Raven Oak's Blog, page 68
February 5, 2015
Book Cover Throwback: Dune
This week’s Book Cover Throwback: Dune by Frank Herbert.
What I Love about this Cover: A nice, old-style sci-fi cover. That’s what it is. Simple and yet it gets the job done.
What I Don’t Love about this Cover: Based on this version of the cover (which is the edition I had), it looks like this takes place on 1960’s idea of Mars, or that the sand dunes are taller than mountains and buildings. A bit weird, but I forgive it.
Click here to view other Book Cover Throwbacks.
The post Book Cover Throwba...
February 4, 2015
Writer 2.0 Podcast
My “Top Ten Ways to NOT Write” was featured at the end of A.C. Fuller’s Writer 2.0 Podcast today. It’s quite the humorous list!
You can give it a listen by going here:
http://acfuller.com/episode-25-reporter-and-author-julia-park-tracey-2/
My list begins about 53 minutes in.
I’ll also be a guest on the podcast sometime in March so stay tuned!
The post Writer 2.0 Podcast appeared first on Raven Oak.
February 2, 2015
Monday Night Gaming: Five Tribes
This week’s Monday Night Gaming: Five Tribes.
Five Tribesis a simple, yet complex game that we played with our friend Will. After a rousing game of Discworld: Ankh-Morpork, we needed something simple to finish up our weekend visit to Cafe Mox/Mox Boarding House. The folks in the Card Kingdom side of Mox recommended Five Tribes as a game that would be easy to learn and quick to play.
While I greatly enjoyed this game, playing against two programmers who are well-versed in algorithms (much more t...
January 30, 2015
Flashback Friday: Bellairs & Alter Egos
For this week’s Flashback Friday post, I’m honored to have YA author, G. G. Silverman, here for a guest post on how John Bellairs‘ works influenced her as a writer and storyteller.
When Raven Oak asked me if I’d contribute aFlashback Friday piece to her blog, I eagerly said yes. I was ready to tell the world about a fantasy author from my childhood that has had a huge influence on me, not just as a person, but as a writer, too. That author is John Bellairs, who wrote the Lewis Barnavelt myster...
January 29, 2015
Quick Poll for Live Stream Event
Since quite a few of you out there don’t live in the Pacific Northwest and can’t attend my Book Reading/Signing event in February, I’m planning a live streaming event with a reading, followed by a Q&A session. You’ll be able to watch it via YouTube and Google Hangouts. But before I pick a date, I need you to vote in the quick poll below:
The post Quick Poll for Live Stream Event appeared...
Seattle Geekly
The wonderful folks of Seattle Geekly interviewed me aboutAmaskan’s Blood and various geeky topics like Dark Dungeons, Anne McCaffrey‘s Pern, D20’s, and more.
Also on the podcast is an interview with author Kristi Charish and the normal “How Geek was Your Week” segments.
If you’re in a huge rush, my segment begins at the 13:30 mark.
The post Seattle Geekly appeared first on Raven Oak.
Book Cover Throwback: CYOAS
This week’s Book Cover Throwback: CYOAS, otherwise known as a Choose Your Own Adventure Series. In particular, Dragonfire by Jody Lynn Nye. The CYOAS folks did two such books set in the the world of Anne McCaffrey‘s Pern:Dragonfire and the other, Dragonharper. (If you’ve never read a CYOAS series, you should at least once. More on them here.)
What I Love about this Cover: It’s youthful theme fits with the CYOAS subgenre. When I was younger, I didn’t care that Anne didn’t write this book hersel...
January 28, 2015
The First 30 Days
Important!
I’m posting this two days before Day 30 because I have a guest author on Friday. I don’t like doubling up posts like that, so we’re going to pretend that January 28th is January 30th. I don’t feel like this topic gets covered enough, so I wanted to take the opportunity cover it honestly and bluntly, for myself and others.January 1st, 2015 was The Day–the day I officially donned the title “Published Author,” and all that goes with it.
30 days later, there are moments when it doesn’t...
January 26, 2015
Monday Night Gaming: Fate Reforged
This week’s Monday Night Gaming: Fate Reforged, the newest expansion for the Magic the Gathering card game.
Normally I cover tabletop games more than I cover something like Magic, but with the new expansion release, I had to tackle it. Especially after I drafted this:
Click image to view larger.
That bad boy is Ugin, the single card in this entire expansion that I wanted. This might not mean much to those who don’t play Magic, but let’s put it this way, this card is worth about $30 all by himsel...
January 24, 2015
Scrivener Saturday – Using Targets
This week’s Scrivener Saturday - Using Targets.
With everyone covering keywords, snapshots, & other options, I feel like targets are easily overlooked, and yet they are quite powerful on their own. In Scrivener, there are two types of targets: document targets and project targets.
Using the outline view, you can see progress bars for each scene or document:
Click image to view it larger.
Those progress bars come from document targets, which are set using the circular target-button in the bottom r...
