Web Wednesday: Links I Liked (29 Jan 2014 ed.)

I'm going to try something a new: muse about things that I saw on the interwebs that sparked something in me.

The links might've sparked something as simple as a smile, a new entry in my Evernote compendium of writing things, a story idea, or just plain enjoyment. As this is my writing existence space, I'll work to keep the links related to writing and story.

• Frozen Becomes the Highest Grossing Animated Film! I love Disney films, so it wasn't a surprise that I loved Frozen too. So kudos (not the snack bar - I made that mistake once) to the production crew, especially the writers. I wonder how much of the fact that the story has two strong female protagonists is a function of one of the writers being a female.

• I love Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. The first book in the series is being adapted into a TV series by Starz to be aired this Summer. Starz has released two trailers, different only in the endings. Trailer one. Trailer two. Love them both, but am partial to the second one.

• Another one of my favorite book series received some love this week. The Into the Wilderness series by Rosina Lippi, pen name Sara Donati and my editor, received high marks in a survey of historical fiction books. If you haven't read this series, what are you waiting for? 

• Photography is a big part of my life, and I'm weaving into my writing process as well. I use photographs to spark ideas, to record locations (I have a slew of photos from our Scotland trip to use in one my stories), and model characters. Sometimes, I enjoy a picture for the sake of the picture. This one, by one of my first contacts from twitter, is one of my favorites just for its clean contrasts and starkness.

• I keep an Evernote list of agents looking for new clients. I realize that by the time I'm done with a story and ready to query, most of the agents listed will probably not be looking anymore. But I keep adding to the list because it'll be a good place to start my search. This week, two agents popped up: Laura Zats and Nadeen Gayle. Thought I'd share the links in case anyone needed more query opportunities.

• Last year, I listened to Fault in our Stars by John Green and loved it. It too has been adapted, but into a feature film. The trailer was released today. Be warned, tears will flow.

• And just for fun... This link is a commercial for Jaguar. "It's good to be bad."

Links and Stuff

My wave of writing momentum broke, leaving me wading in the waters. Not that I'm not getting nothing done, I'm still moving towards shore. Just not very fast.

Rather than go on about my revision hell, I thought I'd link/share some posts that have entertained me, provided conversation fodder, and helped my writing process along recently.

• Donald Maass tweets golden nuggets that writers can use to improve any story. Using Hootsuite, I email his tweets to myself, then copy and paste them into an Evernote note that I save just for his tweets. If I need an idea of how to make the story larger, I browse the list of his tweets. My favorite at the moment is #87 -- I'm so going to let it hurt. 
• Pocket is a read-later service that I found via Lifehacker (another good site) that allows me to save articles and blogposts that I want to read for later. I was using Instapaper, even paid for the app, when I learned about Pocket, a free app. Both apps get the job done and make it easy to share the articles, but found Pocket's layout more visually appealing. I use Pocket to save recipes, writing articles, news pieces, and even links to videos, then dispo them to trash, Evernote, or email for final filing.
• Lynn Viehl, one of my favorite authors and  bloggers, has a Get Back to Writing theme this week on her blog. One of her posts has my Muse waving her sword and spouting ideas for a few short stories.
• Over at Photofocus, Scott Bourne always posts stunning photos as well as helpful photography related tips. Much of his advice is just as applicable to writing and life as to photography, like this one about scrubbing negativity from your creative space/life. (I still have the article in my Pocket queue to keep the message present for myself.)

Hope these links sparked inspiration, curiosity of sources/services available on the web, or just allowed you to take a break.

Me, I'm back to revising. Maybe, now that I have some pain to inflict character building to do, I'll have some fun.

Too Cool

Remember that I asked for and received an eARC from Lynn Viehl? In return I agreed to write up my thoughts on Shadowlight and post it on the interwebs. That done, I sent an email to Ms. Viehl informing her of my post.

Hold on, I'm getting to the cool part.

She posted an entry listing several links in which people had said something about her story. And my site was one of them.

How cool is that? A prolific author with books on best-selling lists actually put a link to my newbie blog on her blog!

I'll tell you how cool -- Too cool.