjet, lasted for so long. Haven’t needed to get a new printer in around ten years; that’s a pretty decent run. But I’m irritated that we need to now.

So, any recommendations for a low-frills, low-maintenance, workhorse-esque inkjet? Otherwise, we’ll probably end up getting another Epson. (The backup was a Canon, and it was not a workhorse.)

So I was not selected for a trial yesterday. Thank Jeebus. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be when they asked if I had State Farm insurance or any other affiliation with State Farm. I figure eleven years working at their corporate headquarters would qualify as an “affiliation” and was crossing my fingers that it would put me out of the running. Looks like it did.

Now I’m curious what the case is about but really, really glad I wasn’t selected for it. The only thing more boring than insurance law is tax law, and I will see plenty of both in just a couple months. I absolutely don’t need a jump start.

In other news, I got Matthew’s feedback on Demon Queller. He liked it! Whew. Yeah, yeah, family opinion and all, but I know he’ll be honest with me if something sucks, and I trust his instincts. It’s why he’s my eternal first reader. Also, he’s legally obligated to keep speaking to me regardless of how bad a manuscript might be that I force him to read.

Got some tweaks, minor edits, and a little rewriting to do based on his crit, and then it’ll be officially at first draft and ready to send to critiquers.

Also started on a short story, the one I’m writing for the DAW anthology. 800 words. Working title, “Kiyohime.”

In the so-sad-it’s-funny category, after my 2-month long ordeal serving on the grand jury in July-Aug, I’ve been summoned for jury duty again–this time trial jury.

So I am once again at the courthouse, waiting to do my civic duty. The only saving grace is that I’m a standby juror so I have a better chance of not being assigned to a trial. I hope.

Sigh.

Got an email from Vera of Norilana. Looks like we’re aiming for November 25th as the release date of Returning My Sister’s Face in e-book format. Just in time for Christmas shopping .

Also saw that The Dragon and the Stars was reviewed in Locus by Gardner Dozois:

[T]he fact that all the stories draw upon “the rich cultural heritage of China” to tell stories of the fantastic makes it interesting, and gives us some milieus not commonly used, making almost all the stories worth reading…The best stories here are by Tony Pi, Emily Mah, Brenda Clough, Eugie Foster, Shelly Li, and Eric Choi

Finished the last zero draft editing pass on Taijiya and it’s now being first-readered by Matthew. Commencing nail biting.

And heard from the editor of the DAW anthology I was invited to submit to. Seems the publication date got bumped up by a month and therefore so did the deadline. I love deadlines, the way they stress me out and make me sweat. Sad thing, I actually mean that.

Just got my contrib. copies of the October ’10 issue of Pevnost with “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest” reprinted in Czech:

This marks my first Czech language publication, and I learned something interesting.  Female and male surnames take different forms, and they modify foreign female surnames by appending them with “ová.”  So my byline in Pevnost is “Eugie Fosterová.”

When I first saw it, I thought they’d misspelled my name. But then I noticed that Stephanie Meyer was listed as “Stephanie Meyerová,” and a bit of Googling showed that they refer to the U.S. Secretary of State as Hilary Clintonová and the First Lady as Michelle Obamaová.

I’m not sure how I feel about having my name modified. On the one hand, it’s an integral part of the Czech language. But on the other, it’s my name, my byline, my trademark, y’know?

Finished my editing pass on the zero draft of the not-brainy-but-no-longer-stupid novel, a.k.a. Taijiya, last night. Made my November 1 deadline! *woot*

Ended up adding something like 1,400 words. Funny thing, when I do editing passes on short works, I tend to cut-cut-cut.  Most of the content edits I did on Taijiya involved fleshing out scenes.

Also thinking of changing the title to Demon Queller, which is actually what “taijiya” means. Not sure which conveys “medieval fantasy set in Japan” better. Kinda feeling that it’s a toss-up between, “Taijiya? What in heck is that about? Pass.” And “Demon Queller? Isn’t that horror? Pass.” Or maybe I should throw my Scrabble tiles back into the bag and pick a new batch…

Still want to do another read-through/edit of certain sections, check some continuity issues, massage a scene transition that seemed rough but couldn’t put my finger on why—that sort of thing. Then I’m foisting it on critiquers.