Jordan Castillo Price's Blog, page 80

Packing Heat 107: Infodump

Packing Heat is a podcast I've been putting out since 2008. My goal is to help other writers stay motivated, and to encourage them to take their writing to the next level. You don't need special gadgets to listen; Packing Heat plays in your browser, like YouTube. Or you can subscribe (and leave me glowing feedback) at iTunes!

Time management I’ve been finding it helpful lately to tell myself, “If I start doing this task now, I’ll be done by (insert time), rather than, “I only need to work on ...

I want my habits back

I'm crushed to look at my calendar today and see that I skipped a whole week of exercise. When I gave up both my day job and my unhealthy long-term relationship, I promised myself that I'd get back in touch with me. I'd keep my mood and creativity up with daily exercise and naps, and start watching what I ate both to get rid of excess weight and to feel better.

I was in a really good routine. Then Wis Con came up and it feels like I might as well have done nothing at all.

I did exercise today (...

Packing Heat 106: Swifties

Packing Heat is a podcast I've been putting out since 2008. My goal is to help other writers stay motivated, and to encourage them to take their writing to the next level. You don't need special gadgets to listen; Packing Heat plays in your browser, like YouTube. Or you can subscribe (and leave me glowing feedback) at iTunes! These are this week's show notes.

 http://packingheat.net/2010/06/02/packing-heat-106-swifties.aspx (the show, 19 minutes)
Newbie mistakes #2
There are certain tendencies I...

WisCon Schedule

If any of you are coming to WisCon this year, I'd love to say hi! Here's where I'll be:

Saturday, June 29 4 pm
The Fearless Vampire Slayers

The changing image of the vampire in popular literature is eliminating the "traditional" vampire as a valid figure, replacing it with either protagonist–vampires separated from evil or science–fiction ones separated from the supernatural. Is this AGoodThing™ or ABadThing™? Where do we go from here?

Saturday, June 29 10:30 pm
...

Packing Heat 105: Hey, You!

Newbie mistakes #1 There are certain tendencies I see often in newbie writing, particularly romance writing. Let’s talk about the direct address today.
What is it? Here’s the definition from About.com: A construction in which a speaker or writer directly addresses another individual; also, the name of the individual who is addressed. Conventionally, that individual's name is set off by a comma.

Honestly? What a useless definition! That’s like saying the definition of house is, well…house.

My ...

More fun with line breaks

Since everyone's mind is numb from the prior "why did they break the sentence here?" post, I thought I'd mention I just now saw another funny one:

Dole Remodels Random
House

How funny, I thought. A home improvement show where a team just bursts in on some unassuming people and remodels their home. I'd watch that! Can you imagine the reactions of the homeowners? Talk about a dramatic reveal. Of course, it should have read:

Dole Remodels
Random House

Being an article about publishing. Nowhere near as...

Because I'm picky

I find it so strange when a big business misses things that I see without even trying. When I worked in the silkscreen printing industry, the floor manager would make people set things up again if there were issues like a weird dot on the print, or a misalignment...and sometimes it was a push-and-pull between quality and economy, when a job needed to get done whether the press was holding proper alignment or not.

My nitpickiness might have come from that early on-the-job learning. I noticed th...

Darn, I had hoped...

During my last round of untangling the Gordian knot of what-ebook-formats-do-and-how-to-make-them, I downloaded the free epub and PDF reading program Adobe Digital Editions. Then coincidentally I also looked at my library system's online library, and was thrilled to find they now loaned ebooks through Digital Editions. (Before it was just Overdrive, which is great...if you like reading at your computer. Which I don't.)

I'm not sure why I thought I could transfer to a device and read on my iPod...

Betweentimes - a spicy little romance

When Jon's neighbor Owen invites him to the Jumping Bean Burrito Bar, of course he accepts. True, the restaurant is about as Mexican as Alan Thicke, the margaritas are sugary enough to send you into a diabetic coma, and the salsa tastes like it came out of a can.

But Owen will be there—that's all that matters.

And then the date turns spicier than Jon could have ever anticipated.

Read an excerpt or purchase at JCP Books

Adventures in CS5

Last week I upgraded my OS to Show Leopard and my Creative Suite to CS5. So far everything's playing nice together, except for some of the OnOne Photoshop plugins I use, but they say the new versions will be ready soon. So here's what I have for my Victor Bayne model today.

The original pic - wearing a better shirt than usual...typical scowl.


Here I plunked him into a random background, which I ended up liking more than I thought I would. The direction of the light source works with the picture...