S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 250

Splendor in the Grass

'Tis the season for butterflies here at Casa PBW, and I've been trying to take pics of them all week. They're faster than me (so are snails, for that matter) but I did manage to snap a shot of what I think was a big, gothic black swallowtail in one of the flower hedges just the other day.

While I was out walking Cole today, I saw a flutter of dark wings in the grass under one of the trees in the front yard. Fortunately I had the camera in my pocket and took this:



This swallowtail didn't appear t

Rain Rain Go Away Ten

Ten Things to Do on a Rainy Day



Begin or update an interesting character names list. Haul out your baby names or other name source book and start reading through; stop and jot down whatever name appeals to you or pops a character in your head.

Catch up on your correspondence. We all whine about how little time we have to e-mail; this is the perfect opportunity to catch up with your colleagues and friends. If you're already caught up, e-mail some friends you haven't heard from lately and see w

Still Off Writing

Yes, I'm not here again. So that your visit was not completely wasted: blow your mind by beholding the magic of 70 Outstanding Out-of-Bounds Photos (via The Presurfer.)

I had to try this, and played with one of my around town pics. It's not as easy as it looks:



Worth1000.com has a tutorial on how to photoshop an OOB photo (in Adobe, I think) here.

Off to Finish StarDoc

Create a sticky note online for your blog at Wigflip.com's sticky note generator, Superstickies (link swiped from Gerard over at The Generator Blog.)

Magnetic Fields

If Dave Kapell, the creator of Magnetic Poetry, ever needs a pro testimonial, I'm his girl. I've been a magnetic poetry junkie ever since the original kit hit the market back in the nineties, using it to play with words, recharge my batteries, work on titles (you would not believe how many of my novel titles were born on my fridge) and otherwise just have fun.

My favorite kit is contained in The Magnetic Poetry Book of Poetry, which comes with a pouch of magnetic words to stick to the metal-line

P&W This Month

The Sep/Oct '09 issue of Poets & Writers magazine is a particularly good one; there's an article on and interview with Georges Borchardt that is worth the entire cover price. Mr. Borchardt has been a literary agent for more than 50 years, and has represented or worked with writers like Elie Wiesel, Samuel Beckett, and Jean-Paul Sarte. He's really seen it all, and has a lot of fascinating observations about the biz. If you can't get the print issue of the mag, you can read the interview with h

Mawked by Dawkness

Aurora Borinlas sat up in bed. The exquisite white French balcony doors she got on sale from from the home improvement store slowly opened inward, which she thought was a little strange. Usually they opened the other way. Could the hinges be . . . defective? Surely not from that store.

A tall, dark, very muscular and definitely masculine six-foot-ten three hundred pound shadow glided into her bedroom. The red silk-lined black velvet very hot vampire novel series-inspired collectible cape he wor

My Persona

Have you ever wondered what the web thinks of you? Now you can find out when you play with a new online toy called Personas*, a program which "creates a personal online data portrait" of you, based on what it finds as it "scours the Web for information and attempts to characterize your Web identity."



It's name-based, kind of like Googling yourself and getting a color-coded bar graph of topics associated with your name; takes a few minutes even on broadband but it's interesting to see the resul

UnBoxed Ten

Ten Authors and Groups Who Promote Outside the Box

Author Doug Clegg is offering a new serial horror novel, The Locust as he writes it week-by-week exclusively to his newsletter subscribers. You can check out the first episode on Scribd here.

Probably the oddest author promotional web site I've seen in a while; I think we have to call this one online performance art. You have to click through about 55 times to get through the entire thing, but it's definitely different, as is the author, Miranda

Scratch Me

I am a Reader with a capital "R." If you scratch me, I bleed books. -- Loretta Benedetto Marvel, Mastering Illusion, CPS Sept/Oct '09

I snared this quote from Ms. Marvel's column in the latest issue of Cloth Paper Scissors, which every other month has me eyeing stuff in my junk drawer and wondering if I should open an online shop. If only there were a market for batteries of indeterminate power, orphaned pen caps and used wire ties, I'd be a millionaire in no time.

It also made me think: if you