Eugie Foster

Author Eugie Foster passed away earlier today.

I never had the chance to meet her in person, but we had known one another online for a long time. I thought of her as part of my cohort, the group of authors who all started writing and breaking in together.

Eugie was an excellent writer. I had the honor of publishing her story “Honor is a Game Mortals Play” in Heroes in Training back in 2007. I remember how excited she was to get into her very first DAW anthology (but it certainly wasn’t her last). I’ve still got her email about that, which included a literal “Squee!” 🙂  In her 42 years, she had more than a hundred short stories published, and won a Nebula Award for her writing. She was that good.

She also devoted a lot of time and energy to reviewing and helping to promote short fiction in the genre, and to working as a director at DragonCon.

I remember her departure from Tangent Online. Without dredging up the details, I admired the honesty and determination she showed throughout an ugly situation. And I cheered when she launched The Fix, which swiftly became a strong and important new short fiction review site for the genre.

And then of course there was her pet skunk Hobkin. Her blog posts about Hobkin were some of the earliest things I remember reading from her, and I always thought it was awesome that she had a pet skunk. I grew up with an interesting menagerie, thanks to my mother, but that’s one kind of pet we never had.

When Eugie announced last year that she had cancer, I was convinced she would recover. It wasn’t a rational belief. I just … I guess I just refused to believe there was any chance of her leaving us.

I hate the fact that we never managed to be at the same event at the same time so I could meet her in person, but I’m glad to have known and worked with her over the years, and the SF/F field was incredibly lucky to have her.

Her husband Matthew wrote today:

We do not need flowers. In lieu of flowers, please buy her books and read them. Buy them for others to read until everyone on the planet knows how amazing she was.

Eugie’s bibliography is here.

We’ll miss you, Eugie.

In yesterday’s blog post, I commented that several people I knew had recently been diagnosed with cancer, or had loved once who had been diagnosed. One of the people I was talking about is author Eugie Foster.

I’m gonna do a little boasting here and say I was the editor who published Eugie in her first DAW anthology, back when I was editing Heroes in Training. Because her story was awesome, that’s why!

Like so many of us, Eugie’s finances have been rather tight. She has a fundraising post here. You can buy her short story collections or individual stories. She also – after being prodded to do so – posted an email address where you can donate directly via PayPal. Which gave me an idea…

If you PayPal a donation to eugie@eugiefoster.com and let me know, either in the comments here or by emailing me directly (jchines -at- sff.net), I’ll enter you in a drawing to win your choice of either Heroes in Training (with Eugie’s story Honor is a Game Mortals Play”), or Unidentified Funny Objects 2 (with my story “Stranger vs. the Malevolent Malignancy).

I’ll pick a winner at random next week. This is open to anyone and everyone. And thank you.