S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 237

The Secret of Everything . . .

. . . wouldn't be much of a secret if I told you, now, would it? No. Then it would be the Expose of Everything. The Tell-All of the Total. The Up front, In Your Face Entirety of the Enchilada. So I must tread carefully here.

A secret is a tantalizing thing, especially as almost everyone has at least one. But when along with it you invoke the sacred summa summarum, you take it to another level. Who doesn't want to know the secret of life, the secret of success, the secret of why the clothes dri...

Blog to Print II

To continue my post from yesterday, I had no problem creating and downloading the .pdf book version of Paperback Writer 2009 blog posts from Blog2Print. I then opened the file in Adobe Acrobat, and it looks very nice. The four-page per screen .pdf preview the site shows you before you buy is not replicated in the final product, it downloads in a normal document format. Here are some screenshots (click on any image to see a larger version):

Front Cover:


Sample Page with Image:


Sample Page...

Blog to Print I

Blogger has been running internal ads for Blog2Print, a self-pub service to which you can upload your weblog content and have it published in book form (softcover, hardcover or .pdf)

The front page features a price of $14.95 for a 20-page softcover "blog book", $24.95 for a hardcover and $7.95 for a .pdf version, the first two of which seemed a bit pricey to me. But I did want to see how the upload feature performed, so I had the site create a book from 1 year of PBW posts, 2009-2010. Which ...

EcoTen

Ten Ways to Go Green

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

Need more data storage for your netbook or mobile device? Roshi over at HowtoGoMobile.com tells you how to get a free 500GB virtual hard drive with active sharing and downloading options here.

Read Bruce Britt's post, The New Stone Age, which talks about the pros and cons of using a new paper made from stone to save trees.

eDoc Organizer (Bas...

Making Promotion Fun

Now and then I visit Adverblog to see the latest in online interactive marketing. I thought Give It a Ponder, the new LG campaign to educate consumers on thinking before they text, was smart, funny and interesting even to someone like me who doesn't text at all. It was genius to have James Lipton do the videos (that guy always tickles me.)

We still don't have a lot of advergames in Publishing, and I think that's an area of online marketing that needs some serious exploration. Author Douglas...

Winners

I appreciate everyone who stopped in to help me celebrate StarDoc's tenth anniversary this week. I loved reading about all the memories and other authors you've stuck with through thick and thin, and I've printed out all of them and have added them to my series file as one more wonderful keepsake.

We revved up the magic hat, and the winners of the StarDoc Turns Ten giveaway are:

Torin, whose comment began with Happy Birthday StarDoc and Congratulations Lynn

Abigail Beal

Lunechilde

A Simple Love o...

All About the Agents

Nathan Bransford's The Secret Year/YA Diary contest nabbed 650+ entries in just three days. Amazing. I saw a lot of great entries in comments, and I don't envy him the task of picking the winners. As the mother of two teens I did chuckle a few times over some of the entries, especially the ones with decidedly eighties overtones (uh, they don't talk like that anymore, guys.)

Agent Kate Epstein is actively looking for YA and nonfiction submissions (link found in this post by Tanya over at SFC...

Inventions for Writers

With all the gadgets and gizmos for writers out there on the market, I still carry around a mini wish-list in my head of things I wish these tech people would invent for us writers. Such as:

Back to Work Reminder: This could be a screensaver that inspires me to stop staring at it and get back to work -- other than a photograph of this month's bills. Or maybe just a disembodied hand that would pop out of my screen and smack me in the head whenever I idle too long.

Comfortable...

StarDoc Turns Ten

In January 2000 my first published novel, StarDoc , was released. Naturally people made a lot of predictions about the book; none of them were particularly optimistic. I was informed upfront that StarDoc would never make a bestseller list, or turn a profit, or stay in print; I would be phenomenally fortunate if I earned back half my advance. I don't think I've ever had my hopes so repeatedly or thoroughly stomped by others as I did that last six months before the book hit the shelves. It w...

Quickie Contest

For you YA writers out there, literary agent Nathan Bransford is holding a very cool contest on his blog for a signed copy of The Secret Year by Jennifer Hubbard plus the winner's choice of a query critique, partial critique, or 10 minute phone conversation/consultation/dish session with Nathan.

To have a chance at winning, contestants must: "Write the most compelling (fictional) teen diary entry. It may be a diary entry or an unsent letter, but it should be in a teen's voice" not longer than ...