Author: Eneasz

He’s OK, or at least, as OK as one can be considering the circumstances. It turns out my mother had been a bit hyperbolic in her distress, he didn’t lose his whole finger, only up to the first knuckle. Safety Third!

And if you haven’t backed up in a while, do so soon. I try to do so every six months, and I was just a little past that line. I figured I’d wait a few more weeks until I heard what corrections are needed on the updated prior episodes, fix them, then backup everything at once. That was a terrible idea. I’m ridiculously happy that I’d already uploaded everything, and that I keep my writing in the Cloud. Right now everything is a pain in the ass, but at least I still have an ass at all! (metaphorically)

Also, you guys are great. I received six submissions for the two Hufflepuff parts in this episode. I already  have people sending me samples for Oliver’s lines, months in advance, and I haven’t even updated the available roles file yet! I’m feeling overwhelmed in a good way, thank you all! :)

People who’ve read Red Legacy as originally published may notice a minor change in the audio version. Specifically, the line “You think because you gave birth to her” has been changed to “You think because you pushed her out of your cunt.” When I originally wrote the story that was the wording I used. I spent some time worrying about the word. I know how vulgar and emotionally-loaded it is. But Marya is resorting to violence, and she’s using the most verbally violent words she can at this point. Alternatives felt flat, or silly, or weirdly sexual, and I didn’t want that; I wanted angry and vicious. There are some amazing stories out there, fairly recent works by Swirsky and Johnson, that use the word, so I thought it would be OK. But of course I am nowhere near the caliber of Swirsky or Johnson. And those stories of theirs that used the word were not published in Asimov’s. I was politely informed that Asimov’s has a policy of never printing that particular word, and strongly avoiding other less-vulgar but nonetheless still vulgar terms for female anatomy.

Obviously there was no way I was turning down an opportunity to be published in freakin’ Asimov’s over a single word, so I cut it out. But I don’t have that restriction in my podcast, so it’s back in for the audio version. :)

The list of updated HPMoR episodes is as follows:

1

2/3

6b

7a

7b

10

12

13

14

16

17a

18a

18b

19a

19b

23

25

26

27a

27b

28a

29b

31

34

37/38

41/42

43

46

50

54

55

56

57

58

59

61

63a

63b

69

70

71

72a

72b

73

74a

74b

75

77b

78a

78b

78c

79b

80

81

84b

86a

86b

87b

88

99/100a

103

It occurred to me that I am the proud possessor of the audio rights to a story that’s appeared in Asimov’s SF, and that I have a podcast, and the next step was obvious. :) I’ve already posted twice about the story (although the second link contains spoilers for part two!! Be ye warned!), but there was one thing I learned that I forgot to include in the TIL post, so I’ll say it here instead:

I’ve lived my life in a world where childhood leukemia isn’t a death sentence. It still sucks hugely, please don’t think I’m saying it’s not a big deal, it’s awful. But all the common forms have very good survivability rates nowadays (nearly 90%!). So I thought I would have my work cut out for me to find a fast-acting and hard-to-cure terminal disease that strikes in childhood, when I started writing this. I was very wrong. As recently as a handful of decades ago (certainly in the time period Red Legacy is set in) leukemia killed the shit out of kids. :( It was almost invariably fatal, and could kill in a matter of months or even weeks. I didn’t realize what a scourge this was, and I’m glad we’ve become so good at fighting it now. Fuck cancer, and huzzah for science.

BTW, no-hassle tweets re my fiction writings, if you’re interested.