The Ultimate Blog Party

Welcome to Science Fiction Mommy!  I'm excited that it's time for another Ultimate Blog Party.  Last year I even won a prize!  Click here to see my post from when it arrived.

My name is Eileen Rhoadarmer, and I am a science fiction author and stay-at-home-mom.  My son is almost two-and-a-half, and I have a second baby due in June.  The second baby scares me a little, even though I'm excited.  I'm an only child, so I don't even have a child's perspective on navigating a family with multiple children.  Hubby is the oldest of three, but they have large age gaps between them so he's never experienced kids this close in age.  There are a lot of things I'm worried about, like sleep schedules and nursing.  My son took FOREVER to nurse every day, and I don't know what I'll do with him while nursing if the new baby wants to take as long.

My son and I.

I don't have any intention of homeschooling my children, but I do a lot of crafts with my son in order to give us stuff to do during the day.  He won't get to start preschool until he's nearly four (he has an October birthday) and kindergarten until he's nearly six, so I also feel like I'd be wasting a perfect window of opportunity if I didn't encourage the natural learning he's already doing.  I still intend to send him to school--preschool, if we can afford it, kindergarten if not.  (My mom teaches pre-K for the YMCA, and has informed me several times that he's going to be bored/have nothing new to learn in preschool, so I guess I sort of am homeschooling him.)  Anyway, if that sort of thing interests you, you can click on the kid crafts label to see some of the stuff we've done.  We started with Christmas and have been going somewhat steadily since.

Since last year, I have gone from a wannabe author to published--I sold two short stories in the last year; both to anthologies.  The first, Doomology:  The Dawning of Disasters, which holds my story "Night Terrors," is now available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  As you might guess, Doomology contains stories about disasters and apocalyptic events; both small scale and massive, man-made and natural, and everything in between.  Check out the links if you're interested in seeing the book.

The second anthology, A Glitch in the Continuum, which will hold my story "Pandora's Time," is forthcoming sometime later this year.  I'll be posting here (a lot!) when it's available.  (I thought about doing a giveaway of Doomology for the UBP but I wasn't sure how many parent bloggers would be interested in entering--if you'd like to win a scifi anthology, put that in your comment.  I'll think about it for next year based on what kind of responses I get.)

I do my writing during naptime and/or after everybody else goes to bed, and I finished the first draft of my first novel in January!  I'll work on editing it sometime later this year and then... we'll see how long things take.

If you're here for the party, please comment and share your links.  I can't wait to get to know some great new people!