S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 244

Catch-Up Day

I'm bailing on you guys today to take my vehicle in for some maintenance, deal with a contract and ship off some packages. I'll also try to catch up on comments I've missed later today (I've been so busy NaNo'ing I hardly plugged in at all this week.)

In the morning I'll have the follow-up post I promised to The Reality of a Times Bestseller over on the group blog, with the second statement that just came in, all the figures and my thoughts on how Twilight Fall performed over the eleven month...

Woeful Ten

Ten New Terms for Writer Woes

Agentnesia: Your agent gives a long, detailed interview at the world's most popular website, during which he mentions every author he represents along with the title of their latest release -- except you and yours.

Copywronged: After finding an error made by the copy-editor on your manuscript, you correct it and send it in. When you find the same error on the galleys, you correct it and send it in with a note flagging it for your editor, who assures you it will b...

Mid-Week NaNoPost

If you're participating in NaNoWriMo this year, you've probably already gotten started with writing your novel. If you haven't and you want to, no worries, there's still 26 days left to write. If you start today. Which means, you should start today.

You're starting today, right? Don't make me get my writer whip.

The first week you spend writing a novel is usually terrific. The idea for your story is new and bright and shiny. You've got all sorts of cool characters to play with on the page. Your...

To-Doing

It's eight a.m. here, and everyone has gone to work or school. The pup has been walked and allowed to win the latest bout of tug-of-war, the cats have been scritched and cuddled, the laundry is started, and the dishes are half done. The tea is brewed, a whole wheat English muffin waits by the toaster. The television, stereo and phones are silent. In a few minutes phase two of the writing day will begin (phase one started at 5 a.m., when I woke up and wrote for an hour while everyone else slep...

Set It 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.

The latest version of AM-Notebook Lite is "a multi-featured personal information manager that provides an easy and reliable way to save notes, formula supported spreadsheets, to do lists, tasks and contacts within a light weight tray icon tool" (OS: Win 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP/2K3)

Calibre is "a one stop solution to all your e-book needs. ...

Winners

Did everyone have a great Halloween? Hope so. We had a small party this year at Casa PBW, traded books and ghost stories with friends, and handed out treats to the neighbor kids, who assured us that we had the coolest decorated house on the block (although the haunted garage six houses down was definitely scarier.)

After taking all the Snickers out of the magic hat tonight, we put it to work, and the winners of the Haunting giveawayare:

Jay Montville

shawna

Tori

Maria Zannini

Jusy

Winners, when y...

Wishing You

Haunting

After I got hooked on author Douglas Clegg's online difference game for his new novel, Isis, I had to buy the book. Knowing Doug, I had the feeling it would be the perfect read for Halloween week, and sure enough, it was.

After her British father goes off on a war assignment, Iris Villiers and her family move from America to the Villers ancestral home in Cornwall, where they deal with a crazy grandfather, old spooky local legends and a seriously scary family burial ground called The Tombs. W...

Updates

According to my SF editor, Dream Called Time, the tenth and final StarDoc novel, will be released in August 2010.

The pitch for my third Kyndred book (title pending approval) has been accepted, and it will be a crossover Kyndred/Darkyn novel (and to avoid spoilers that's all I'm going to say about it for now), tentatively scheduled for release in late 2010.

Last but not least, I feel that the Shadowlight e-ARC experiment was a great success. I've never had a book place so high on the Times l...

Unique

If there was a twelve-step program for my most peculiar jones, I would probably have to confess something like this: "Hi, my name is (whatever it is this week) and I'm addicted to house porn."

Yes, sad to say it's true, but like the teen with the fashion magazine addiction in the film Mumford, I love to look through magazines with glossy photos of beautiful architecture, amazing floor plans, exquisitely furnished rooms and gorgeous landscaping. I think it's the lack of clutter that seduces...