S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 230

Green Eggs & Sam

Like most parents who read to their kids, I can (still) recite from memory most of the popular Dr. Seuss books. Go Dog Go was my daughter's favorite; Green Eggs & Ham was my son's (mine is Put Me in the Zoo, which I still think is the best of Seuss.)

When I was little the only things I can remember the adults in my house reading were the Bible, the Sunday newspaper and Life magazine (I was not allowed to touch any of them, but occasionally I'd filch Life to look at the pictures.) I was also n...

Fan to Pro

This morning I stopped by Seventh Sanctum, one of my favorite online sites for writing inspiration, and saw that Sanctum Master Steven Savage has published Fan to Pro , a guide about using your fandom to take a new career direction or enhance your current job situation.

Over the years I've had so much fun playing with the generators at Seventh Sanctum that I believe I would happily buy Steven Savage's grocery list if he chose to publish it (what does that guy eat for breakfast, anyway?) Howev...

Gone Blogger Gone

I know I have to redo my sidebar; there are at least a dozen links over there now for blogs that have closed their doors or gone static. According to my somewhat nebulous blogging rules these should all be removed (Writeminded is the latest to close their doors) but it's too depressing to acknowledge how much of my blogroll Twitter, Facebook and all the other social media trends have eaten alive. Thing is, I keep thinking how Rosina Lippi came back to blogging, and Romancing the Blog is suppo...

Easy Art

I just downloaded David Thoiron's image-to-art FotoSketcher conversion freeware to help photoshop some of my digital pics into art images for a quilting project, and I thought it might be of interest to anyone who likes to tweak their pics. I'm really impressed by how simple this freeware is to use; I started working on it right away with no problem. Here are screen shots of some different conversions I did with it (click on image to see larger version):

Photo to Watercolor



Photo to Colored ...

Grant Me Ten

Dylan Thomas Center ~ Dylan Thomas Prize offers a prize of £30,000 (approximately $48,000), given annually to honor a book of poetry or fiction that "displays creative, imaginative, and innovative use of the English language" by a writer under 30. Publishers may submit three copies of a book published between May 1, 2008, and April 30, 2010, by April 30. There is no entry fee. E-mail or visit the Web site for the required entry form and complete guidelines. Deadline: April 30, 2010.

Lake...

3 Art/Text Generators

Flame* is "a painting program, it belongs to my 'I am Artist' experimental project. I think with tools which inspires you, everyone can be an artist. You can try it here, change different brush settings and paint your own flame paintings. When you change background from black to white, palette changes from additive to substactive and the feeling of the painting is very different. It's not easy to explain all brush parameters, so I leave this for your experimentation."

I made this cover (cick i...

Off to Quilt

Today is one of my personal holidays, National Quilting Day, so I'm taking off to join my sewing sisters to work on our latest quilt for charity. If you like to quilt, or just like quilts, here are some links to check out:

Learn more about National Quilting Day, and download a free .pdf quilting pattern from NQA here.

Sherri from A Quilting Life has posted some pics of her latest project.

Ruthann Logsdon Zaroff at Adventures in Creativity is also giving away a free .pdf block pattern to celebra...

Update on Dr. Peter Watts

Some of you may have been following the case involving SF author Dr. Peter Watts, who was stopped, searched, assaulted and arrested by U.S. border protection while attempting to cross the U.S./Canada border. Most of it is chronicled on his weblog.

When I read that Peter was the one who was charged with assault and was going to be prosecuted, I was utterly horrified, and like so many among the online writing community did what I could to offer some support for him. Today I'm saddened and sorr...

Lady RaRa's Rules for Self-Promotion

RYAN SUKRITE: Hello, Publishing! This is Ryan Sukrite, reporting live for BookTV from the red welcome mat at BEA. Oh, look, here's superpublicist and bestselling author Lady RaRa arriving in her hot pink limo! She's the guest of honor at this year's event, and doesn't she look amazing in that razor-spiked g-string made out of rejection form postcards? She's spelled out "Not for us" in diamonds just below her navel, how clever! Let's see if I can get an on-the-spot interview. (charges li...

Time to Read

The one complaint I hear most often from people who love books is that they never have enough time to read anymore. They blame the demands of day jobs, family and household chores as the cause, and since these are all time-consuming parts of life I don't disagree with them. What I think eats into reading time are other, less noticeable preoccupations along with some old bookish habits that no longer fit with most people's lifestyle.

Jobs, family and home have to come first; at least they do wi...