S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 232

Warning Ten

Many people in NetPubLand have already commented on the latest PublishAmerica plan to separate aspiring writers from their money, and I really have nothing more to add, except maybe some hastily-ejected saliva aimed in the direction of the CEO's head.

There are some things I've noticed about money-making/writer-faking entities in Publishing that do shriek scam to me the minute I see them, so I thought I'd compile a ten list on them:

Anything and Everything: There are a few major publishing hous...

Off to Hang

I'm back from my favorite annual quilt show, but I'm hanging up my writer hat for the weekend so I can spend time with a few visiting quilter friends (they keep grumbling about how much I neglect them, so I'm hosting a fabric swap. You would not believe how much forgiveness a few yards of hand-dyed fabric can buy you.)

Have a good weekend, and see you all on Monday.

Winners

I thought when I wrote the final version of the post for the Dream Books giveaway that I was still being overly emotional, but after reading all your comments you've reminded me of the many ways in which books become our sanctuaries, and how important that can be during the worst of times.

From there I turned things over to the magic hat, and the winners of the giveaway are:

Annette

Gillian

Carrie

Whateverfor

Erin Kendall

Cid

Margaret Yang

Maripat

Talon

CrystalGB

Winners, when you have a chance, please s...

Prepare to be Charmed

If you enjoy books by author Monica Jackson (definite fangirl here) and are familiar with her novels Love's Potion and In My Dreams (ditto), or you're just in need of a great romance to read (always), then you'll be happy to hear that today is the release day for Charm Me Baby , Monica's latest release.

Here's a bit about the book from the page at Red Rose:

Mia Washington, a respected professor at a large Atlanta university, has a plan for her life that doesn't include dealing with her...

Six Sub Ops

The American Journal of Nursing (circ. 340,000) wants poems and short personal essays on health care related experiences for its Art of Nursing and Reflections departments. Original perspectives and clear, unsentimental writing preferred. $100.00 honorarium paid on publication. See more details at their web site.

Kansas City Voices has an open call for poems, fiction and creative nonfiction for their 2010 issue, and awards for best prose and best poetry. Work doesn't have to relate to Kans...

Dream Books

I received a nice box of ARCs for Dreamveil , my second Kyndred novel, and got to work on a giveaway post for them this morning. I deleted it and rewrote it, and deleted and rewrote it, and kept that up until at last a shampoo manufacturer called to see if he could hire me to ghost-write instructions for his product labels.

I generally avoid painting a bullseye on myself by talking about how I feel about my work, but this book happens to be a tough one for me to fling into the world. I won'...

Fire Me Up Ten

Ten Things to Fire and Inspire the Imagination

Ancient Calendars walks you through the history of timekeeping and (if you're not careful) might spark from story ideas.

What are the basic emotions? Experts don't always agree, but skip them and scroll down to check out the tree-structured list of primary, secondary and tertiary emotions.

Because earthly thoughts don't always do the trick: Julia West's Cosmic Thoughts generator.

Imagination Frequent Fliers: Yeeta.com's Fantastic Out of This...

It's Hip to Be Us

Over at Fan to Pro, Bonnie Walling's post Romance Fiction X Geekery OTP! celebrates how hip the romance genre is for embracing geek culture. I also think she's right on the money as to why romance has finally caught up with the times:

So how did a genre so associated with being unhip become hip? Simple - young women raised on geeky entertainment entered the industry, bringing their interests with them and sweeping away a lot of outdated attitudes. The result is a subset of the industry which h...

Your Site Rocks -- Literally

If you've ever wondered how your blog would sound as a song, you should try feeding it to CodeOrgan.com. Simply type in the URL of your blog, web site or anyplace, and your content will be translated into a piece of music, which the site will create using a complex algorithm, and then it plays the song for you.

I liked the one it generated for PBW; reminded me of all that glam-rock we used to listen to back in the eighties. The song it made for the photoblog had a faster beat, but the notes ...

Final Pass

This afternoon I finished the copy-edit on Dream Called Time, which I thought would be an ordeal but turned out to be pretty much a breeze. It's funny how some books seem to fight you tooth and nail, and others just stream over you and through you like moonlight and music.

Other than correcting the proofs, the novel is finished, which means today I wrote the very last word of the StarDoc series. As before when I finished the final draft of the manuscript, it was a serene experience.

Today ...