S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 90

Vizit

According to their website, Visuwords™ is an "online graphical dictionary — Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate. Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections."

I gave it a whirl by entering the word blue, and it immediately built a nice big web of associations:



The service is also free for use by anyone with an internet connection; no membership or other access fee involved. I also noted this on the website -- "Visuwords™ uses Princeton University’s WordNet, an opensource database built by University students and language researchers" -- so that's a fairly respectable source.

Sub Op Ten

Ten Things About Submission Opportunities

Apex Magazine wants to see dark spec fic that is "sheer, unvarnished awesomeness. We want the stories it scared you to write. We want stories full of marrow and passion, stories that are twisted, strange, and beautiful. We want science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mash-ups of all three—the dark, weird stuff down at the bottom of your little literary heart. This magazine is not a publication credit, it is a place to put your secret places and dreams on display. Just so long as they have a dark speculative fiction element—we aren’t here for the quotidian. Keep in mind that the search for awesome stories is as difficult as writing them. If you are rejected, don’t get angry—instead, become more awesome. Write something better, and better, until we have to accept you, because we have been laid low by your tale. It really is that simple" Length: up to 7.5K (firm); Payment: $.06 per word; no unsolicited reprints, electronic submission only, see guidelines for more details.

Cohesion Press has an open call for their upcoming horror antho: "Blurring the Line (working title) is seeking to blur the line between what is fiction and what is non-fiction. We want horror stories, tales that are serious and frightening, hard-hitting and imaginative. We want monsters; vampires and zombies and werewolves and the mummy and creatures from the Black Lagoon and giant killer plants and mutated ants and demons and devils and Mothmen and everything else you can think of or that hasn’t been thought of yet. But we also want your serial killers and demented and depraved humanity. We want it all. Push your imagination and take us into the far reaches of your darkness, without letting go of reality. Make us believe. BUT, we want to be scared, made to feel uneasy and uncomfortable. We do not want to be shocked for no reason; if you’re going to eviscerate someone, there needs to be a good reason for doing so. We want style over shock value. We do not want supernatural romance, or weird fiction. We’re not looking for tales about a monster hunter or a covert monster hunting team (we love these stories but they’re not what we’re looking for here)" Length: up to 5K; Payment: 8¢/word; no reprints, electronic submission preferred, see guidelines for more details. Submission period opens August 1st, 2014; Deadline: October 31st, 2014.

FictionMagazines.com has a whole page of mag sub ops here, including one for romance: "Reflect on Traditions; Challenge Convetions
Love, lust or heartache, we want it all! We aim to capture the diversity of romantic experience, be it modern or dated, unconventional or relatable, or something entirely new. Tell us a story; how do we connect, how do we feel love? Fiction, poetry and book reviews accepted. Pieces will be chosen by the editor with consideration of reader responses and voting processes." [PBW notes: I'd check into that mention of voting process and get more details before submitting.] Length: up to 10K; Payment: lifetime royalty of 50%, no reprints, electronic submissions only, see guidelines for more details.

Ghostwoods Books is looking for dark fiction novel submissions: "Ghostwoods Books, a small fair-trade press located in London, UK, would like to see new and interesting dark fiction novels or cleverly connected short-story collections. Dark fantasy, gothic fiction, dark historical, creepy (but not mindless) horror. No slasher novels, no zombies, probably no YA. Let it be sinister and clever or enchanting yet creepy. We'll know it when we see it. Examples of books we would have taken for this call: Frankenstein, Dracula, An Interview with the Vampire, The Night Circus, The Throne of Bones. Note that historical novels must be somewhat updated in writing style to accommodate the tastes of modern readers. (No lengthy, needless exposition or purple prose.)" Pays 50% royalties; see guidelines for more details.

Ghostwoods Books is also looking for romance novel submissions: "Ghostwoods Books is planning a new romance imprint. We'd like to start with a slate of books. Books must be complete and in a finished state, meaning that the book has been revised and errors removed to the best of the writer's ability before submission. If possible, writers should enlist the aid of beta readers or an editor. Think of this like submitting to a literary agent. Impress us. Length will be between 60,000 and 90,000. We're looking for well-written books that evoke true romance. Other aspects of the work may vary. The key to a good romance is romantic tension." Pays 50% royalties; see guidelines for more details.

Simian Publishing has an open call for their upcoming Apotheosis antho: "Stories of human survival and defiance in a world subjugated by the return of the Elder Gods. Humanity struggled to grow and evolve as a species for thousands of years forever caught in the shadow of a dread threat known only to a devoted few. When the stars are right, the Old Ones will return to claim utter dominion of the world. Lovecraft Mythos stories often climax at the moment of the fateful return of the Elder Gods and the audience is left to ponder what might happen next. This anthology features stories about humanity under the reign of the Elder Gods and ancient terrors. We’re looking for stories inspired by the stories of H.P. Lovecraft and associated writers such as August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smit , Robert E. Howard , Robert Bloch , Henry Kuttner, and Frank Belknap Long. We’re also interested in writers that inspired Lovecraft such as Edgar Allan Poe, Algernon Blackwood and Lord Dunsany. We’re interested in classic mythos gods and monsters and originals that have inspired by the mythos" Length: 2-7K; Payment: "3 cents per word (or 1 cent per word for reprints)" Reprints okay, electronic submissions only, see guidelines for more details. Submissions open November 1st, 2014. Deadline: December 31st, 2014.

Sekhmet Press has an open call for their upcoming third Wrapped antho, which appears to be witches and occult-themed, but the only mention of what they want to see on the guidelines page is this: "We are not looking for stories reflecting religious dogma." Length: 2.5-5K; Payment: $0.01 per word + contributor copy; no reprints, electronic submissions only. Submissions period open May 18th, 2014; Deadline: June 8th, 2014.

Storm Moon Press has several open calls for upcoming unusually-themed anthos, and among them is one for bisexual steampunk: "Advanced technology is essential in good cyberpunk, but what really sets it apart is the way it showcases that technological achievement while also exposing the seedy underbelly of society. Has technology polarized society, created an underground counter-culture? There is infinite potential for adventure, especially when you have a bisexual hero/heroine in the cyberpunk setting. Are they jacked into virtual reality to express themselves, or do they have some other way of blazing a trail through high society or the downtrodden? For our Surfing the Aether anthology, we want to see what makes your bisexual characters stand out from the world they inhabit. Cyberpunk protagonists are often misfits and anti-heroes, so we'd love to see where your characters fit in the hierarchy. How do they use the technology at their fingertips rather than letting the technology use them? Have the advanced tools changed the sexual climate, and if so, how does it impact your hero/heroine's identity and expression as a bisexual? We want to discover the darker consequences of the time's industrial successes through your characters' eyes" Length: 10-20K; Payment: .0075 per word [PBW notes: this is flat free; no royalties offered]; no reprints, electronic submissions only, see guidelines for more details.

Whippleshield Books has an open call for their upcoming Venus-themed antho: "To put it bluntly, if you think your story is a good match for a science fiction magazine, it may not be for me. I’m looking for stories that are realistic, but that doesn’t mean they have to be science/space fiction. However, the planet Venus has to feature in there somewhere. Your story could be about the first attempt to land on Venus, or life in a habitat on the surface. It might describe a present-day group of engineers and scientists controlling a probe on the surface of Venus; or perhaps a journalist discovering evidence of a past secret mission to the planet. There are plenty of tales that can be told about Venus. Surprise me. I’m big on realism, so I’ll be looking for that. And good literary prose too." Length: up to 6K; Payment: 0.03£/word (>5¢/word); no reprints, electronic submission only, see guidelines for more details. Deadline: May 31st, 2014.

World Weaver Press has three upcoming antho open calls for 2014 that have not yet opened, but include themes of dragons, corvids and scarecrows -- stay tuned to their guidelines page for more details and opening dates.

Wishing You

(Please note: I'll be out of town for a couple of days, and (probably) not able to access the internet, so comments may not be posted until I get back to moderate them.)

Floating Comma Hidden SPAM

I always reserve the right to make fun of anyone who SPAMs me, even when English is obviously not their first language:

Dear Sir ，

So this is already starting out well. What?

This is [Kindness Duct Tape] from [Kindness Duct Tape] and thanks for your time to read this email.

Eh. I needed a blog post for today.

[Kindness Duct Tape] is [yada yada yada] and we have more than 100 million users all over the world.

Counting people who read your SPAM is cheating, you know. Hey, how did you get that comma after Sir to do that?

Our main products are about [yada]， [yada]， [yada]， [yada]， and more [yada].

They just kind of float, don't they? Like little balloon commas.

Now our targets are as below :

Lo siento, pero no hablo estupido.

1. Is it available that we make advertisement on your websites and we pay for your nice working?

Alas, have no websites. Is nice working that thing we do when we say "No problem" to a client when we really mean "You're an unpleasant demanding ass who can't edit or write your way out of a paper bag, but I'd like to get paid so I don't have to sell a kidney to pay for my medical insurance premium"? If so I can nice work all day long. I should add that to my resume: Nice worker +15 years.

2. Is it available that we post on your websites and we pay for your nice working?

Okay, so that's not it. Maybe you mean networking? You should really stop using Babel Fish, you know. It's hardly ever right.

We make very high diacount of our products ，and put it in your websites or put it in your newsletter part， and we share the total sales.

I love the floating commas, but I'll be honest: I'm afraid you'll infect me with your crap spelling and your inability to hit the space bar at the correct moment.

any suggestion, kindly let me know.

Hire someone whose first language is English. You'll never regret the investment. Trust me.

Looking forward to hear you soon.

Turn your ear to the south. I should be shrieking any minute now.

Thanks Sincerely，

I want one of those commas!!!!!!!

Perspective

This whimsical video shows some of the sights of London as if in miniature, thanks to the tilt shift effect (with background music, for those of you at work):

Tiny London from Mario Muth on Vimeo.

Catching Threads

Last week I finally started on my annual Spring project of making sachets for our drawers and closets. One nifty little helpful widget I picked up at this year's county quilt show is a thread catcher, which you can see there in the photo on the left (the white and black cup-like thing.) When you sew you are forever snipping threads, and having a little bin in which to deposit them prevents them from clinging to you, your project, your hair, your pincushion, your fabric, your rug, your sewing machine, being sewn back into your project, etc. The neat thing about this widget is that when I'm finished I can empty it and collapse it into the size of a Ring Ding, which also makes it very portable. It was so cool I bought a second one for a friend.

Would that we had such handy widgets for catching our story threads. Writers use everything from index cards and Post-It notes to whiteboards and outline trees to keep our threads mapped out, organized and contained, and still we drop them, lose them, forget about them and/or wake up at 2 a.m. in a panic after we send off the last round of revisions to our editor because we forgot about that thread we left dangling unfinished in chapter seventeen (I'm still really sorry about that, Adam.)

If you're into software solutions, excellent novel organizer services like Hiveword can help you keep track of your story threads (and it's still free, and there's nothing to download; you work online with it.) But let's say you want a low-tech solution that is simple and easy to update while you're working offline on your story -- this is why I invented PBW's Story Thread Catcher:



Okay, I know, it's just a blank writing pad. But you're going to turn it into a story thread catcher -- like this:



At the top of your writing pad, write Chapter One/Scene One or however you want to divvy up the work, and write a short line on each of the threads you start in this section (if you're a plotter, you can do this before you write the chapter; if you're a pantser, do this after you write the chapter.) This is your thread catcher section. Now on the bottom half of the page, make notes about any work you need to do on the threads in the next chapter (pantsers, if you want you can just write lalalala on this part.)

Tear off the bottom section of the page and remember to review it before or after you write the next chapter so you do or have done the thread work necessary. The work you do on the threads then becomes the entries for the top catcher section of the next page. Then all you do is repeat the process for each chapter. As you progress with your story, you will build up a flippable series of tops with your thread notes, so that's the catcher part:



See how simple? If you need to look back at a particular thread and how it went, all you have to do is flip through the top part. Keeping track of the threads is as simple as lettering or numbering them in sequence (and yes, you can add more threads as you go along, just remember to keep adding them to and tracking them on your subsequent thread notes.) When you finish your story, all you have to do is make sure you wrapped up each thread, and you do that by reading through your catcher section.

You're welcome.

Eureka! (and Sub Op)

I think I've figured out how that Good Reads reviewer was able to rate my story Forget-Me-Knot: she must have borrowed it from someone on Library Thing! You can see a copy of it in the LT member's library right here:



Now I can't say how this person got a copy of a story I haven't written yet, but we're not going to rule out mind reading, psychic transference, time travel or any sort of retrieval method that wouldn't cause a literary/temporal paradox. Hold on, since I'm also a member of Library Thing, maybe I can borrow it from her! Wouldn't that be completely awesome? Then I can just copy it and save myself all that time I would waste, you know, actually writing the damn thing.

While I'm working that out, here's a sub op for all you SF erotica scribes:

House of Erotica editor Nicole Gestalt has an open call for Cosmic Encounters, an upcoming erotic SF antho, and would like to see: "Science Fiction but any sub-genre is welcome be it steamunk, BDSM, Fantasy, alternative-historical, action, comedy, crime or any other! Pairings: Any Heat: Any level from romance to burning the pages of the book!" Specifics on what she's looking for: ". . . stories with a science fiction feel. These stories do not have to be focused on the far future or even the near future, they could be alternative histories or stories from far away worlds. Be as inventive as you can but please don't forget the story line and the relationships! Since this is an erotic anthology there should be on the page sex scenes however don't forget the interaction between the characters and the relationship they have. The stories should either end with a Happy-For-Now or a Happy-Ever-After it would have to be a amazingly good story for me to select it if it didn't (but I am well prepared to have my opinion changed on that)." Also: ". . . stories that stand out so please don't just set your stories on Earth, they can be set anywhere in the solar system – or even outside of our galaxy. Don't be afraid to experiment." Length: 5-15K; Payment: "Royalties will be split 40% of the net profits with contributing authors, exact values will be given once we know how many stories will be in the final anthology." No reprints, electronic submissions only, see guidelines for more details. Deadline: June 30th 2014

Lovely Dark

Here's a look at some new cover art for the German edition of Nightshine:



I don't think I've ever had brown cover art, which I know can be a tough color to make look appealing. Unless you're wizards like my German publishers. I have no idea how they made it this gorgeous -- I'm really thinking magic might be involved. I believe the title translates to Look in the Dark, which is pretty canny, considering.

Freely 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.

Attach! is a handy little utility that scans your outgoing e-mail for mention of an attachment, checks to see if you've attached anything, and if you haven't warns you with a little pop-up screen prompter. If you're forever forgetting to actually attach your attachments, this might be worth a test drive (OS: Microsoft Outlook add-on for 2000, 2002; Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP)

Bytescout Watermarking Freeware "protect copyrights for your images with professional looking watermarks" (OS: Windows 2000, XP, 7)

Flip Page Book Maker allows you to "build stunning flippingbook publications in minutes! 100% freeware to to create the effect of turning or flipping the pages of your digital book or document; create digital flip page book from text book in seconds; interactive experience for your readers (Ease to Use); support for iPhone/iPad and Android for mobile viewing, and many more; control your flash page flip bookmark . TOC (Table of contents); download all files and publish: Your WEB server, CD / DVD, or USB device; customize and design to your brand identity" (OS: Windows 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, 2003, 7)

FocusWriter is a "simple, distraction-free writing environment. It utilizes a hide-away interface that you access by moving your mouse to the edges of the screen, allowing the program to have a familiar look and feel to it while still getting out of the way so that you can immerse yourself in your work" (OS: Designer notes "It's available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X, and has been translated into many different languages")

The free trial version of Idea Tracker offers "an easy, customizable and effective method to organize, sort, filter, and print your ideas, thoughts and/or notes. Ready to run immediately after installing or customizable to allow the user to decide how to display their ideas. It allows the organization of ideas (with up to two levels of categorization) and offers the choice of fields in which to save data. Thanks to customizable databases, the user is free to track ideas in many different ways. Ideas can be kept in one database or broken into logical groupings, such as notes on a single project" (OS: Win 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT 4.0, or XP)

Instant Writing Resources Tool Bar provides "instant access to free writing resources and writing links. Developed by Rowdy Rhodes its primary use is to provide access to the massive writing resource site Freelance Writing Organization - Int'l. which was established in 1999. The Tool Bar Includes Thousands of Resources, Freelance Writing Jobs, Job Search, Global Sponsors, RSS Feeds, Online Text Formatter and Character Counter, Dictionary, How-To-Write Library, Encyclopedia, Chat, Software, Writing Courses, over 55 Online Games and Gadgets, a Writers Radio Station by Writers for Writers, Forums, a Writers Store with Over 50,000+ Writing Products from Four Separate Suppliers, Writers Site News Archives, Windows Tray Alerts Announcing New Resources and Jobs, POP3 Email Notifier for All Your Email Accounts and a Help Desk" (OS: Windows, and designer notes "This software works with Internet Explorer, FireFox, and Safari")

The free trial version of PDF to Word Converter allows you to "effectively convert a PDF file to Doc file in just a matter of a few seconds. Such utility provides the simplest method to carry out the tedious and time taking conversion. Using such software all that you got to do is just make a selection and right-click the source file and then carry out the conversion to get the desired Doc file" (OS: Windows 98, 2000, XP, X32,7 X64, WinServer, WinVista, WinVista X64)

TreeSheets is "the ultimate replacement for spreadsheets, mind mappers, outliners, PIMs, text editors and small databases. Suitable for any kind of data organization, such as Todo lists, calendars, project management, brainstorming, organizing ideas, planning, requirements gathering, presentation of information, etc. It's like a spreadsheet, immediately familiar, but much more suitable for complex data because it's hierarchical. It's like a mind mapper, but more organized and compact. It's like an outliner, but in more than one dimension. It's like a text editor, but with structure" (OS: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X)

The free trial version of WhizFolders allows you to "Write up your notes in pieces and outline them in a hierarchy with a powerful outlining list. See the difference it makes in any kind of note taking, research and study" (OS: Windows 8 desktop, Windows 7, Windows Vista, XP, 20XX)

WriteMonkey is a "Windows zenware* writing application with an extremely stripped down user interface, leaving you alone with your thoughts and your words. It is light, fast and free. With an array of innovative tools under the hood and full Markdown* support, it helps you write better" (OS: Windows)

Off to Deal

I'm taking the weekend off to write and deal with some work-related stuff. So that your stop here was not a complete waste of clicking, here is not one but two brilliant videos that discuss why so many geniuses are/were, in fact, complete losers -- and what that means to everyone else in the creative world:

The Long Game Part 1: Why Leonardo DaVinci was no genius from Delve on Vimeo.

The Long Game Part 2: the missing chapter from Delve on Vimeo.

See you on Monday.