S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 134

Winners

The entries for the Nine Lives giveaway were really magical -- bravo to you all for making such marvelously creative suggestions (and the next time I adopt a kitty, I know who I'm asking to help me with a name.) We got the magic cat, I mean, hat, to do its thing, and the winners (along with the names they chose) are:

Anne V.: I might call a magical cat Dresden after a favorite wizard for hire.

Deb Salisbury: My most magical cat was Mystic, a little black queen from the California Gold Country.

bluebamboo: Rowan, a mash-up and slight spelling tweak of Rod and Owen from Shanna Swendson's Enchanted Inc. series.

SandyH: . . . I decided that our next cat would be named Darcy (yes, after that Darcy - my most favorite book).

Terri R.: Mistofeles, from the musical Cats

Bonnie (Bonz): Miss Minerva Delurvah!

Jennifer and Jeff: How about FNU? (Pronounced Fin-oo) It also stands for First Name Unknown.

Lisa954: Poof! would be the name I would give to a magical cat.

Na: I would like to name a Magical cat Whispers.

Winners, when you have a chance please send your full names and ship-to address to LynnViehl@aol.com so I can get your books out to you. My thanks to everyone for joining in and helping to celebrate our pal Darlene's NYT bestseller debut.

Bon Ton

This video manages to be wickedly clever, visually interesting and utterly hilarious (some music, and narrated in French with English subtitles):

C'est la vie - ENGLISH SUBS from Simone Rovellini on Vimeo.

Poster Me

While image searching for some cover art for a large print edition of one of my novels (the few print copies I have came to me all dinged up) I found something I'd never seen in the results: two quote posters with my byline:



I traced the images back to The Quote Factory, which allows you to download "famous quotations" in low resolution (screen use) for free or higher resolution (for home printing) for a couple bucks. You can also create your own custom quotations, which is how I imagine the quotations from my books got there - I've seen both before on that Goodreads site.

Since I'm already quoted on the site I thought I'd try to create my own poster with something interesting I've said about writing, and with a few clicks produced this on the screen:



I then downloaded the free version of my poster, which comes out like this; pretty nice for a low-rez image. While anyone with a decent photoshop program can produce the same sort of poster themselves, the Quote Factory is a fun generator to play with (there are a few choices as to the type of background, font and layout.) I also like the option to download whatever you create for free -- just remember that whatever you create stays on the site and can be sold to others.

Nine Lives

Guess whose latest release is debuting at #9 on the New York Times bestseller list this week?



Yep, that's Cat Trick , the latest Magical Cats mystery by Sofie Kelly, aka our pal Darlene Ryan. I've loved this series since the first book hit the shelves so you know I'm a very happy girl. There is also nothing more awesome than seeing a friend who is such a gifted storyteller skyrocket to the top of the lists.

I know how I'm going to celebrate: by giving away some copies of Ms. Kelly's brand new bestseller, of course. If you'd like one of them to be yours, in comments to this post tell us what you'd name a magical cat by midnight EST on Friday, February 22nd, 2013. I'll draw nine names at random from everyone who participates and send the winners an unsigned copy of Cat Trick by Sofie Kelly. This giveaway is open to everyone on the planet, even if you've won something here at PBW in the past.

Tuesday Ten

Ten Things About Color Palettes and Palette Generators

Freeware Caution: always scan free downloads of anything for bugs and other threats before dumping the programs into your hard drive.

Big Huge Labs' Color Palette Generator will generate a color palette (complete with inventive names and HTML codes) based on any of your photos.

The 30 day free trial of Color Wheel Pro software allows you to create innumerable color palettes of your own.

According to the designer, ColorBlender.com is "ia web-based tool for creating color palettes (here referred to as "blends") for web design and other types of digital design. The main feature of the tool is to have a complete "blend" of 6 matching colors created when choosing only one "base" color. This makes it very quick and easy to create a color scheme for e.g. a website, as you can instantly use the colors for text, backgrounds, links, border etc."

ColorRotate allows you to work with virtual colors in 3D (I didn't want to register so I couldn't past the front/splash page, but I was able to rotate the cone thing and the site is frequently recommended as legit and very helpful.)

CSS Drive's Image to Colors Palette Generator also generates palettes based on any of your photos but gives you a range of palettes from light to dark as well as a complete color palette.

Tiny Eye Labs' Multicolr Search Engine allows you to pull up a selection of Flickr photos that match the color (or combination of colors) you select for the search.

ColRD's Palette Creator page changes according to the colors you pick, and also allows you to export your custom palette designs.

Pictaculous generates multiple palette suggestions based on your uploaded image and works from your phone, too.

Silk allows you to create online with virtual silk (this lovely link was stolen directly from The Word Nerds.)

59times.com's Web Color Generator generates some neat random color palettes.

Finally, I thought this ColorMatters.com article on color branding and trademarking was a fascinating read.

Tardily Elsewhere

Today I'm very late but I know you'll forgive me when I tell you I'm working on the next Disenchanted & Co. novel. I'm also over at the Office of Letters and Light Blog today talking about traditional versus independent publishing. I don't call anyone any names (since I've done both that would be a bit hypocritical) but I do point out some facts about both. Do stop by if you get a chance.

Comments Catch-up Day

This year I wanted to be a better blog host and make more of an effort to respond to the comments you all are so kind to leave for me. I started on this goal in January but other responsibilities derailed that in short order. Now that I'll be updating the Disenchanted & Co. blog as well as my photoblog I do need to make some changes to be more productive with my online time.

I think the only way I'm going to manage this is to devote one day a week to simply answering on comments. This will keep me from becoming distracted or doing a haphazard job of it. Since weekends are a bit less hectic than weekdays I thought I'd reserve Sundays for catching up. If nothing else I'll find out how many I can answer in one day's allotted internet time.

So, I'm off -- see you in comments. :)

Winners

I know it's hard for series lovers to pick a favorite; I have so many that I had to do that "If I were stranded on a deserted island and could only have one series with me . . . " thing. Even then I could whittle the list down only to three: Marjorie Liu's Hunter Kiss novels, Anne Maxwell's Fire Dancer books, and The Petaybee Trilogy by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough. If I can't have all three series then I'm not going to the island, lol.

We revved up the magic hat, and the winners of The Adventures of Miss Temminnick giveaway are:

Karen Renee, who still favors Lord of the Rings.

Caroline, whose favorite series last year was the Parasol Protectorate.

ten, who chose Zenna Henderson's People.

Winners, when you have a chance please send your full name and ship-to address to LynnViehl@aol.com so I can get your books out to you. My thanks to everyone for joining in.

Urban Growth

This looks so real it's a little scary -- and brilliant (also has background music, for those of you at work):

New York Biotopes from Lena Steinkühler on Vimeo.

(Video link nicked from Gerard at The Presurfer)

Her Ladyship's Weblog

Today I'm unveiling the official weblog for my Disenchanted & Co. novel series, which features the first official excerpt from Her Ladyship's Curse (the header font might also look familiar, and thanks to everyone who offered feedback; I decided to go with #4.)

To visit my virtual Toriana, all you have to do is click on the pocketwatch:



I'd also like to wish everyone: