Ever wonder how the masters achieved those rich colors and life like images? Well read on. In this tutorial you can follow along as I create a beautiful portrait of a child done in oils using traditional painting techniques. I originally posted this tutorial on instructibles a few years back. Step 1: The early painters…
The Summer Mom went Crazy
Paladin of Lost Causes This is my requiem To tradition, the Old Guard Blamed, belittled, castigated, Bombastically harangued in bellicose derision Casualties of iconoclastic mendacity I am the paladin of lost causes This is my lamentation To tolerance Obsequious, timorous, reticent Chary of a ubiquitous double standard Dogmatic chauvinism practiced with malevolent hubris I am…
The Dead Don’t Eat, They Rot… When a short story out grows its britches.
My soon to be published novella grew from the short story below. I wrote it never intending for it to be published, I just needed another item fill up a student portfolio and get a grade. This is why I’m always telling my kids to save all their work no matter how unimportant it might…
She said what?
Punctuating dialogue is a nit-picky field of grey quicksand. And one of the most confusing aspects is speech attribution. You can use dialogue tags to explicitly state who said what… “Fuck you Bitch!” she said, opening up a can of whup-ass. Or action to imply who’s speaking. “The spots on your glasses are driving me…
Kitchen Chemistry, My accidentally awesome fish bisque
Last night, after another long day spent editing “Dead Dwight,” my family asked repeatedly (four times… one for each mouth,) “Do we have a dinner plan?” For some reason they ask this every night, and since the answer’s always “No,” you’d think they’d know better. Now, for those of you who who don’t know me,…
We can all go to Stanford… Free!
As promised in last week’s post, today I’ll be talking about free educational resources every writer should know about. Back at the turn of the century—I’ve always wanted to say that—MIT decided to put a bunch of their course lectures on the web for free. While they weren’t the first to do so, they did…
Ambulance memoir: Happy bloody Christmas!
Originally posted on Random Ramblings:
? Ambulance memoir. I have tried to recreate events, locales and conversations from my memories of them. In order to maintain their anonymity and privacy I’ve changed the names of individuals and sometimes places, I may have changed some identifying characteristics, so the people described do not necessarily reflect the…
I love tools… (well not the walking and talking kind.)
So for those of you out there who’ve decided you’re going to finally take the plunge, and write the world’s greatest novel, I decided to share some of the tools I’ve found to get the job done, and best of all, most of them are free!
My Cover Art…
Folks have been asking about the first “The Science of Loving” cover and why I changed it then returned to it. So it’s like this: I loved most of the original illustration. I spent forever getting the tattoo designed just right. But days started turning into weeks of digital painting. Writing and editing chores weren’t…
Just a snack until an unsuspecting toddler strolls by…
We worked side by side building our sandwiches. Mine, just a few modest layers of meat and cheese, with a bit of lettuce for some added crunchiness; his, a Dagwood —- piled high with turkey, ham, baked beans, salami, sardines, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, two kinds of cheese, and —- were those jalapenos —- with a…
Candace Vianna Writes 