Tag Archives: writing sale

Session ’07, Languishing in Recess

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Saturday night, fosteronfilm and I partook of the excellent hospitality of the Eleys (escapepodcast) in their ongoing “Single Malt Who” shindigs. We watched the season 2 finale of Doctor Who, ate veggie burgers, and sampled scotch. Well, other folks sampled the scotch. I stuck with soda. But I think I’m still zoned from session-related stimuli. My brain’s on perpetual low beam. Sigh.

As advertised, here are some of my favorite pix from the Girls of Dragon*Con charity calendar photo shoot we did at Grant Park:


(All photos by Dean Ansley)

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Session ’07, Day 26

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Busy. Very.

Weekend: photo shoot at Grant Park to get some promo shots for the Girls of Dragon*Con Breast Cancer Charity Calendar. Fun, but cold. Very, very cold. Will post pix as I can.

Not enough sleep. Haven’t seen husband or skunk for more than a few minutes all week. Coffee habit resumed. And it appears that the General Assembly is indeed going to adjourn for two weeks in March to hammer out the PeachCare for Kids financial mess, meaning that the session will be extended through the middle of April.

Urg. I die now, please.

   


Writing Stuff

I saw the other day on Ralan that Cicada was glutted and closed to submissions. Urk. I sent them something about ten days ago. Hope it manages to slip under the wire.

Received Hurray:
– An email from the editor of Best New Romantic Fantasy (previously titled Best New Paranormal Romance) that she wants to reprint “The Wizard of Eternal Watch” for it. *Squee!*
– An email from Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine to inform me that “Body and Soul Art” has been shortlisted for reprinting in their ASIM Best of Horror anthology, and was it available? I think that means they want it . . . or at least they’re seriously thinking about wanting it. *Squee?* Um, I emailed the editor a “yes.”
– Note from jackzodiac letting me know that he’s found a publisher, Dragon Moon Press, for Writers for Relief 2, the sequel charity anthology to the first edition.
– Note from slushmaster letting me know that my current RoF submission was received safe and sound and will be en route to Shawna when the next batch gets exchanged.
– Email from jimhines to tell me that Heroes In Training is now available for preorder at Amazon. My very first appearance in a mass market paperback!
– Galley proofs from mroctober for “Year of the Fox” in So Fey and my check from Haworth Press.
– Contract and check from Strange Horizons for the interview I did with mroctober.
– Note from a listener in Australia who heard the Pseudopod podcast of “Oranges, Lemons, and Thou Beside Me,” loved it, and wanted to know whether she could get a print copy of it. I pointed her to the Best of Apex Digest anthology. I love getting fan mail. It makes me feel all warm and glowy.

Received Wah:
– 35-day “really intriguing and refreshing” but . . . from Strange Horizons. Sigh. Despairing that my fiction will ever break in there.
– 73-day form “no” from InterGalactic Medicine Show, something of an especial ouch after selling “Beauty’s Folly” to them.
– 4-day thanks-but-no from Heliotrope.
– Note from lynnejamneck letting me know that they’ve decided to cancel the Supernatural Sleuth anthology due to an insufficient number of strong enough submissions. That’s another story orphaned, my second this year.

A good beginning to the week

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I keep gushing about it, but I can’t help it. I absolutely lubs my job. The people here continue to rock my socks. Yesterday, one of the attorneys gave me a pile of Christmas prezzies. I came in to find a stack of wrapped packages and a card on my desk. I’m absolutely over-the-moon touched by the gesture.

My old day job had a select-a-gift setup where employees got a catalog wherein we could choose something for our holiday gift. While nice and appreciated, it was also sterile and sucked the charm and joy out of the gift tradition, replacing it with corporate efficiency.

   


Writing Stuff

The critiques are coming in for “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest etc.” And they’re mixed. While most critters enjoyed it, some folks found it confusing and would like more world explanation, one critter thought I was a tad too ham-fisted with my explaining parts, and then there were also the critters who totally got it: story, theme, and message. Urk. Rewrite pondering.

Received:
– The editor of OSC’s IGMS liked my rewrite and wants to publish “Beauty’s Folly.” Woot! It’s not slated for the January issue but the one after that, #5, due out in April/May of next year. But that’s all good ’cause he said he (probably) wants to use it as the cover story!
– Payment for my December Writing for Young Readers column, and also an unexpected surprise, a holiday bonus from the editor in the form of an Amazon gift certificate. *squee!*
– Also, an 89-day pass from the Holy Horrors anthology and a 123-day “we were holding this but . . . ” from Heliotrope.

Editing:
– Couple editing passes on “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest etc.”

Cold cold cold cold cold

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Yesterday, on my way to work, as I was walking out of the Twin Towers–the building catercorner to the Capitol and where the MARTA station is–I was hit by a frigid wind that knocked my breath away and clamped my lungs shut. Of late, my fingers turn blue every time I go outside (and sometimes even when I’m inside)–my Raynaud’s syndrome coming out of its southern climate-induced dormancy–and my skin feels so dry I think it should crackle when I smile.

I remember all of these sensations in icky, vivid clarity. It’s what winters are like in the Midwest: freezing, arid, and painful. It’s not how winters are supposed to be in the South! Wah!

At least it’s not snowing. But this weather makes me utterly miserable.

On the non-griping-about-weather front, dire_epiphany swung by on Sunday and taught me the rudiments of Adobe’s InDesign. So much better than MS Publisher. I’ll be using it to lay out the Daily Dragon from here on. And now I have the urge to engage in gratuitous desktop publishing.

   


Writing Stuff

I’m way distressed at email right now. In addition to getting undeliverable error messages when I try to send to aol.com accounts, it seems some of my emails to other, non-aol accounts aren’t getting through, and I’m not getting any sort of bounce message.

The editor of Writing-World sent me a query about the status of my Writing For Young Readers December column, the one I emailed to her over a week ago. I emailed her my column again and asked for a receipt confirmation (from a couple accounts) and haven’t heard back. Ack!

While the bounce messages are annoying, at least they told me when something I sent didn’t make it. This no error thing is freaking me out, wondering what emails I’ve sent that might’ve gotten lost in transit, and what ones I’m not receiving that the sender hasn’t realized didn’t make it to me. So much of the nuts and bolts of my writing career dealings are dependent upon reliable electronic communications. This is so not good. Also, WTF?

Received:
87-day audio reprint sale+contract of “Oranges, Lemons, and Thou Beside Me” to the fine folks of Pseudopod. Not sure when this podcast will go live, but the editors indicated that it might be soon–as in the next couple weeks. Happy dancing and wooting galore!

New Words/Editing:
– Maybe 200 on “By Oak, Bramble, and Metro” and an editing pass to clean up some flotsam. I’m gear-spinny on this one, trying to figure out where I want to take it. I thought I knew, but upon reflection, I think my original idea was too big for the story, when what I really want is to encapsulate a single concept. Pondering.

Published:
– Aegri Somnia is now out! Just in time for the holidays. Makes a great gift for all the dark fantasy/horror fans on your shopping list:

Contents:
“YY” by Jennifer Pelland
“The League of Last Girls” by Christopher Rowe
“All Praise to the Dreamer” by Nancy Fulda
“Nothing of Me” by Eugie Foster
“Heal Thyself” by Scott Nicholson
“On the Shoulders of Giants” by Bryn Sparks
“Dream Takers” by Rhonda Eudaly
“Letters From Weirdside” by Lavie Tidhar
“Wishbones” by Cherie Priest
“All Becomes as Wormwood” by Angeline Hawkes
“Well of the Waters” by Mari Adkins
“Mens Rea” by Steven Savile

Skunk in purse

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Came out of the shower this morning to discover a skunk in my purse and the previous contents displaced and flung helter-skelter about. I made the fundamental error of thinking that when fosteronfilm talks clearly and lucidly in the early AM, that he’s actually awake.

Me: I’m gonna go shower now. Hobkin’s sleeping under the covers there, okay? You can watch him if he wakes up?
fosteronfilm: Skunk there. Yep, we’re fine.

After my shower:
Me: Aghh, my purse! You were supposed to be watching him!
Matthew: Wha? *blinks, yawns* I was?

No harm done. I keep my various medication bottles in a separate zippered bag that little paws can’t (or at least haven’t yet figured out how to) open. And I really should know better by now. My hubby is so not a morning person. Although I don’t know how I would have explained bringing a skunk to work by accident . . .

   


Writing Stuff

After lamenting about the dry spell I was having sales-wise, I made two yesterday! Woohoo!

Received:
– 1-day sale to Helix. “Addy in My Mind” is slated for their January issue.
– 114-day sale to new U.K. ‘zine, Hub. “Wanting to Want” will be in their premiere issue, which I believe is coming out in December.
And, because three sales in one day is just too much to hope for:
– 111-day “almost” from John O’Neill of Black Gate with invite to submit again. While he liked it, the ending was too much of a downer for them. Alas.

Wood-eating visitors

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So yesterday for fosteronfilm‘s birthday, we had many guests over who abused our hospitality. And they’re still here! They’re small, six-legged, have ravenous appetites for wood pulp, and are uneducated on the nuances of etiquette and good manners, especially the “don’t eat your host’s house” one and also “don’t overstay your welcome.”

Yep, we have termites. We’d let our termite coverage slide during the year-o-poverty-and-unemployment, but now that we’ve got a regular income coming in again, we’re taking care of all those things we let lapse in order to minimize the amount of money hemorrhaging out of our savings. Renewing our termite coverage was high on our priority list and good thing too. Seems the little buggers haven’t done a huge amount of damage yet, only chewing through one baseboard (which is fortunately no longer on an outside wall, as it’s on the side of the house we built a sunroom on during more prosperous times.) But there is a hole there which we’ll need to see about calling a contractor in at some point to fix.

The exterminators are charging us $850 to evict our unwelcome visitors. *Gurgle* But, as a bonus, they’ll take care of our yellowjacket wasp nest for free.

Sigh. We’re sort of over a barrel on this one, so we gave them the go-ahead. We could get an estimate from another company, but we’ve had Terminix before, and they would charge comparable rates (if I recall correctly), and I wasn’t particularly impressed by them.

The creepy-crawlies here are bigger, meaner, and scarier than their brethren up north, one of the few things I dislike about living in the South.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
– 201-day sale of “A Parade of Taylups” to Aberrant Dreams, my third to these fine folks. Woohoo!
– 254-day French reprint sale to Faeries of “Of Two Minds in Lanais” (which originally appeared in Brigham-Young’s Leading Edge in 2004). This is also my third sale to this excellent publication. Yay!

Home again home again

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Back from Illinois. Exhausted and drained, both psychologically and physically. I broke down multiple times at both the wake and funeral, but mostly held it together. I had the foresight to bring lotso Kleenex.

Seeing my DiL all preserved and made-up for the first time at the wake was the worst. It didn’t look like the man I remembered at all up close–too plastic and smooth–but from a little distance, he did, and a couple times, I caught myself thinking, “I hope DiL’s not feeling left out. He’s all off by himself and no one’s talking to him.” And then, of course, I’d have to deal with another bout of teary-eyes when I realized that I didn’t have to worry about him feeling excluded and that it didn’t matter that no one was chit-chatting with him because he couldn’t hear them, would never have another conversation with his friends and family ever again.

Been trying to take it easy, trying to ease back into things. But there’s tons of work to catch up with that has already waited a week.

And, after all, life goes on.

   


Writing Stuff

Received a lovely review at Novelspot for my Inspirations End/Still My Beating Heart chapbook:

“Eugie Foster’s vampire stories have everything a good vampire story needs to have . . . The author is a great story-teller, who pays attention to details, creates great characters, and uses a highly enjoyable style. Her choice of words and her use of language gives a very special flavour to these writings, which makes it hard to put this book down. For those who enjoy vampire fiction, this book is highly recommended. ”
–Ilona Hegedus

Published:
– My August Writing for Young Readers column, “Writing for Tweens.”

Received:
– 57-days to a reprint sale (+ contract) of “Second Daughter” to Her Circle Ezine. It’s slated for their fall issue. Their contract is odd, a bit too vague and Spartan for my preference, lacking even the bare-bones, standard legalese that I’m accustomed to. But it’s for a reprint and they’re not asking for anything weird. Eh, as long as they pay me . . .
– Email + contract from Stephen Eley confirming that the Pseudopod editors loved and want “Returning My Sister’s Face.” Their contract, of course, is completely in order.
– Status update from Mech Muse that their Summer issue (with the audio reprint of “The Storyteller’s Wife” in it) will be going up Aug. 21.
– 272-days to an “after careful consideration we have decided to decline” on a story held for the second round of reading at IGMS. Fooie.
– 3-days to a “not what we’re looking for at this time” with personal (and a bit contradictory) feedback. One editor liked my prose, the other found it too florid, but it was the ending that didn’t sell them. Alas.

This Week Better than Last

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So we went to Washington Mutual and opened an account. The folks there were very personable and helpful. As it turns out, there is a fee for depositing a foreign check with them, but the manager waived it, and he said as long it wasn’t too frequent, he’d waive the wire transfer fee for future foreign payments. Very nice. Going to start transferring all our account stuff from SunTrust, rah.

Got the replacement warranty faucet part from Moen. It wasn’t what we expected. fosteronfilm and I were taken aback to discover it was neither the handle nor the whole faucet unit they sent, but a piece of metal and some attachment thingies. After some head scratching and much instruction poring, we realized they’d sent us the hardware piece that connects the handle to the unit, the actual bit that had broken. Huh.

Matthew applied screwdriver and much grunting to the faucet and succeeded in re-attaching the handle. Except, um, the hot and cold run backwards. It’s an oops that currently has us debating whether we should try to fix it or simply get used to right being hot and left being cold, but I’m very pleased to once again have a kitchen sink that delivers water.

   


Writing Stuff

The dry spell I was complaining about ended in a big, gushy flood of sales. Woot!

Received:
– 89-day SALE of “The Devil and Mrs. Comstock’s Snickerdoodles” to Realms of Fantasy. Woohoo!! I was beginning to wonder if my sales to RoF last year were a fluke. *happy dancing!*
– 23-day SALE of “The Dragon’s Breath Seed” to Reflection’s Edge. Thanks to squirrel_monkey for getting me to submit to these fine folks!
– 7-day SALE of my 2 part article “Multicultural Writing” to Writing-World.com. Also, the editor has invited me to do a regular monthly article on children’s fiction. Of course I said yes. It’s slated to begin in August. I’m casting around for what to title it . . .

New Words:
– 500 on the collab. piece I’m doing with mtrimm1. I hang my head in shame for how long I’ve sat on it, but at least I’ve finally got myself back in the game.

Lobbing dem hamsters . . .

Club 100 For Writers
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500/day
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Fairy portals sprouting in Michigan

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dean13 sent along this link from NPR on wee fairy doors popping up in Ann Arbor, MI. I want one! Although I’m inclined to think there’s already one under Hobkin’s hutch . . .

[Edit: dean13 found the artist’s website: urban-fairies.com (*squee!*)]

   


Writing Stuff

New Words/Editing:
– 1000 on the middle-grade novel –> Picture book effort. Only halfway into the story and my word count limit’s just about up. Urp. Must cut and tighten. Daunted has become intimidated.

Received:
– Payment for my “When the Guidelines Say for Children 7 to 12” article. The editor said it’ll probably be published in June.
– Acceptance and contract for my “10 Myths About Writing for Kids” article from Writing-World.com.

And now I’m thinking I need to start seriously considering doing lots more nonfiction. Dwelling on trying my hand at writing nonfiction for kids. I think I’d be decent at it. And this whole query/pitch->green light->pay thing, where I know I’ll get paid before I write something, there’s definite appeal there.

Club 100 For Writers
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500/day
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Busy busy busy

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I was going to pen this rambling, meditative post on “reinventing oneself” but as it turns out, I’m too busy to give the topic the attention it needs. In a nutshell, I’ve been lurching and flailing through some fairly meaningless self-indulgent introspection and dwelling on what to do about it. Maybe I can go more in-depth into the subject tomorrow.

Anyone who knows me personally, it’s nothing to fret or freak about. No major life changes or anything, and mostly to do with my writing. And undoubtedly nothing major there either. Just your everyday angst and agitation.

   


Writing Stuff

Received:
– 8-hours to a SALE of my nonfiction article “When the guidelines say ‘for children 7 to 12’: An overview of children’s developmental reading stages from a writerly perspective” to Writing-World.com.

This was the article I queried, pitched, and subsequently wrote over the weekend. Plus the editor wants to see the other article I pitched to her, and she pays on acceptance! So yeah-for-sure the contract’s going out in the mail tomorrow. After all the research I did for that mongo freelance gig a few weeks back, I was pretty primed to write this. Using my Psych. degree makes for a happy Eugie. A huge thanks go out to basletum for bringing this publication to my attention!

– Email from the editor of GrendelSong that “The Goddess Queen’s Battlefield” is going to be in issue #2 not #3. Sooner publication, rah.

– 175-days YFOP from RoF, alas.

– At long last, the notes from the editor asking me to turn my middle-grade novel into a picture book. *gulp* Much sleeve rolling up to commence.

New Words/Editing:
– 500 on “When the guidelines say ‘for children 7 to 12′” and several editing passes and reference checks. Obviously, the fork’s stuck quivering up to the hilt in this one.

Club 100 For Writers
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500/day
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