beren_writes: Adam Lambert from before Idol with eyes lit up (al - eyes on the prize)
2014-09-09 03:19 pm

Gun Encyclopedia - Useful site for Authors

Author's Note: This is a repost from my other blog, but I thought a gun encyclopedia would be useful to some so I've posted it here as well.

So I'm currently writing a short story with a character who is an assassin and I wanted her to use handguns. Since I know nothing about handguns at all I turned to Google and this really useful site popped up. It has everything you could possibly need to know about guns and ammo. of the 20th Century.

World Guns
World Guns - An Encyclopedia of Weapons of the 20th Century


I thought I'd pass it on because these are the kind of resources I know we writers are always after. I suspect many of you have found it already, but I hadn't so for those that also haven't here is the link.

I had no idea there were so many different types of gun out there; it's all a little scary really. The site gives run downs on what a type of gun is as well, so if you want to know the difference between a submachine gun and a machine gun, this is the site for you.

The site is in English and Russian.

This is a list of the categories the site has:


  • Handguns
  • Submachine guns
  • Military Rifles
  • Assault Rifles
  • Sniper Rifles
  • Civilian Rifles
  • Shotguns
  • Machine guns
  • Anti-tank rifles
  • Grenade launchers
  • Ammunition
  • Traumatic Weapons
beren_writes: Loki smiling with the words "Sweet and innocent ... honestly" (Avengers - Loki sweet and innocent)
2014-03-13 09:38 am

TLWLexicon - Literary Festival - come see us

So this weekend Soph and I are going to be at TLWLexicon, a literary festival in Faversham, Kent, along with lots of other lovely authors and creators. Check out the TLWLexicon website for all the details.


This is the festival's first year and there are going to be panels and presentations and dramatic readings and huge amounts of fun.

Soph and I are doing two panels on the main stage, one on Sat at 4pm and one on Sunday at 12 noon and we will be in the 'everyone' panel both mornings as well.

Saturday's panel is called '"Self-publishing" or "Independent Publishing"' where we will be nattering on about the percieved differences.

Sunday's panel is called "Creating worlds and building audiences" and is just what it says on the packet.

Basically we're going to try and tell everyone the things we have learned as publishers and authors in the shark pond that is the self publishing world today.

We also have goody bags to give away with bookmarks, keyrings, sweeties and other nice things in them, and all you have to do is take the flyer with all the money off codes as well to get it - so win/win :).

If you are anywhere near the south east of the UK this weekend this is going to be a lot of fun, so come see us and all the other lovely people involved. It's only £1 to get in and under 14s go free.
beren_writes: Manga portraits of Harry and Draco (Default)
2014-03-06 04:15 pm

New page on my Tasha's Thinkings blog full of links to resources for Bloggers and Designers

I've just added a new page to my Tasha's Thinkings blog full of a list of resources for Bloggers and Designers.

These include free image sites, sites containing downloadable photoshop actions and scripts, image reference sites, free books sites and more. These are sites I have used when designing book covers and making web images.

Click here to visit the new Resource Links page.


And additionally:

This site (PSDCovers.com) is awesome if you have Adobe Photoshop and you need to mock up objects with your own designs. They have books, bottles, cartons, boxes, iphones, ipads, DVD/blu-ray cases and more. I played around and I created this with one of my book covers in five minutes.


Most of that five mins was waiting for the action to run because my machine is old and clunky and I had 40 tabs open in Chrome as well. The images the actions create are very large so I would suggest only having Photoshop running when you are using the them.

After trying to run the action twice my machine did decide to reboot all on it's own because it's cranky like that. :) Save everything, save often.