S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 117

My Five Minutes

USA Today's Happily Ever After blog has a three-authors/three-things piece running today, and Her Ladyship's Curse and I are featured with trio of things about me that may (or may not) surprise you.

If I sound I bit terse in comparison to the other authors, it's because my publicist said "Be brief. Be very, very brief." and so I was.

Comments Catchup Day

See you in comments.

Postponement

Due to some unexpected personal troubles the host of Paranormal & Urban Fantasy Review asked me to rescheduled the appearance I had planned for today (and of course I agreed) so that giveaway and guest post will be on hold until she can sort things out. Please send her some good thoughts and prayers if you would, too.

Illuminated

Some of the world's greatest examples of architecture shine in Luke Shepard's Nightvision (contains background music, for those of you at work):

NIGHTVISION from Luke Shepard on Vimeo.

Texterize It

Gerard over at The Presurfer found the neatest word-art generator, Texter, which allows you to paint with words, ala concrete poetry (click on the image to see a larger version):



The generator's controls allow you to customize your word-painting to include whatever text you want, colors, angles and more.

Hidden

Today I'm over at Disenchanted & Co. talking about something beautiful I found hidden away in a couple of pillow covers, and how you can use personal metaphors, symbols and other secrets to help with your world-building.

Aftermath

Due to some unusual circumstances I had a chance over the weekend to take photos of the aftermath of the Blue Rhino Propane Plant explosion (and please note I took all of these shots by zoom from a very safe distance):


From the conditions the heat must have been unbelievably intense; all of the trees and shrubs immediately surrounding the plant are dead or dying. Scorched heaps of the 53,000 small propane tanks that blew lay everywhere; some had blown apart into twisted hunks of shrapnel. Even the cover on one of the very tall back lot lights had melted into a stringy mess.

While I was initially curious about what had happened, actually seeing the aftermath made me feel very uneasy and upset. The three big white tanks you see in a couple of the shots supposedly hold close to 100K pounds of propane; if they had also exploded it would have been much worse (and I take my hat off to the fire fighters who worked so hard to keep that from happening.) I know several employees at the plant were hurt in the explosion, three critically, and I'm keeping them in my prayers. I'm also pretty sure now that I'm not cut out to be a photo journalist.

Elsewhere Ten

Today I'm over at Under The Covers talking about English and how differently we speak it on either side of the pond. Drop by if you have a chance and enter to win the giveaway, which includes everything in the following slideshow (except the exploded things), aka

Ten Things in the Under the Covers Giveaway

Comments Catchup Day

See you in comments.

Elsewhere Minus the Corsets

Today I'm over at All Things Urban Fantasy to talk about world-building Toriana and why the corsets had to go. Stop in if you have a chance and enter to win this giveaway of a handmade quilted silk Victorian tote, signed galley copies of Her Ladyship's Curse and His Lordship Possessed, along with some other goodies.