S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 226

The Artisan Seller

One of my first jobs in high school was working as a telemarketer. I was fifteen at the time, and spent three hours a night five nights a week cold-calling people to offer them a free 8" X 10" portrait if they'd purchase a modestly-priced photo package from a national photography studio. I used a call list, read from script cards, and after the first week I got the hang of it and started selling pretty steadily (this is also why to this day I try never to be rude or hang up on telemarketers. ...

Back

We're finally back online here at Casa PBW, which is good, because much has happened since last I blogged, such as:



My youngest has started driving, and she's doing very well. When I'm not sobbing into a damp Kleenex while I look through her baby picture albums, I'm being brave. Sort of. Do you think everyone else on the road would stop driving for a couple months if I asked nicely?



Stubborn Thing's eggs hatched, and she had twins. We've named them Benazir and Ernesto. No one has fallen ...

Coyote Con Chat Questions

From Heather Massey:

Q: What were the joys and challenges in bringing the Stardoc novels to life? Were there any publication obstacles?

I wrote the first StarDoc novel just as a fun writing exercise, a way to explore an idea I'd written in a short story, and to pull myself out of a major depression. From the beginning that book was a pure delight to work on. I loved writing the story and once I got started, I couldn't stop, which resulted in book two. I didn't even mind when I tried to get...

Technical Difficulties

Sorry I'm late posting. My main frame went a little haywire last night, and I've been on the phone talking to the very patient folks at tech support about it. At this point they are considering using sock puppets via video conference to explain the fix (to me.) No, not really, but wouldn't that be cool?

Seriously, since the problem involves my firewall, my e-mail and my anti-virus program I have to unplug and shut down until we clean it up.

Be back when I know I'm not infectious.

More Free Ten

Ten Things You Can Have for Free

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

Desktop-Reminder is "a freeware task planner for Windows to manage your tasks and other to-dos' in easy way. Always during start of Windows it lists all tasks, which are urgent for that day. In case, there is additionally time of day in task defined, according notification message will be shown, when the time comes" (OS: Windows ...

Free Alternatives

A few years back I bought Adobe Acrobat so I could make professional-looking e-books, and I've regretted it ever since. Not only is the program really complicated and difficult for a technoidiot like me to use, it's way more software than I ever needed. But at the time I bought into the idea that you get what you pay for, at least in software.

Not so. In the years since, almost all of the new programs I've acquired have been freeware or shareware. When I find something I like, I make a donatio...

Through the Reader's Eyes

One of my readers put together a dreamcast video for characters from my Darkyn series and posted it on YouTube (for those of you at work, there's also a soundtrack, so watch your speakers.)

Things like this give me the rare opportunity to see my characters (and by extension, my work) through the eyes of a reader, which is always interesting and often surprising. Writers do wonder how our vision of the story translates in someone else's mind;, but mostly what we hear are opinions (which are ...

Assemblage

Assemblage art is what I'd describe as 3-D collage. Basically you use found objects (usually vintage or distressed) and recombine them to make art. You can read more about it and see some very fine examples here.

I'm working on my first assemblage piece but I've been having kind of a tough time with it. I like order, neatness, organization and logic; I'm drawn to patterns and symmetry versus spontaneity and chaos. The soup cans in my pantry are arranged in alphabetical order; so are the spice ...

Tiger Eye

Passionfruit Games has just released Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box, the first PC video game based on Marjorie M. Liu's novel, Tiger Eye.

I've been looking forward to the release this game for a bunch of reasons, including the fact that I am a devoted follower of Marjorie's Dirk & Steele novel series. But I have to admit, I'd already assumed that I wouldn't be able to actually play it myself . I've tried exactly one video game in my life and never made it past level one; solitaire and pin...

Your Writing Horoscope

Aries (March 21 - April 19)
You're known for your fiery temper, which isn't going to be soothed by watching Amazon.com dump all your e-books next week after they squabble with your publisher over pricing. Remember that you do this in order to make a living, not as an excuse to purchase that rocket launcher you've been secretly lusting over. Besides, do you really think you can pick out the right window to Jeff Bezos's office from the street? You'd be better off bringing a video camera to tha...