* SIMECENTER SUPPORTS HAITI
* ANNUAL NEW YEAR'S CHAT POSTED
* WISH JEAN LUCK
* BORDERLANDS NEWS
* JEAN PUBLISHES JOURNAL
* RELAY FOR LIFE
* NEWSLETTER NEWS
* JEAN'S SOCIAL NETWORKING
* Check our our new Amazon "Stores"
* NEW PROJECT FOR JACQUELINE
* COAL FOR CHRISTMAS
* REREADABLE BOOKS
* PATRIC MICHAEL'S NEXT PUBLICATION
* JOIN THE REVIEWERS
* NEW ITEMS FROM ARTISTS AND AUTHORS AT CAFE PRESS
* HELP WANTED
* PUBLICATION SCHEDULE
* AVAILABLE RELEASES
* SITES TO REMEMBER
* SUBSCRIPTION AND CONTACT INFORMATION
**COPYRIGHT NOTICE**
****** SIMECENTER SUPPORTS AID TO HAITI
Starting with this month's issue, SimeCenter is asking authors and artists to sponsor charities
that actively participate in relief and recovery aid to Haiti.
This month's story on http://www.simegen.com/simecenter/ is:
The Time Travelers' Guide (by Katy Thorp)
- some words of advice
The accompanying artwork is:
Bark Shin Guardian (by G.B. Chew)
- quiet protection
In keeping with the new direction, these creations are submitted in support of Oxfam America,
which is spearheading several major projects to restore conditions in Haiti.
When you donate to this worthy organization, be sure to tell them you were referred by
SimeCenter.
Send your comments, questions, etc.--about the site, the stories and art...whatever--to the
address below. [Mention 'SimeCenter' in the subject so I'll know it isn't spam.]
In Service to Unity,
Kaires Tevesu
****** SIME~GEN ANNUAL MEETING MINUTES POSTED
Sime~Gen, Inc., holds its annual meeting on the first day of each year, to report on happenings
over the previous year, and give awards to people who have served the domain valiantly in the
previous year.
The meeting is conducted via mIRC, so that friends of Sime~Gen from all over the world can
attend. Two chat rooms are opened for the occasion; one hosting the formal meeting, and the other allowing the participants to chat in the background before, during, and after the formal meeting.
The logs from both chat rooms are posted on the web:
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/chats/chat2010_mtg.html
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/chats/chat2010_chat.html
There, you can read notes about the meetings from 1999 through 2010. The files for the last few
years are fairly elegant in format and content. The files in the earlier years are less formal,
but they report the necessary information.
Note that this is actually the 12th year (!) of these online meetings!
Comments are greatly appreciated. Send comments, questions, etc., to the address below. [Mention 'Sime~Gen Meeting' in the subject so I'll know it isn't spam.]
In Service to Unity,
Kaires Tevesu
historian@simegen.com
*******
******WISH JEAN LUCK******
WISH JEAN LUCK!
Jean's trip to Hollywood last November has resulted in an agent asking to see the first act of
the script she pitched at those meetings.
It's just a request to read, NOT an offer of representation, but it is an essential first step.
It could be a false step that goes nowhere, or it could be the first step on the path to
eventually getting a script produced. Good wishes for the latter are welcomed!
Also please send strength and inspiration as Jean polish-polish-polishes that first act before
sending it in in early February. "Good enough" is not good enough when trying to break into
Hollywood. It has to be great
******
******BORDERLANDS NEWS******
Borderlands Part 32, "On The Run," is now posted at
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/fans/bev/boom/index.html#part.32
Who's on the run? Well, new characters Dilena and Portia are on the run from Gen T, which doesn't like their lifestyle very much. No, they're both Gens. Sosu Nick is not actually on the run, but like Yellow-Dog Dingo, he's very truly run after, and by a rather unsavory character.
Poor Ambassador Tsibola is back in town, and at least four difficult interviews with different
people send him on the run -- to his bed.Sidebars include the beginnings of a new Distect scare, this time out-T, and a scene where Cristal asks for advice (with thematic connections to one of the main plot threads). We also have Saag and Randayl, the Senator's Sime sons, exchanging stories, as well as Fennik and Tsibola having one of their brandy evenings, only without the brandy this time.
Feedback! We want feedback! Give us feedback! And then in due course you'll get Part 33, "What's Yours Is Mine."
******
******JEAN PUBLISHES INDIA/NEPAL JOURNAL******
New entries are up in Jean's blog......loads of pictures!
http://houseofkeon.blogspot.com/2009/12/italy-part-two-pompeii-and-herculaneum.html
India and Nepal--True Adventures
A journey into a new world, real events, wonders vs. hardships. Tips and
tricks for travelers. What to see. http://houseofkeon.blogspot.com/
******
******RELAY FOR LIFE ~ a message from Jean******
I know that at the moment we are all putting any charitable contributions we can afford toward
helping the people of Haiti. Nevertheless, the drive to this Spring's Relay for Life in the fight
against cancer has begun.
As a cancer survivor twice over, I participate in a relay team made up of survivors, the 8th
Wonders. I will remind you again next month, but if you are interested in seeing my website for
Relay, it's at http://short.to/12jf1
******
******NEWSLETTER NEWS******
NEW NEWS: We have a new way of accessing WHAT'S NEW on simegen.com It is a blog where you can read the monthly Newsletter and drop your own comments and news, tell us what you need done, or report problems with pages.
http://whatsnew..simegen.com/ Click in the right margin to follow this Newsletter, and the news
will appear in your blogger.com account. Or you can use the RSS feed. If there's another follow-tool you would prefer, please e-mail simegen@simegen.com asking for it (give the URL) and we'll enable it. There are a few handy tools we haven't enabled yet, but they are available (such as feedburner).
Patric set this magical thing up on our server and Karen has posted the Newsletters from Jan 2009 to now, so you can access past news just by scrolling. Please visit our top page,
simegen.com, and note that my Twitter scroll is there for you -- plus a very nice Writing Tips Twitter scroll. Click and read the entire scroll on Twitter.
******
******Advertisment*****
When you enter the imagination of L. H. Young, you begin a fascinating
ride, whether you are traveling the time stream with witches, finding love the
stuff of legends with her wonderful vampires, traipsing across the universe
with her Sci-fi, or going to school with four unusual teenagers born with the
ability to heal by touch. Don’t forget that she even writes for the
imagination of the very young as seen in The Christmas Kitten.
www.authorlhyoung.com
*****Please Support Those Who Support Us*****
******JEAN'S SOCIAL NETWORKING******
If you are on LinkedIn or Facebook, be sure to look up Jean Lorrah.
Jean's personal Twitter account is http://twitter.com/houseofkeon She tweets only when she has something more important to announce than that she got up in the morning.
She also has a daily Twitter account, http://twitter.com/TipsOnWriting That's right: tips on
writing every single day.
Jean is taking a course on Marketing and Emerging Media, part of which requires learning to use
even more social media. You can see her photo album on Italy now at http://short.to/14bad
And finally, Jean's blog continues with weekly entries at http://www.houseofkeon.blogspot.com/
******
****** Check our our new Amazon "Stores"
Blatant commercial to keep simegen.com on the air.If you buy from Amazon using one of our search boxes at the bottoms of many of our pages, or find what you're looking for in our a-stores, we get a few cents to pay the bandwidth bills.
Our Amazon stores (we recommend buying directly from Amazon itself, not one of their onboard
retailers unless you know the retailer very well -- we get paid the same, but have found better customer service with Amazon.com shipments).
http://www.simegen.com/marketplace/keybooks/
http://www.simegen.com/marketplace/keygifts/ -- NEW STORE created to hold gift items specially useful to writers, both in writing and in just finding the TIME to write.
Also we now have Google ads on our main entry pages -- and they pay nicely when someone finds what they want via one of those ads. But don't click just to click -- click something that looks like what you really want.
******
******NEW PROJECT FOR JAQUELINE******
MY CURRENT MAIN EFFORTS:
http://www.simegen.com/marketplace/downloads/
That is a page that needs redesigning, just as the /marketplace/ top page will.
We are preparing to make available in e-book and on paper, a set of 7 textbooks on writing, 5 of
which are on philosophy, the wellspring of ideas and the bulwark against writer's block. The particular philosophy showcased is the structural framework behind Tarot, but you don't have to be interested in Tarot to use this information in writing or many other endeavors.
Novel and Screenwriting are both very much rooted in structure which becomes invisible when
clothed in unique details.
Learning to perceive the underlying structure behind seething masses of detail is somewhat like
learning to spot starfish against an underwater boulder full of barnacles.
It's pattern-recognition, a brain function we all have and sometimes fail to buff up. These first
5 volumes help train the mental "eye" in a kind of abstract "pattern recognition" that will serve to sharpen results in everything you do.
The final 2 (or possibly more) volumes are directed at readers and writers who want to understand the application of the pattern recognition principles showcased in the first 5 volumes. These volumes are designed to be of use specifically by writers, but writers working in fiction, non-fiction, or screenwriting.
Currently, this project stands at the beginning of Volume #5, with several more weeks work to do on that volume, plus artwork and packaging efforts. This is a team effort that has absorbed Karen, Patric, Jean, me -- and others here -- for a year or more.
Some of these Tarot and Writing Lesson chapters have been posted to the blogs
http://www.editingcircle.blogspot.com/
And on Tuesdays where I post on
http://www.aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/
The better entries on these two blogs will be compiled and presented in PDF (or other e-book
formats) plus, on paper.
******
******COAL FOR CHRISTMAS**********
COAL FOR CHRISTMAS by Lois Wickstrom and Jean Lorrah finished in the top ten family screenplays in the 2008 TheMovieDeal contest. http://www.themoviedeal.com/#/finalists/4532422034 Find the SCROLL icon at the lower left, and scroll down to see the top ten in each category.
******
******REREADABLE BOOKS******
PLEASE REMEMBER TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR BLOG WHERE THIS NEWSLETTER IS POSTED
http://whatsnew.simegen.com/ which is a neat way to avoid losing the Newsletter in spam.
The Rereadable Books review column for January 2010 has now been posted.
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2010/
ReReadable Books review columns posted for November and December 2009 can be found at
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2009/
The books that will be reviewed through June 2010 have been posted at
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2010/
Preview of some novels in the hopper for after June 2010 can be found at
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/is-that-really-you.html
http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/12/recommending-devon-monk.html
Alien Romances is a co-blog where you will find Jacqueline Lichtenberg blogging on Tuesdays.
******
****** Patric Michael (our Webmaster) is pleased to announce his NEXT publication!******
"The Santa Mug," a novella, was released by Dreamspinner Press in December, 2009 as part of their Advent Calendar.
Light of a Different Moon" by Patric Michael, part of the "To Die For" ghost anthology by MLR
Press, has been released. Look for it at www.mlrpress.com
Check out http://www.patricmichael.com for the Start of Something Great.
*******
******JOIN THE REVIEWERS
Jacqueline is developing a new way to find books to review -- via Twitter!
And with more people helping we could, perhaps, find more reviewers. I've been collecting people in writing, editing, publishing, and various parts of the film industry on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
I really could use some help with this. To connect with me on Twitter
http://twitter.com/jlichtenberg
To connect with me on Facebook --
http://facebook.com/jacqueline.lichtenberg
To connect with me on LinkedIn --
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jacquelinelichtenberg
Karen MacLeod and Patric are also available on LinkedIn. We are moving gradually into the
networking space and evaluating the uses of cloud computing. We need a new coordinator for the Reviews department who can work with the social networking tools.
For the moment we have only a few reviewers responding to the e-mail List, and I suspect that's
the drift away from e-mail because of the spam load. We need to launch a blogspot blog for our Reviewers instead of a List, or perhaps establish a Group on Facebook.
I will continue to post books to be reviewed to the reviewers List as I discover them. As Coordinator of our Reviews Department, I ask for your help. With the current upsurge in e-book publishing that is sweeping the Internet, we daily receive an increasing number of books to review. Yet, in counterpoint, we have a shortage of reviewers, and many of our reviews staff are several books behind. We are eagerly and actively seeking new people to review for us. As with all of Sime~Gen, our reviewers are volunteers. When they write a review, it is posted with their byline, and they get to keep the review copy of the books they have read and reviewed.
For more information on our Reviewers Agreement, visit:
http://www.simegen.com/agreements/revagr.html
Please help us by passing this information along to anyone you know who might want to join our
happy band. If interested, they can send a note expressing their interest to Jean at simegen@simegen.com
******
******Advertisement******
Anyone shopping Amazon who wants to contribute to simegen.com without it
costing them a cent, please start by using any of the Amazon Search boxes on
our pages. Our top page has three really handy ones near the bottom.
http://www.simegen.com
******Please Support Those Advertisers Who Support Us *****
******NEW ITEMS FROM ARTISTS AND AUTHORS AT CAFE PRESS
A SIME~GEN postage stamp is now available to order on cafe press. It can be used just as you
would use a regular postage stamp. Be the first on YOUR block to have them!
We've got a new page for Cafe Press items from our artists and authors. Now you can get t-shirts, greeting cards, clocks, mugs, and other great stuff with work from your favorite artists. You can even buy books about Nessie, the Orange Forest Rabbit and The Reluctant Spy that aren't available anywhere else.
http://simegen.com/marketplace/cafepress/ is a direct link to all our items and merchandise
stores. Use of this page will give the domain extra income. If there is an item that you wish to see that isn't offered, just write Lois at
lois@lochness-monster.com and she'll get it ready for you to order.
******
******HELP WANTED*****
The spotlights section of Simegen.com currently needs interviewers, spotlight posting personnel,
an assistant spotlights gatemaster, and a keygifts store manager. We are also requesting an Assistant Reviews Co-coordinator - duties include covering when other staff are unable to perform tasks. We are almost finished revamping our reviews section and expect
activity to be at a constant high level. We're looking for a versatile quick learner able to put
in some timedaily. Pluses are: A good command of the English language (syntax, grammar, punctuation, in that order), some computer experience or ability to learn, and an interest in books. Direct all inquiries to simegen@simegen.com.
Individuals to take over, or assist with the SIMECENTER Site -- It isn't at all hard, but a bit time-consuming...and very rewarding ("meeting" these marvelous authors and artists, if only via E-Mail and their websites.) Please write me, Kaires Tevesu, if you are interested. People who talked to me earlier about helping: I've lost track of your communications in the throes of several changes of computer. PLEASE contact me again. The time is right, the templates are much more robust, I have a small backlog of stories (the hardest part of operating SimeCenter), and I've even documented some of the processes. I'd like to talk to you again.
****** Please Support Those Advertisers Who Support Us *****
******PUBLICATION SCHEDULE********
We have had to withdraw the entire Sime~Gen project from Meisha Merlin for a wide range of
reasons. They missed several deadlines for publication of TO KISS OR TO KILL and showed no signs of intention to get it out any time in the foreseeable future. That stalled everything else. It was very disappointing. So we are now actively in search of another publisher.
THE UNITY TRILOGY should continue to be available for some time -- they have the right to dispose of all stock in the Meisha Merlin warehouse.
******
******AVAILABLE RELEASES***********
~ the Omnibus reprint of Jean Lorrah's SAVAGE EMPIRE: DARK MOON RISING --
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/193210013X/rereadablebooksr/ is #1
in the reprint program.
~ Trade Paperback edition of DREAMSPY from BenBella Books and you can order
on Amazon and some other places
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1932100253/rereadablebooksr/
Read the comments here:
http://www.simegen.com/writers/luren/dreamspy/dreamspyreviews.html
~ SAVAGE EMPIRE: PROPHECIES
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/193210030X/rereadablebooksr/ is #2
in Jean Lorrah's and Winston Howlett's omnibus reprint of the Savage Empire series.
Still Available in Trade Paperback, SIME~GEN: THE UNITY TRILOGY
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1592220037/rereadablebooksr/
******
***** Sites to Remember *****
Author spotlights: http://www.simegen.com/writers/spotlights/
Chats: http://www.simegen..com/writers/spotlights/chat.html
Romance articles: http://www.simegen.com/romance/articles.html
Reviews of books by Jacqueline Lichtenberg:
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/
Reviews: http://www.simegen.com/reviews/
Shopping: http://www.simegen.com/marketplace/
Sound files of Jacqueline Lichtenberg pronouncing Sime~Gen vocabulary words
can be found at http://www.simegen.com/jl/nivetsoundfiles/index.html
To sign up for classes, go to http://www.simegen.com/school/SchoolForms.html
To volunteer, go to http://www.simegen.com/agreements/helpwanted.html for the latest openings.
******
To contact editor for any reason, please e-mail Lisa Saunders at
simegen@simegen.com
*Please Note all material posted on Official Virtual Tecton is copyright © by Sime~Gen Inc. and all rights are reserved.
To get your Sime~Gen(tm) material sanctioned for web posting or to get permission to repost from official materials, e-mail ambrovzeor@aol.com, contact simegen@simegen.com.
Sime~Gen (tm) is the trademark of a fictional universe copyright © by Jacqueline Lichtenberg, 1969, 1974, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1984, 1986 and Sime~Gen Inc. 1999-2010
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