Tag Archives: hobkin

Hobkin squeaks, a good night’s sleep, and signs

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Hobkin is a very silly animal. I went downstairs yesterday after working in the library all day to discuss and start dinner prep with fosteronfilm, then made to go back upstairs to lug down the interim desktop I was using while my laptop was in the shop. I wanted to hook it to our network and retrieve the files stranded on it, but the fuzzwit apparently thought I was going back up to work for another cluster of hours and was dismayed. The little guy started squeaking.

It’s the silliest sound I have ever heard an animal make–like a wheel in desperate need of oil on helium. Of course, I turned right around and went back to reassure and cuddle him (leaving fosteronfilm to retrieve and set up the computer). I can’t post the sound he made, but here’s a picture that illustrates how Hobkin is so not an animal of dignity and grace:


I wonder if this is the skunk equivalent of “Live long and prosper”?

   


Writing Stuff

It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep can do to quell a minor freakout. I’m feeling much better, totally over my quakes and anxiety.

When I woke up, my head was brimming with ideas for how to simplify the opening of my novel to make it more accessible to a younger audience, as well as thoughts on how to block out the chapters I’ve currently got into panels and picture pages. It seems like my sleeping self has made my decision for me. Barring some unforeseen weirdness, I’m going to go for the picture book effort. I was pretty much headed there, but it’s reassuring to know my unconscious is in sync with my conscious.

I find I’m rather looking forward to the challenge of preparing a picture book manuscript out of my novel. At least I won’t have to wring my brain coming up with new characters or settings or story lines. It doesn’t hurt that I am utterly enchanted by the idea of having my tale accompanied by lavish, beautiful illustrations.

The editor is sending me her notes and a few examples from her publishing house of what she has in mind to give me an idea of the length, complexity, and scope I should aim for. I’m going to wait to see these before I start (and before I give them my official “I’m game”), but in the interim, I’m re-reading my novel to once again familiarize myself with the voice and mood I used, as well as any details I may have forgotten since the last time I looked it over.

In the next couple days, I’m going to try to clear off as much Tangent and The Town Drunk work from my plate as I can, as well as try to check off all the outstanding stray issues hovering about my “things to do” list. I want to be able to approach this project with focused concentration at the start. So if folks need me for something and have been holding off on dropping me a line, better do so now while I’m in rapid-fire-just-do-it mode.

I’m very glad I finished the first draft of “Honor is a Game Mortals Play” so I’m not having to ping-pong back and forth between these two projects. Barring a deluge of critiques of the “this-totally-sucks you-call-yourself-a-writer? Hah!” variety coming back on it, I anticipate the rewrite will go smoothly. I typically find rewrites fairly easy on my writer muscles . . . I say as I gear up to embark upon the biggest “rewrite” I’ve ever contemplated. Erm.

Received:
The editor of Dragonfly Spirit sent me a sneak peek of the March cover. The artwork features my story, “Kaawwa, Naagan, and the Queen’s Diamond Necklace”! She also kindly gave me permission to display it:

Isn’t it gorgeous? And again, I’m reminded how much I love seeing beautiful artwork come about as a result of the words I scribble on the page. Were I one to believe in signs and portents delivered from the Great Beyond, I would see this as a really good one.

Things that make me giggle and grin

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My posts have been full of gloom and grump of late, so I wanted to make a post of airy lightness and fluffy skunks. And then my network card belly-uped, so I can no longer access the Internet on the computer upstairs, Hobkin sicked up his lunch, and HP still hasn’t shipped back my laptop.

*gurgle* Calmblueocean. Calmblueocean!

I could really use some humor. Fortunately, my flist/reading list is chock full of excellent writers, Hobkin, though ill is still undeniably cute, and the AP occasionally throws me a bone.

The bone(r): Dick Cheney Shoots Fellow Hunter. Yup. Our country’s esteemed VP went quail shooting and shot a lawyer. Nope, it’s not an Onion article. This is legit.

Okay, that giggle fix was unmitigated schadenfreude. Bad me. (*snerk*) For something completely different (and wholesome), skunk pictures:


Blah . . .

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Lamenting the Egregiously Americentric Media

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Gah! I shouldn’t be shocked or surprised when our media provides yet another example of appallingly Americentric coverage, but I am. First there was the Greek bank strike, a bit of information I discovered only because I had to contend with a returned check fee from Greece, but now it seems that our media does not deem the Basque country’s efforts to secede from Spain as worthy of coverage. Instead, we get Michelle Kwan’s groin injury. Major sociopolitical upheaval in Europe, or pulled groin muscle . . . I can see the importance o’reporting scales wobbling there.

When I happen to catch snippets like these, I have to wonder what other huge chunks of global news I’m missing out on.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
– 120-day “sincerely regret that we’re unable to accept it” from my Cricket editor. Encouraging comments as ever, but a “no” is still a “no.” Pook. She did, however, mention my blog, and put in a request for more Hobkin pix. As I am never one to deny an editorial behest:


Hobkin, curled up on fosteronfilm‘s lap, being a Daddy’s skunk.

Things that aren’t working: Hobkin’s tummy, my back, HP

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Hobkin isn’t feeling well. Last night he sicked up his dinner as well as his midnight snack of (we’d hoped) tummy-settling bread and bok choy. I continue to be inordinately grateful that the little guy seems disinclined to be sick either on me, the carpet, or the furniture.

He was curled up with me on the couch, and when he realized dinner was going to make an urgent reappearance, he sprang up, scrambled off the couch, and made a mad dash into the kitchen. He didn’t quite make his area with its linoleum floor–and thereby didn’t execute another head-in-litter-box miracle–but the hard wood kitchen floor is leaps and bounds better than the living room carpet. And after his first bout, he wobbled his way into his area for his second. The poor lil guy! It always makes me feel so helpless and anxious when he’s sick. And we still have no idea what sets off these tender tummy episodes.

At least we’ve got a treatment worked out. The vet prescribes us this amazing anti-nausea stuff (which thankfully the fuzzwit loves the taste of), and Hobkin also gets mint sandwiches (bits of bread soaked in Pepto Bismol) which, in combination, fix him right up, usually within 24 hours. And as far as psychological effects go, having a queasy GI tract doesn’t seem to particularly faze him. Just a half minute after his sick-up, he was energetic and begging us for a snack to replace his lost dinner. Silly, worrisome beastie.

He crawled up to snuggle with me after all the excitement and seemed happy to bask in the extra attention as I fussed over and cuddled him.

My back continues to malfunction. I took two Tramadol yesterday, which is pretty astonishing because usually one lays me out flat. This time, one only took the edge off–didn’t even make me sleepy. Makes me wonder if it’s the pain overwhelming the med, or the Adderall keeping me awake.

According to the status info on the HP website, my laptop hasn’t shipped yet, even though the expected date was yesterday. So not a surprise. Our case manager mentioned it would take longer than their promised 3-day turnaround because they need to do fairly in-depth tests on it this time. (*snort*) I suppose we should have asked how much longer.

   


Writing Stuff

New Words: 500 on the Japanese Demon Hunter story, now tentatively titled: “Honor is a Game Mortals Play.” Into the climax and I’m dithering over where I want to go with it. No, scratch that. I know where I want to go with it, but I’m dithering over how to get there. Going to lasso and sit on my muse today and see if that doesn’t get her cooperative-like.

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
5,111 / 6,000
(85.2%)

Club 100 For Writers
      1
I’m pretty sure I missed at least one day in there . . .

500/day
      4

Home again, home again . . .

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Full Sundance write-up tomorrow. Mundane catch-up herein:

Back from Utah. Retrieved skunk from godmother. The lil guy was pretty ecstatic to be home, and so am I. All is well, but I’m exhausted. I was napping with Hobkin–crashing really–until he got it into his wee head to run amok and wake me up. Now he’s done being amok and napping under his hutch, and I’m bleary-eyed and insomniac.

Hobkin somehow knew when we were coming to pick him up. He was busily digging at the door when we rolled into her driveway–a behavior she informed us he hadn’t engaged in at all before, and which he’d begun about two minutes prior to our arrival. There’s a lot of sense and intuition going on in that small, fuzzy head. Hobkin gave me many nose-sniff kisses as soon as I picked him up, and snuggled me all the way home. ‘Course then he went amok at 5AM . . .

My laptop powered itself down several times while we were in Utah, the same malfunction as before. Not surprised in the least. Going to have to call HP and see about sending it back again. Bastards.

   


Writing Stuff

Got an email from the Aberrant Dreams folks inviting me to dinner after the signing on Saturday. Haven’t replied yet ’cause dude_the is coming down this weekend for Superbowl Sunday, and I don’t know what our plans are. Delighted by the invite regardless. I love it when editors offer to feed me.

I have much, much Tangent work to catch up on. And I have about two dozen stories that I want to read, as well as a slew of ones I’ve already read from last year, that I need to pare down to the five best to nominate for the Sturgeon Award before the 24th of February. Urk.

Received:
Squee:
– 217-day sale of a French reprint of “Returning My Sister’s Face” to Faeries.
– Check from Ennea for the Greek reprint of “When the Lights Go Out.” And it’s in U.S. dollars and not euros, hurray!
– A status update from mroctober on a YA anthology he’s trying to sell to Mirrorstone that I wrote a story for. The Mirrorstone editor made lots of promising-sounding words, “very interested” being the main ones, but it’s still in the “maybe” category. A very positive maybe, though. Got my fingers and toes crossed. I’d love to be published by Mirrorstone.
– 24-day email from Doug Cohen, slush editor of Realms of Fantasy, informing me that he’d received my latest submission and that he’ll pass it along to Shawna in February.

Sigh:
– 106-day personal nope from Chris East of Futurismic after holding onto this story for extended consideration. Bummer. But he did invite me to try again.
– 54-day “no thanks” with invite to submit again from Lorraine and James. Eh, it was a long shot.

Rolling my eyes:
– 547-day “Despite your publication credits, we feel you need some help getting your prose skills up to a truly professional level. You may want to consider attending a Borderlands Press Writer’s Boot Camp” rejection from Borderlands 6 on a story I’d already withdrawn and sold elsewhere.

I am terribly tempted to respond with: “Despite your pay rate, I feel you need some help getting your publishing house up to a truly professional level. You may want to consider improving your response times and organization skills, as well as not including a self-serving plug in your rejections.” But I won’t. After all, two unprofessionals does not equal a professional.

New Words: 3K on a Japanese Demon Hunter short written during some down time in the condo at Utah. This one I’m intending for dsnight‘s Heroes in Training anthology.

Club 100 For Writers
      1
*sigh*

500/day
      1
It’s a new year, and the first time I’ve managed to hit 500. At least it’s not February yet.

Needy skunk and 5 quirks

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Did our part in being good little capitalistic consumers. Much shopping was done and we’re almost finished. Almost.

When we came home, Hobkin came running up and I gave him a pat before heading upstairs to the library to retrieve my laptop. The stairs are blocked off by a rover gate and while I was on them, Hobkin astonished me by pacing back and forth in the foyer and squeaking. It was a high-pitched, chirpy noise–sort of like bat calls–that gradually turned into the grumbly roinking I’ve heard him make before. I came running back down, because Hobkin is normally an utterly silent animal, and any vocalization from him is cause for immediate attention. I picked him up; he stopped and buried his nose under my chin. The little guy was calling for me! I think he’s been upset that we’ve been gone so often in the afternoons, Christmas shopping, and after we’d just got home, me going upstairs was the last straw for his poor walnut-sized brain. He clung to me for the whole night, to the point of following me into the bathroom (which is disconcerting, to say the least), and not letting me out of his sight. My skunk’s neurotic. I think that means the last bits of shopping we had slated to do today will have to wait until tomorrow or Friday. I’d also meant to swing by the post office today. Silly little fuzzwit.

canadiansuzanne tagged me good. So:

Rules: The first player of this “game” starts with the topic “5 weird habits of yours” and people who get tagged need to write an LJ entry about their 5 quirks as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next 5 people to be tagged and list their names.
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Domain renewal, Laptop dismay

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Oof. Y’know what’s more effective than any alarm clock at waking a person? A hungry skunk. You can’t hit snooze, can’t ignore him, and God save the person who thinks they can sleep through being walked over, pawed at, and snorted upon by an indignant fuzz loaf. Trying to explain, “I just need fifteen more minutes, Hobkin. Breakfast in 15, okay?” so totally doesn’t work. He’s asleep now with a full belly. I’m bleary and waiting for the Adderall to kick in. My life is odd.

I went to renew my eugiefoster.com domain from hostingdude.com and discovered they’d doubled the price. I guess that’s standard operating procedure. Lure you in with an initial low, low price and then jack it up. Ptooie on that, I sez. I transferred my registration to godaddy.com which was conveniently having a sale on transfers. Snagged the sale price for four years. I figure when that time runs out, I can always transfer it somewhere else if they ramp up the cost too. But there was an hour or so of anxiety between the initial transfer setup and the confirm proceedings where my website was down and my domain email forwarding wasn’t functioning. At least I was clever enough to do all that in the wee hours of the night. Everything’s back up now. Whew.

And, on the extremely annoying front, my laptop powered itself down three times in a row yesterday. Totally freaked me out the last time because I started wondering whether I’d be able to keep it stable long enough to backup my last couple day’s work. Fortunately, on the last reboot it stayed on. And then there was a massive backing up of everything.

So yeah, upgrading the BIOS and switching to a new power adapter didn’t solve the problem. Called the MicroCenter HP techs and they want $50 just to send it to HP for us. The thing’s under warranty! Doesn’t paying $50 to send it in for maintenance defeat the purpose of having a warranty?? Going to get back online with the HP tech support folks in India (sigh) and see if there’s another way to get it looked at that doesn’t involve paying a wad of cash. As an interim solution, fosteronfilm is wiping out our old Sony Vaio desktop and reloading it for me. We’ll set it up as a writing workstation in the library. The only real downer is that it doesn’t have a WiFi card, and it’s old enough to only have USB 1.0 ports, so if I want Internet connectivity, we need to buy and install an internal card. And, of course, I need my Internet, so that’s an expense and a hassle we’ll have to look into stat.

Hardware is being mean to me! And I’m also all twitchy wondering whether my system will power down spontaneously at any moment. I just want to write! Waaah! Stupid unstable technology that I’m completely dependent upon and addicted to.

   


Writing Stuff

Did a pair of editing passes on “Rue and Ruin” incorporating the suggestions from fosteronfilm‘s first reader experience. Declared “first draft” and sent it off to the Critters queue. It should go up next week.

Today, after I hash it out with the HP folks, I start on my re-telling of Arachne.

Club 100 For Writers
      58

Pie, cookies, and a chocolate chip for our chocolate chip

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Baked veggie pot pie and chocolate chip cookies the other day in an effort to make our Halloween-decorations-go-down-Christmas-decorations-go-up efforts merry and festive rather than tedious and chore-like. Managed to drop a semi-sweet chocolate chip on the floor, and before I could retrieve it, our chocolate chip Mephitis mephitis lunged and nabbed it. I grabbed him and tried to get it out of his mouth, but the very best way to encourage Hobkin to gulp something is to pry at his jaws and stick your fingers in his mouth while shouting “Drop it!”

Sigh. Silly beastie. Can’t really blame him. I mean, it’s chocolate.

I stressed. He’s fine. Not even an upset tummy. Apparently chocolate frosting on a birthday candle or a single semi-sweet chocolate chip isn’t enough to even faze a skunk’s digestive tract. But I really need to be more careful. Hobkin appears to have acquired both a taste and a nose for the stuff, and can pounce and swallow faster than I can bend and snatch.

Also, on the laptop front, I updated the BIOS (thanks for the suggestion, cyber_pagan) and am now waiting to see if that did any good. And, I’ve been working off battery more often–although the amount of time a fully charged battery provides is downright pathetic–to see if the shut down happens while solely on battery. So far, one day and no mysterious power outage . . . and counting.

   


Writing Stuff

Did some research on an Egyptian myth that I think I’d like to turn into a retelling to try on Cricket, but it’s really hard finding source material. It’s the Unut/Wenet and Wepuat/Un-nefer/Osiris moon-hare tale. I’m good with Osiris, but I’d really like more info on Unut/Wenet.

If I continue to come up dry on the source material front, I’m leaning toward retelling the Greek Arachne Myth instead. But I worry that that myth is simply too well known, and therefore done. I’d ask fosteronfilm if he’s heard of Arachne, but he’s not much of a myth/folklore/fairy tale sort and nine times out of ten he’ll give me “huh” face for even the most well known myths. So I can’t count on him being unfamiliar with a myth necessarily indicating that it’s obscure. But just because I know a myth backward and forward, it doesn’t mean it’s common knowledge either. Grumph. I need a control group. Or . . . a poll!

New Words: -500 on “Rue and Ruin.” Culled about 500 words and foisted it on the hubby. He thinks I should turn it into a novel. Yup. Also, I went back and looked over the anthology guidelines. Doh! When I thought they’d said a max word count of 12K, it was actually 20K, so I’m going to put back in some of the bits I pulled out.

Zokutou word meter
12,776 / 12,000
(106.5%)

Club 100 For Writers
      55

500/day
      106

Skunk-induced sleeplessness

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Last night was a restless one, due completely to a certain skunk. For some reason, Hobkin couldn’t decide on what he wanted to do–sleep or run amok. He crawled up beside me to cuddle (waking me to give him a boost), and then about twenty minutes later–as I was falling back into a nice, deep sleep–he decided he wanted down, waking me again (usually by walking over me), go tearing around the house a couple times, and then come back to cuddle. Repeat for several hours.

Result: No sleep for Eugie.

Silly fuzz beast. It might have been the furnace. We turned on the heat for the first time this season and there was undoubtedly quite a bit of dust in the vents.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
4-day “I can’t use this. It’s too long” from my editor re: “Beauty’s Folly.” I’m viewing this as a nod from the universe that I ought to try to extend this story into a novel. Therefore, it’s back in the “in-progress” queue. But the editor very kindly offered me another chance to provide something else.

New Words: 2500 on “Princess Bufo Marinus: I call her Amy,” a re-telling of the Frog Prince fairy tale. Wrote this story to zero draft from opening sentence to “the end” in one day. Sat down at 6AM to write and got up from my desk in the library at 5:30PM for dinner feeling a bit woozy but very pleased with myself. Made fosteronfilm first reader it and will do a rewrite tweak based on his comments as well as a few editing passes today. Then it’s off to the editor.

Next up: back to work on “Rue and Ruin.”
Club 100 For Writers
      45

500/day
      97