Photo from sxc.hu user Spiders

Can’t believe fall arrived on time in the Dallas area after one of the hottest summers ever. Today is the first time I donned my sweater while working in the office. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think about fall aside from changing leaves? For me, it’s candy corn. I know Halloween is over a month away, but somehow it’s become a bad habit for candy corn (and it must be a specific brand) to find its way into my house along with a few candy pumpkins.

Brain food …

• The Great Big (30+) List of iPhone Apps for Writers. Ooh. Saving this in case my next phone is an iPhone. BlackBerry still fighting … battery flipped out, but found a replacement and it’s still working.
• Blog Book Tour Providers. Blog tours are a great way to spread the word about your book without the cost of travel. You also get a search engine boost.
• What Is the Point of Writing a Book If You Have No Online Presence? Authors need to think platform and presence long before the book deal.
• Attitude Counts. This economy can bring anyone down because it keeps beating on us. It’s OK to be down, but don’t be out for too long. Take action.

For fun because we’re allowed …

• When Parents Text. How about “When kids new to texting text?” I hope I never land on this list. 10 Funniest Parent Texts from Oddee.
• 88 Ways to Make a Stranger Smile. Nothing lifts one’s spirits than making another smile just because …
• X-Men Restroom Sign.
• What It Would Look Like If Facebook Was Honest About Its New Changes.
• The past and the future of famous logos. So future logos will be boring, or turn into generic icons?

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Tomorrow, my husband and I celebrate 22 years of wedding bellissimo. I don’t know how I landed such a great partner in life, but I do all I can not to take him for granted. I’ll stop with the mushy gushy. Just know that I did. I am. I will.

Yes, another short note. I had a post for this week all figured out in my head, but no time to type it up and present it to you. It’s bad enough I went to bed late a couple of times this week because of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. What do you know? I started writing about the book and it turned into a post on book summaries and editorial reviews.

On with the links!

Brain food…

• Six Reasons You Should Stick with Legacy Publishing: Yes, rejection is so rewarding.
• How to Be a Successful Ghostwriter: If I had the time, I’d love to pursue ghostwriting. I write because I love the work — not because my name is in print or e-ink. Then again, I may not be the best ghostwriter because it usually involves many phone interviews and listening to recordings. Not an easy feat for moi.
• How to Write Short Stories: “Dear Michael, The dog is in the oven. Don’t open it, it’s too late. I’m sorry.” Quite an opening, eh?
• 10 Facebook guides and blogs posts every non-profit should read: Great resource.
• Do welcome popups work? Personally, I close the popups without a glance. I’ll either leave the site immediately or read the article I came to read and leave. But you can’t argue data. Never hurts to test.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Wave at the Bus: For 170 days, a dad wore a different costume while waving to his 15-year-old son as he stepped into the school bus.
• 12 Geekiest Wedding Proposals: How appropriate: geek and wedding. As you know my husband and I celebrate our wedding anniversary this weekend and we’re geeks. We met the geeky way: on a BBS.
• 10 Weirdest iPhone Apps: Another from Oddee. I knew about several… but the others… odddddd… here’s one more: Kick to Pick App that lets babies choose their own name.
• Infographic: Left-Handed Facts and Statistics: Southpaws ROCK! Yes, I’m one of ‘em. If one parent is left handed, 33% of their offspring will be left-handed: My own personal data. My mom is a lefty, Dad wasn’t. They produced TWO lefties out of three kids. Dear husband is a righty (I know! Mixed marriage.) and I’m a lefty. We have three kids and 0 lefties. Yes, I know we supposedly have a lower lifespan than righties. That’d because everything is designed with a right-hander in mind and we have accidents as a result.
• How to Draw Creative Caricatures: I’m a lefty, but I never could draw decent stuff.

A two week break from school and work is just right. Neither too much or too little, but it’s enough to snap your schedule as you don’t go to bed or wake up as early. I managed to sleep until 8am a lot of the time — unusual for me.

Well, I had a great start and a disappointing finish this week. I’m all over the place… so I’ll just hand you the links and get out of the way.

Brain food…

• My Freelance Writer’s Manifesto: Right on, Carol. Preach it!
• Excuses, Excuses: While I see the writer is trying to be funny, really you shouldn’t complain about editors (or any client) in public even in jest. What do you think?
• ArchivedBook: Browse old Facebook updates without scrolling down through old posts for pages and pages… (Details from Tech Tickle.)
• The Big Question: Where to look and not to look for writing jobs outside of low paying ones (read: content mills).

For fun because we’re allowed…

• Sh*t My Kids Ruined: Instant stress reliever.
• Worst Video Game Names Ever: No wonder I haven’t heard of these and you know I’m a gamer girl.
• Damn You Auto Correct! These give you plenty of reasons to turn off autocorrect. It has a way of sneaking on you. I wrote a message recommending Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. Autocorrect changed it to “Outports.” Not funny, but I’ve seen my share.

P.S. The non-Collector’s Edition (read: cheap) of the latest from the awesome series Mystery Case Files: 13th Skull is available. I’ll be playing that one soon.

How was your first week of 2011?

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Meryl Evans

Y’all know I love my books. They’re cheaper than gadgets (I love them, too) and reveal all kinds of wonderful stuff. My seven-year-old’s book shelves overflowed that I couldn’t straighten it anymore. His shelves were the culmination of Mom’s pre-children collection, big sister’s outgrown collection and big brother’s dumped collection.

He let go of many picture books (Aw, I’m proud since it means he wants to challenge himself with harder reading material) and then I reviewed his 250+ books to see what I wanted to keep. This task scared me as I feared I would hold on to too many. Well, I managed to select no more than 20. Proud of myself. Repeat with older son’s books. Survived again.

Plus it’s summer time. You know what that means? It means I start watching Style, Food Network, Bravo type stuff with shows like Clean House and Hoarders. These also motivated me to dump a lot of stuff. I’m even trying to find a home for my precious Theatre World Annual collectible books. These I won’t just give away.

The local Friends of the Public Library is having its annual book sale this month. Debating whether to go. Do I really need to haul in more books? Of course, it won’t be 100 books — I don’t think I’ve ever bought more than 10 (used much restraint!).

Another openin’, another set of links…

Brain food…

• How to Simplify When You Love Your Stuff: When I came across this the day after the great Snave (read it backwards) book clean of 2010, I knew what to write about in this post.
• “No!” Is a Complete Sentence: Fabulous post from Anne Wayman. Y’all know how it is to say, “No.” But Do you continue on with an explanation or do you stop there? Lori Widmer refers to Anne’s post and adds another important factor — the client’s reaction. Put these two together and you’re golden the next time you need that n-o.
• Winners of Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest: “A whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.”
• 5 Reasons to Title Your Art: While focused on artwork, it can apply to many things. When I see “Untitled,” I move on and don’t waste my time with it.  [Link: Marcia Yudkin]
• Ultimate iPhone Apps for Writers: 30+ Productivity and Creativity Boosts: I still use a BlackBerry, but own an iPod Touch. I don’t know that I’d ever want to make the switch to an iPhone because (1) I type faster on hard keyboard than on screen keyboard, and (2) iPhone / iPod Touch has addicting time-wasting apps that having it with me all the time could be harmful to my time management efforts. (I don’t have iPod Touch with me very often.)

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 12 Unbelievable Mosaics: These artists have unbelievable patience.
• Clients from Hell: Hope you don’t recognize anyone here.
• Over 15 Very Funny Posts and Other Links to Make You Laugh About Freelancing: See comments for a few more.
• Time’s Best Blogs of 2010: Lists a few that I love like Cake Wrecks, The Oatmeal and GeekDad. I discovered a few cool ones I hadn’t met like PostSecret, S___ My Kids Ruined, Information Is Beautiful (How did I miss this one when I have this info visualization collection?), Shorpy (Reminds me of browsing through my grandparents’ photo albums… just something about black and white photos from the early 1900s) and more.
• 28 Minimalist Movie Posters: I used to collect Broadway show posters. Actually, having the posters paid off as I held a Broadway-themed party and put them to use. Anyway, enjoy the neat tour of these minimalist movie posters — some excellent and some eh? Love Shawhank Redemption‘s poster.
• Login is not a verb: What do you think?
• Re-imagining four common products from 2010 as if they were designed in 1977: An MP3 player, laptop, mobile phone and handheld video game system. Geeks will love this tour of what a flash from the past would look like had these existed in the ’70s.
• Dream Chronicles: Book of Air (affiliate): Dream Chronicles games consist of breathtaking scenes and lots of challenging puzzles. The cheaper standard edition is out. This could be how I’ll spend some of my weekend especially since it looks like a rainy one.

How do you manage your book collection?

• Novice Authors Must Promote Themselves: Fabulous and insightful article that every writer oughta read [Link: Rachelle Gardner].
• 8 Tips and Resources for Managing Your Business Finances: I rely on QuickBooks for my business and MS Money for balancing the accounts fast [Link: Freelance Switch].
• Tips for Writing a Long or Short Author Bio for Magazine Articles: I try to update my bio on a regular basis and create a short, medium and long version so it’s ready whenever I contribute an article.
• Beast Books: a sign of times to come: Shorter books created faster.
• 69 Free (or low cost) Tools to Improve Your Website: From @thegrok‘s good buddy and mine.

And the fun stuff because we need to have fun!

• Etsy Loves Pet Costumes: Fave: Dog Marley.
• Showcase of Designs Optimized for iPhone: Wow. Looks like full-fledged sites. Not enough to get me to switch from BlackBerry though.
• 15 Designs Inspired by Tetris: Who knew a video game can inspire such designs? It looks like a natural.
• Artwiculate: Twitter-based Word of the Day competition. Learn a new word and have fun doing it!