Winner

The Publishing Fairy has been appeased, and by random draw will be granting a BookWish to:

Gail Leinweber, who wrote I really liked Eloisa James's Once Upon A Tower (though the Rapunzel aspect is pretty subtle).

Gail, when you have a chance please send the title of the book you'd like along with your ship-to information to LynnViehl@aol.com. My thanks to everyone for joining in.

Appease the Fairy, Please

Last night the Publishing Fairy dropped by to whine about how I've been ignoring her lately. To keep the peace (and prevent her from cursing my next release) I'm giving her today's post and the chance to grant a BookWish* for one of my readers.

If you'd like to be the one for whom the wand waves, in comments to this post name a book you've just read that you really enjoyed (or if you haven't read anything enjoyable recently, just toss your name in the hat) by midnight EST tonight, July 17th, 2013. I'll choose one name at random from everyone who participates and grant the winner a BookWish. This giveaway is open to everyone on the planet, even if you've won something here at PBW in the past.

*A BookWish is any book of the winner's choice available for order online and that costs up to a maximum of $30.00 U.S. dollars (I'll cover any additional shipping costs involved.)

Print Edition Cover Art

We have cover art for the print edition of Her Ladyship's Curse and His Lordship Possessed, which will be released together in January as one novel:



No surprises here, as it's the same artwork my publisher used for the e-book edition of Her Ladyship's Curse. Since this was my favorite of the two covers, however, I'm quite happy.

Writerisms Ten

Ten Things Writers Say (and What They Really Mean)
(The copy and revisions edition)

A copy-edit is something all writers look forward to.

A copy-edit is something all writers dodge until the last minute, and then gripe about for weeks after.

Generally I don't use as many ellipses as you've suggested in my stories.

Why do you think all my characters are stutterers and asthmatics?

I actually clarified this in Chapter One (note to editor).

(Note to self) He won't notice that I just went back and clarified this in Chapter One.

I appreciate all the corrections you took the liberty of making throughout the story, but in the process you seem to have changed my character's title.

363 times, and now he's the Viscount of an illicit sex act. Do you hate me or something?

I used an alternative spelling here, but I'll replace it with the more common word.

I misspelled the word it but I don't want to admit that.

Look at all these helpful little comments and suggestions on the writing.

Great, another copy-editor who thinks they're a writer.

May I STET this, please?

May I smack you in the head with my manuscript a few times, please?

There's a little problem with the cover copy.

There's a huge problem with the cover copy, and it took me two hours of anxiety attacks before I calmed down enough to write this e-mail. Excuse me while I go start freaking out again.

This scene is important to the development of the character and the plot, so I'd like it to remain intact.

This scene is important to me because it took me three weeks and nine rewrites to get it right, and I'm so in love with it I'm thinking of having it tattooed in Chinese on my left shoulder.

Why sure, I can run through the copy-edit, answer all two hundred of the queries and get it back to you tomorrow morning.

Goodbye, sleep, hello, expresso maker.

Comments Catchup Day

See you in comments.

Short Story Sub Op

I found this interesting sub op over at Ralan.com and thought I'd pass it along (and this one has much better payment terms than the last one):

Phobos magazine is looking for submissions for their inaugural issue: "We want short and flash fiction and poetry. We want horror, SF, fantasy, slipstream, adventure tales, noir exercises, bizarro experiments, boxing stories, and sea-yarns. We want well-written pulp fiction. Genre boundaries are unimportant. If your work attempts to astound, unsettle, thrill, baffle or completely terrify the reader, it probably qualifies. We want huge twists, epic journeys, two-fisted adventures, maximum drama, and we want it accomplished in under 3,000 words. We want writers unafraid to read their work before an audience, to record their stories for mass download, to be part of the process from typesetting to cover art to publication and beyond. This part is crucial; it takes more than a good story to be part of this, which is why we are strongly biased towards submissions from local writers. As such, if you'd prefer to "submit it and forget it", please look elsewhere. We'll be accepting two short stories (1,000-3,000 words), two to four pieces of flash fiction (below 1,000 words), and a handful of poems. If you have a longer piece which would need to be broken into two or more parts across two or more issues, please contact us" Payment: 5¢/word. Query on reprints, electronic submission only, see guidelines for more details. Deadline: August 31st, 2013.

Elsewhere with Her Ladyship

For this Friday's video post I have to send you over to SF Signal here to see it. Why should you go? This time it's my video.

You should also know that this trailer was produced by amazing author and fantastic filmmaker Jeff Somers, whom I highly recommend as a genius when it comes to putting together a writer's crazy ideas and making them into a terrific video.

New Online Publisher

Freedom Fiction has opened it doors for business and is looking for novel and novella submissions; here's what they want to see: "Novella and Novel length Fiction works of genre fiction (all genres) or pulp fiction only; Word Count is to be minimum 30,000 to maximum 90,000 words; Payment is 8 cents per 100 words in year 2013. Please note this will change every year in progressive manner." No reprints, electronic submissions only, see guidelines for more details.

Added: As of this morning the publisher's site is down, and as there is some confusion about the exact payment terms I'm going to save us all a lot of headaches and strike this one.

A couple of reminders: there's still time to enter my Steampunking Barbara Samuel giveaway over on the Disenchanted & Co. blog, which runs through midnight EST on Friday, and my newsletter subscribers have until midnight EST tonight to enter June's giveaway; see the June newsletter for more details.

Elsewhere with Barbara Samuel

Today over on Disenchanted & Co. we're steampunking our very first guest: award-winning author Barbara Samuel. Stop in, read the interview and enter in comments -- over there, not here -- to win this giveaway of her books and other goodies themed to Barbara's world-building (gorgeous girl not included.)

LJ's Antho

Our blog pal LJ Cohen has a new Spec Fic antho project about to debut, and all of the proceeds will go to helping other writers, which is one of my favorite things:

Interrobang Books is pleased to announce the publication of "Pen Ultimate: A Speculative Fiction Anthology". The anthology, edited by LJ Cohen and Talib S. Hussain, is comprised of eleven short stories written by up-and-coming writers in fantasy and science fiction and includes a foreword by Craig Shaw Gardner and an afterword by Jeffrey A. Carver.

All proceeds will be donated to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) Emergency Medical Fund. The fund offers interest-free loans to members facing unexpected medical expenses. Active SFWA members are eligible to request assistance from the fund. More information about the fund and how to directly donate to it can be found here.

The anthology will be unveiled at ReaderCon 24, an annual convention devoted to "imaginative literature". The book is available in trade paperback edition through Amazon and CreateSpace, and e-Book editions through major online venues. For more information and purchase links, head over to LJ's site.

No Cost 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.

Blender is the "open source software for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, post-production, interactive creation and playback. Blender has proven to be an extremely fast and versatile design instrument. The software has a personal touch, offering a unique approach to the world of Three Dimensions. Use it to create TV commercials, to make technical visualizations, business graphics, to do some morphing, or design user interfaces. You can easy build and manage complex environments. The renderer is versatile and extremely fast. All basic animation principles (curves & keys) are well implemented" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7)

Compositions is a "great tool for those who enjoy writing, and want a tool which allows for easier access. Using Compositions allows for easy drag-and-drop file access. You can also use the tool on mobile devices, and transfer files easily that way. You can also export the file in a .txt format" (OS: Mac OS X 10.7.3 or later, 64-bit processor)

Foto-Mosaik-Edda "allows you to create photo mosaic pictures from your own computer. A photo mosaic picture is made up of tiny photos which are fitted together in such a way that, from a distance, they blend together to create the appearance of a new picture. To create a photo mosaic picture, you can use digital photos from your collection, for example from your last vacation or family get-together. Foto-Mosaik-Edda analyses the photos and then adds them to one or more databases from which they are drawn to create your photo mosaic" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7)

Free Desktop Clock is an "advanced replacement for standard Windows tray clock. View the time, seconds, month, week and day in different skins in the Windows system tray clock. 9 skins are included in the distribution" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/7/8 [32-Bit/64-Bit])

Instagiffer is a "free tool to easily create animated GIFs from various video file formats and online video sites. In addition to video file support, users can also create animated GIFs from images. The program features an easy to use interface that allows you to adjust the quality of the GIFs, add effects and text captions, crop images, a screen capture feature to create animated GIFs, and more" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7 [32-Bit/64-Bit])

Money Me is a free program to manage your income and expenses. Although it includes an extensive set of features, the simple interface makes it easy to use. You can quickly and easily add your expenses and start making statistics. You can create budgets, organize your debts and administrate all of your coupons with a simple interface" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/7/8 [32-Bit/64-Bit])

Password Pad Lite "allows you to create multiple note files, each secured by a different password. The key feature of password pad is its simplicity, which makes it easier to use and allows it to be easily extended to other uses. Keep your data in the format that you want, not in the format that someone else has decided for you. Later, simply search for the data that you want to retrieve" (OS: Mac OS X 10.6 or later)

Photoscape is a "fun and easy photo editing software that enables you to fix and enhance photos. Features: Viewer: View your folders photos, slideshow; Editor: resizing, brightness and color adjustment, white balance, backlight correction, frames, balloons, mosaic mode, adding text, drawing pictures, cropping, filters, red eye removal, blooming; Batch editor: Batch editing multiple photos; Page: Make one photo by merging multiple photos at the page frame; Combine: Make one photo by attaching multiple photos vertically or horizontally; Animated GIF: Make one animation photo with multiple photos •Print: Print portrait shot, carte de visite, passport photo; Screen Capture: Capture your screenshot and save it; Color Picker: Zoom in screen on images, search and pick the color; Rename: Change photo file names in batch mode; Raw Converter: Convert RAW to JPG" (OS: Win 98/ME/2K/XP/2K3/Vista/7)

Textcast "turns any text — documents, web pages and entire blog feeds — into personal podcasts you can listen to right on your iPod and iPhone" (OS: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard)

Ultimate Calendar is a "free, easy to use calendar with rich features and settings. Features: Calendar for any year from 1 to 9999-th in table and list; Common and personal dates differing by sets and groups •Movable, cyclical, periodical, particular dates; Internal editor for easy work with dates sets; Two view modes: Whole year and Monthly; Popup window which contains the list of nearest events and displayed when the mouse hovers over the tray icon; Tracking change of day; Options «Autostart on system startup», «Hide to tray on minimize», *new* «Run only one copy», *new* «Always on top»; Plugins support. Distribution includes the following plugins: Sun and Moon. Displays, in accordance with the selected geographic location, the time of rise and set of Sun and Moon, the duration of the solar and lunar day, the current phase of the Moon; Julian dates. Displays the date on the Julian calendar (old style), Julian Day and Modified Julian Day; Displaying schemes support; Export to Microsoft Excel and formats BMP, RTF, TXT; Multilingual interface and Unicode support; Contains predefined dates sets with holidays and events for Armenia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine, USA" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7)

Comments Catchup Day

See you in comments.

If Ideas Were Alligators

If ideas were alligators they wouldn't be so bad.



We could hide them for a time beneath a handy lily pad.

When they'd pop out they'd be (almost) a kind of cute surprise,



as long as we remember not to look into their eyes.



Idealligators would likely sleep a lot each day,

and hardly ever bother us or get into our way.



It's fairly easy to ignore the prehistoric twerp,

and think of him as silly or some sort of mental burp.



but like ideas a gator waits until the time is right,

when he can catch us off-guard and lunge in to take a bite.



Perhaps we should be grateful that all ideas can do is seethe,

and won't turn into anything with quite so many teeth.

Paper Dreamworld

What would it be like to drive through a city made of paper? This video gives you a wonderful tour (some background music and sound effects, for those of you at work):

Paper City from Maciek Janicki on Vimeo.

I'm also having a giveaway today over at the Disenchanted & Co. blog, so stop by if you get a chance. (Video link nicked from Gerard at The Presurfer.)

Wishing You

Locked BookLoops

I'm experimenting with my BookLoop design again, and here are three ways you can make faux "locked" loops. First you'll need some vintage trims, skeleton keys and antique lock plates:



For the first locked design thread your desired length of ribbon through the fastener holes on the lock plate and tie a loop at the bottom:



Tie a skeleton key on the opposite end of the ribbon, like so:



To fasten the BookLoop, pass the skeleton key through the ribbon loop and tug gently until the loop cinches around the book:



If you have small keys and plates, you can simply tie them as anchors to either end of your ribbon loop, like this:



An alternate way to make a cinching loop is to tie one end of your ribbon to the lock plate, pass the other end of the ribbon through the keyhole, and then tie your skeleton key onto the end as your anchor (this also allows you to use a single length of ribbon versus a doubled loop):



This option doesn't allow you to release the loop (unless your skeleton key is small and thin enough to pass back and forth through the lock plate's keyhole) so you should allow a little extra length of ribbon to slip around your book:

Newslettering

I have never been crazy about e-mail newsletters, which is probably why I've never attempted to do one myself until I sold the Disenchanted & Co. books. Since there is a lot going on behind the scenes with the new series I really needed one, but I didn't want to get myself into a huge time sink that would just end up being deleted unread from someone's inbox.

The first thing I did was search for instructions as to exactly how to get a newsletter subscription option on a Blogger template. This video by Odin Spark not only explained that, it directed me to MailChimp, a free newsletter creation and mailing service -- which basically eliminated the rest of the research I was planning to do.

Once I watched the MailChimp tutorials, I put together my first test newsletter in about half an hour. I used one of their designer templates for the first issue, although I plan to create my own once I become a little more experienced with the site.

I think newsletters should be short, so I kept mine brief. I made a couple of insider-info type announcements about upcoming events, and included a request for feedback on what my subscribers would like to see in the newsletter. As an extra temptation I offered an incentive giveaway for those who take the time to respond. Right now my subscriber list is small but as it grows I'm planning more perks for the recipients that won't be available to anyone else.

The primary challenge of a monthly newsletter is to put together enough news, bonus material and incentives to make it worth someone's time to read. Before I jumped into doing my first issue I put together six month's worth of newsletters in draft form to get an idea of how best to approach the content, and that was extremely helpful in getting a handle on how to sustain it. Since I'm doing a lot of advance marketing right now I have plenty of news about the first book, but that tends to dwindle after the initial release and promotions are over. I also have to remain flexible enough with my content that I can add all those last-minute items that plague every author.

I think offering monthly incentives like contests and freebies is a fun way to keep subscribers reading the newsletter, but you have to think about what your readership really wants to know. My people are huge readers and always on the lookout for great books, so one of my newsletter content goals is to come up with a monthly recommended read by another author I think will appeal to them. I may also extend that to include recommendations from my subscribers.

The one thing I don't want is for the newsletter to become tiresome -- on either side. This challenges me to keep creating content that helps promote the series but that doesn't bore me or the subscriber. I'm going to do a lot of thinking outside the box on this aspect, and hopefully put together a monthly mailing that keeps readers clicking to open it instead of opting for the delete button.

Do you use a particular newsletter service that has proven valuable or helpful in some way? Let us know in comments.

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.

Alarm is a "digital clock that you can set to display a message and play a sound at a time of your choice. It is meant to be of help when you want to be warned while you are working (and chances are big you are going to forget you have to do this very important thing later on)" (OS: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/7/8)

Capture Screen Rectangle is an "application adds a tray icon that provides functionality for capturing a rectangular area of the screen. This prevents you having to capture the whole screen or a window and then clipping it afterwards. The resulting image can be captured to the clipboard or to a file. Supported image formats include BMP, JPEG and PNG" (OS: Windows)

Cyotek Webcopy is a "free tool for copying full or partial websites locally onto your harddisk for offline viewing. WebCopy will scan the specified website and download it's content onto your hardisk. Links to resources such as stylesheets, images, and other pages in the website will automatically be remapped to match the local path. Using its extensive configuration you can define which parts of a website will be copied and how" (OS: Windows XP/2003/Vista/7/8 [32-Bit/64-Bit])

MoneyLine Personal Finance software "tracks all your money, bank accounts and spending in one place, so you stay organized and in control of your finances" (OS: Designer notes "Works on Windows 7, XP, Vista and 8; Works on 64 bit Windows; Mac OS X 10.3 or above")

Pocket Radio Player is a "free Shoutcast compatible internet radio player. Unlike the many other players out there, this software concentrates on offering basic functionality in a compact package" (OS: Linux, Mac and Windows platforms)

Polygot 3000is an "automatic language identifier that quickly recognizes the language of any text, phrase or even single words" (OS: Windows 95/98/NT/ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7/8)

Print Envelopes is a "versatile program for printing business cards, envelopes or labels from Windows. There is a address list in the program, which you can create either by editing or by importing from general CSV file. There is a possibility, with this tool, to import addresses from such programs as Thunderbird, MS Outlook and others. Also, this program allows you to add your own envelope sizes to the primary formats. The optimal size for print is to be chosen automatically according to the printer settings. The printed file can be turned and shifted , also, there is possible to slightly move and place a sender and receiver address (margin distance). Print a sender address is optional. This program is able to print out a logo on the envelope too. In order to print an address to a foreign country you just simply choose your destination country. There is also possible to print out a different files in to one sheet ( texts or pictures ) while you printing an address plates at the same time" (OS: Windows XP/Vista/7/8)

SoftCardManager allows you to "use your scanner to store Business cards and other similar sized cards. SoftCardManager stores digital images of each Card. Each one highly compressed is immediately available for viewing. Scan in a card, enter it into a phone book (basic details, Name, Company, Email address) and you can look at all their details instantly" (OS: Windows)

SoftMailCheck is an "email filtering utility designed to help you remove unsolicited emails which may contain viruses, undesired attachments or unrequested information, before you download them. Run SoftMailCheck as your first line of defence and then choose which emails you would like to receive before running your email program" (OS: Windows 2000, Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT )

SSuite Office Writers D-Lite is a "tool that has just enough functionality to start you on writing that important novel, short-story or article, without any bells and whistles to distract you. Get writing from the first moment you start the application. It has all the important functions and text formatting needed to get you busy. It also has custom page settings for easier viewing of your document. Has a fixed type writer view for easy reading and text input. Full statistics are visible on the status bar, keeping you abreast of your text document as you type. No java or .Net required to run this application, keeping it very small and portable and very useful. Has all the necessary editing short-cut keys for power users" (OS: Windows All [32-Bit/64-Bit])

Comments Catchup Day

See you in comments.

Office Depot Finds

On a recent toner run to Office Depot I took a little time to browse (I know, such a hardship) and found some stuff I thought might be interesting to other writers:



3M keeps evolving its Post-It product line, and I found two types of multi-use decorative labels (#1 and #2 in the photo) and a pad of file folder labels (#3) which are super convenient. The decorative labels, which are 1-3/4" X 2-3/4" and come in packs of 40, are printed with phrases like "This belongs to..." and "Property of..." and are exactly the right size to serve as book plates. They were also on clearance and cost $2.00 per pack. The file folder labels are a patricularly nice find as I recycle my file folders and constantly have to relabel them; the pack of 100 labels was also on clearance at $.92.

Wilson Jones's Binder Apps Tool Band (#4) can be helpful to anyone who works with notebooks; it's the right size to fit over binders, tablets, sorting filers or large books. At $2.99 I considered it a real steal, too.

The "Rollin' with my Gnomies" three-ring binder (#5) is just a fun buy; great for kids, grownups or anyone who is a fan of the movie Amelie. I got mine for $4.99.

Back by the toner section I found a little display of blank ruled journals, and I was surprised at how pretty they were:



The smallest (#6 pictured in the photo) was $3.99; the middle-sized (#7, which has a fancy magnetic closure cover) was $5.99, and the largest (#8)was $7.99. That's about 50% cheaper than comparable journals you find in bookstores.

If you have time to browse at your local Office Depot be sure to check the bargain bins, which are usually located close to the registers -- that's where I found all the 3M lables on clearance.