S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 228

Winner

After reading all the creative tips and stuff you guys do to keep organized I don't feel quite so obsessive (and I admit, I am a Post-it note, notepad, index card and notebook collector/addict, too. One can never have too many places to jot down the occasional killer line of dialogue.)

One last tip: I gave up my office supply closet a couple years ago and started keeping my office supplies on shelves in the bookroom where I could always clearly see what I had (the photo over there is of my n...

Fire and Ice

In honor of National Poetry month, I thought I'd write a bit about one of my favorite poets, Robert Frost.

To be honest, I have a love-hate relationship with much of Frost's poetry. Sometimes nothing else will do, and I need Robert to remind me about the road less travelled and being acquainted with the night and other, quiet countries of the heart. Other times (usually about three a.m. on a bad night) I want to drop into the office shredder every book I have with his name on it.

Like Blake, ...

Neat Writer Stuff

Every year spring cleaning means getting my office reorganized, which gives me a reason to splurge a little on new organizational stuff. I like shopping at Target stores because they always have something different, interesting, or clever for me to lust over in the office supplies aisles. Here are some things I picked up on my last trip:

Greenroom Recycled File Folders: You'd never know it to look at them, but these folders are made with paper that contains 60% recycled paper fiber and are ...

Winner

Sorry I'm a bit behind on posting, but now that I'm home things should return to the usual level of controlled chaos shortly.

To get to the announcement you all have been so patiently waiting for, we put the magic hat to work, and the winner of the Complete . . . Almost giveaway is:

Joe Iriarte

Joe, when you have a chance, please send your ship-to info to LynnViehl@aol.com so I can ship this package out to you (and as Joe will be the first person besides my editor and copy editor to read Dream C...

Sub Ops Ten

Ten Things About Submission Opportunities

The DF_Underground "welcomes submissions of fiction and nonfiction by horror and dark fiction writers from all walks of life" and are building an online community as well: " . . . theDF_underground editors provide review and response-time preference to members of the underground_Community. No two ways about it: our goal is to build a living, breathing community around the genre as a profession, and we support our community first. By joining and engagi...

On the Road

I wasn't planning on taking a trip, but turns out I have to be somewhere else, so I'm out of here and will be out of touch until probably late Sunday evening.

I'm also back to running the blog solo, so any comments you post will not appear here until after I return to moderate them. Because of this, I'm extending the deadline for the latest giveaway until midnight EST on Sunday, April 11, 2010.

Have a good weekend.

Complete . . . Almost

The proofs for Dream Called Time are sitting on my desk, waiting, ready to be corrected. One more read-through for typos, fax any corrections to NY, and I'm finished another series.

Well, not just any other series. The first series, the longest series, the series that has been a personal mission from day one. StarDoc. It's been a long time coming, and now it's here.

While I was doing my annual spring cleaning of the filing cabinets I found the very first incarnation of StarDoc, a short stor...

Why Then, Here's Ten

In honor of April, which among other things is National Poetry Month, here are:

Ten Things About Poetry

Bartleby.com has one of the largest collections of poetry on the internet, all searchable and all 100% free.

You can generally make some interesting accidental poetry by inputting text into the Bonsai Story Generator or Robopoem, or playing with the Automatic Poetry Generator, the Genuine Haiku Generator, Icon Poet, or The Poetry Generator.

For those of you who have poetry you'd like to sell, D...

Wunderschön

For everyone who complains about how I never have any book videos, here's one from the publisher of Versuchung des Zwielichts, the German translation edition of If Angels Burn:

The No-Thanks That Helps

One of my annual spring rituals is to clean out my office filing cabinet, which I've been doing this past week. While disposing of what I no longer needed to save, I came across an old reduant copy file of rejection letters for proposals I sent out back in the 90's. About five hundred of them; looks like everyone in New York rejected me at least three times. Now I can chuckle over some of the scathing comments -- like one editor who said I'd never get my vampire fiction published -- but ba...