S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 35

Best of PBW 2015

On the last day of every year my tradition is to sort through the archives to see how things went, what I accomplished (or didn't) and get some ideas on ways in which to improve things with PBW and my writing life.

I continued my themeless trend of 2014 by not picking a theme for 2015 (or if I did, I can't find the post), but I did talk a bit about ghost writing, and how well my transition to becoming a full-time freelance ghost writer worked out. I finally found the nerve to end things with the agent, which was very tough but also my first significant step toward indy publishing.

Downsides were surprisingly minimal this past year, or maybe they just seem that way by comparison to all the scares and bears of 2014. All of the things that made me unhappy in my professional life vanished once I quit traditional publishing, and 2015 has been one of the better years in my personal life, so I see it as a win/win. While touring colleges for my kid I did get a chance to briefly revisit Savannah, my favorite American city, which made me quite happy. I didn't do too many new things, but the few I tried were fun, like signing up for Library Thing's Early Reviewer Program.

My writing life changed for the better in many major ways in 2015. On my own I managed to build a nice list of clients over the last twelve months. Although NDAs prevent me from talking about my work now, I walloped 2015 for completed writer-for-hire works (around 800K total), rejuvenated my love of writing, saw my work return to several bestseller lists, and established a reliable, livable income. And I didn't have to promote a single thing I wrote all year which, let me tell you, was absolutely wonderful. I also continued to write for my readers almost every week online via Just Write, and completed Club Denizen and Ghost Writer ; and began work on Twenty-One, the first SF story I've written since 2009. If I nailed anything in 2015, it was definitely writing.

Here's a look back at what I think were the best posts of 2015:

January: Ban It Ten, Not So Smart, Story Carding

February: Ugly Beautiful, 5 Flickr Photo Freebie Sources, Thumb Rules

March: Blogger SPAM, Falling Up, WFH No-Nos

April: New Venture, Necessary Weapons, Walking It

May: Better Writing Days, Gone Post, Personal Legends

June: Toes and Throws, Secret Covers, Q&A with LJ Cohen

July: Pic Ten, Calendar Recycled Pocket Journal, Yes, Europeople, We Have Cookies

August: Summer at the Shelter, Creative Space, Nom Nom Nom Ten

September: Foot Shot Ten (also the most popular post of 2015 on PBW), Free Pics (Weekly!), Color Week #5: Color Collection Notebook

October: NaNoPrep Ten, Titlepalooza, Everywhere

November: Lost in the Details, Blockbuster Ten, NaNoNag #3

December: Gift Pass Ten, 100, Recycled Gift Wrap #2

Welcome 2016. Since I'm in a good place, may you help everyone else make at least one of their dreams or wishes come true.

Sub Op

I spotted this sub op in the antho market listings at Ralan.com:

"Announcing open submissions for Triangulation: Beneath The Surface, Parsec Ink’s speculative fiction annual for 2016. We’re looking for outstanding speculative fiction from new and established writers. Impress us with your best interpretation of our theme. Be creative, be unique, show us what hides, lurks, or thrives…beneath the surface.

Theme: Beneath the Surface

Submissions Open: December 1st 2015

Submissions Close: February 29th, 2016

Word Count: We will consider fiction up to 6,000 words. There is no minimum word count.

Genre: We are a speculative fiction market. We accept science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories. Please do not send stories without any speculative element.

Compensation: We pay 2 cents per word. Authors will also receive an e-book and print version of the anthology and wholesale pricing for additional printed copies (typically 50% of cover price).

Rights: We purchase North American Serial Rights, and Electronic Rights for downloadable version(s). All subsidiary rights released upon publication.

Submissions: We do not accept reprints, multiple submissions, or simultaneous submissions. If we reject a story before the end of the reading period, feel free to send another.

We love creative interpretations of our themes, but we do require that stories fit the current theme.

We will run mature content if we like the story and if the mature content is integral to the story.

We will not accept fanfic, even if it’s of a fictional universe that has passed into public domain.

How To Submit: Electronic submissions make our lives easier. Please upload your story via Submittable. If this is your first time submitting to a publication that utilizes Submittable, you will need to create an account with them. It’s free.

SUBMIT YOUR STORY HERE!

Manuscript Format: Please use industry standard manuscript format. We’re not testing you to see if you can follow each and every niggling detail, we just want a manuscript that is easy for us to read.

We accept manuscripts in the following formats:

.doc or .docx (MS Word)
.rtf (Rich Text Format — generic document format that most word processors can create)
Editorial Process: We will aim to read submissions as they are received. If a story doesn’t work for us, we’ll reject it. If we think the story has great potential but isn’t quite there yet, we might do a rewrite request. If we love it, we’ll accept it. If we can’t make up our minds, we will request to hold onto it for a while for further consideration. If we send you a hold request and you have something else that would fit the theme, feel free to submit it. After a story is accepted, the only changes that we will make will be minor line edits and formatting fixes.

Response: We aim to make final decisions by March 31st.

Eligibility: All writers, including those who are known or even related to the editorial staff, are permitted to submit to the Triangulation anthology. That doesn’t mean we’ll automatically publish them; just that we’re willing to look at their work."

The submission guidelines page can be found here.

Marked as Read

This month I've been forcing myself to clean out my two oldest online mailboxes. I've kept them going since I opened them back in 2000 and 2004 respectively, and they've always been cluttered. I save a lot of e-mails every week. Some I want to read twice, or put off until I have the time to write a thoughtful answer. Others are documentation of some business deal I forgot to print out. But there are hundreds of old e-mails I've also saved because I don't want to let them go.

One box is finally cleared out; I read through over 300 e-mails dating back to 2007 before finally clicking on each tiny box to mark them as read. One last time I got to see some of the highlights and low points of last eight years of my professional life, business deals and choices, and colleagues who contacted me at various times over the course of my career. The book I could write about Publishing, oy. But I'd rather simply remember the good things and the decent people as I consign all of it to the pro history vault. I do wish all the folks I've met over the years the very best.

I did see some correspondence that proved very hard to mark as read. It consisted of e-mails from people who have since gone onto the next place, and while I've accepted that, feelings for them still linger. Frank, I will always wonder what that first book of yours would have been like to read. Anne, I wish I could have met you and thanked you in person, just once. Monica, I still miss you and your wonderful storytelling. I saved all those e-mails I guess because it helped me to reread them and hear those voices again. Less painful but still pang-filled is a copy of my old blogroll HTML, which I e-mailed to myself in case I accidentally deleted it. Although most of those blogs have vanished, and their writers have been gobbled up by Facebook and Twitter, sometimes it's nice to remember how it used to be back in the early days of blogging (and maybe work on making this year on PBW better.)

It does feel better to finally let go of all these saved messages. Clean-slate good. I can keep moving forward, stop clinging to reminders of the past, and stick with the friends and colleagues who still want to keep in touch. And maybe figure out how to stop hoarding e-mails . . . .

Secret Santa Books

I mentioned last month that I was signing up for Library Thing's Secret Santa event, which is a surprise book exchange between members during the holidays -- and this is what Santa delivered:



Ah, this is so much fun. I love surprise books. Let's open it up and see what I scored:



Hooray! I have read the Bill Bryson, but someone nicked my copy. I was planning to buy another to add to my Bryson keeper shelf, so very pleased to have it so I can read it again. Back when I was in high school Sylvia Plath was my favorite poet (big surprise there, eh?) and I bought the edited/censored edition of Ariel, which is now too old to handle. I'm anxious both to reread it and see what's in the restored edition. I've read several of John Keegan's books -- he's an amazing nonfic military writer -- but not this one. All three books are perfect choices for me.

And in case you're curious, here are the books I sent as Secret Santa for my recipient:

Soulless by Gail Carriger -- hilarious steampunk at its best.

Raven Black by Anne Cleeves -- my Secret Santa in 2014 sent this to me, and I enjoyed it so much I bought the series. Ruthless writer, great puzzles.

Play Dead by Anne Frasier -- Amazing writing. Amazing series. Just amazing.

Black Tupelo by Anne Frasier -- You can't have too much Anne Frasier.

Chalice by Robin McKinley -- this is a book I give often to folks who write or enjoy reading different YA. Really interesting characters and world-building.

Just Write

Today I'm off to write something new and post it online before midnight. Everyone inclined to do the same is invited to join me.

My link: More on Twenty-One , (click on the title to go to the .pdf), with new material beginning on page 33.

For more details on Just Write, click here to go to the original post.

Image credit: My kid. :)

Write! Free

I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays. I spotted this Write! freeware over at AbsoluteWrite.com: "It does not get in the way of your creativity. It helps you be productive when you write or edit. It connects you with other people when (and only when) you need it. Yet Write! provides enough functionality for when you switch from "write drunk" to "edit sober" mode, you can stay as productive and creative as after a bottle of Chardonnay.

Even though it's trendy in the software development community these days, we chose to abandon being mobile-first and browser-based, but set on an alternative path of native desktop responsiveness, performance and experience over the overhyped browser-based-everything. That being said, the much hyped cloud-everything does have a point, so Write! is set to be deeply integrated with the cloud: your drafts, notes, documents and research materials all synced. Another big "online" feature we want to focus on is collaboration and digital asset management integrated right into the text processor.

You can think of Write! as a lightweight combination of a distraction-free editor, Evernote app, a bit of Wordpress post editing UI, some formatting features of Word, and even some IDE mechanics, from which we borrow how auto-complete or text folding works."

A bit too technical for someone as allergic to devices as me, but it seems like something you gadget-savvy scribes might like. You can see the features here, and I particularly liked this bit: "Every account starts with the Pro version of Write! and falls back to the free version after one month, should you decide not to subscribe." The pro version is $4.99 a month. Looks to be Windows but you might want to check into that.

Wishing You

Image credit: egal

Recycled Gift Wrap 3

I'm pretty sure most of you thrifty souls out there already know this way to recycle a handled store bag into a gift bag, but I'll show how I do it just in case there's still someone out there throwing them away. For this extremely easy project you'll need a handled paper store bag, a picture, old Christmas card or pretty paper to cover the bag logo, tape or glue or double-stick tape, and some scissors for any necessary trimming.

I brought this store bag home when I bought a gift at Bath & Body Works (and I always save their bags to recycle them because they're clean, usually unwrinkled, and all around nice to work with):



All you have to do with a store bag like this is cover up the logo with a seasonal image that has matching or complimentary colors. Here's a pic I printed out, trimmed, taped over the logo and also used it as the gift tag:



Or to make it a double-recycled bag, use the front of an old Christmas card to cover the logo:



Be creative with what you use as your cover image. A family photo would be terrific -- or how about a photo of the recipient instead of a gift tag? This is also a great project for kids, who can draw or color the cover pic for the bag.

For this one I salvaged this piece of holgraphic card stock with a beautiful snow flake from an old origami kit box:



You can also layer pics and things, like this variation with a piece of holographic paper and a snowflake I cut out from bond paper:



New gift bags can be costly, so every time you recycle a store bag this way you'll definitely save $$$. Get into the habit of saving your store bags, and you'll always have one ready to recycle for those times when you run out of wrapping paper, or have a hard-to-wrap gift, too.

Recycled Gift Wrap 2

Okay, deadline done and I'm back. To continue with my posts on how to make your own gift wrap by recycling paper and some other items you may have around the house, today I'll show you how to turn a plain brown bag into a neat gift container.

For this project you will need a small brown paper bag, a sheet of white paper, tape, and scissors. Some optional items to use: double-stick tape, glue, stapler, old flat Christmas ornament or a small candy cane. I got this bag when I bought some cards at the market:



Accordion-fold the top of your paper bag six or seven times:



Place your gift or treat inside the bag now, and then fold the top accordion fold you've made in half, to form a fan shape:



Tape the back of the two sides of the top fold together (you can also staple them if you want):



Cut a snowflake out of your white paper (if you don't know how, Martha Stewart has a photo gallery with simple instructions here) and tape (or glue) to the front of your bag:



You can add a little candy cane on top of the snowflake as extra decoration:



Or use an old Christmas ornament:



You can do this with just about any size plain paper bag; all it has to be is flat at the top so you can fold it. It also makes a neat, inexpensive party-favor bag during the holidays, birthdays or any special occasion.

Off to Write

I'm unplugging today to finish up some work. I may also be off tomorrow. See you when I get caught up.