Seventh Sanctum Blog

The Fabulist Needs Your Help!

The-Fabulist.org is looking for volunteer slush readers … If you’d like to get involved, please email The Fabulist at readme@the-fabulist.org, and include a short note detailing your interest, experience and expectations for doing any slush reading.

Background: The Fabulist’s website relaunch has gone well. Traffic is up and we’re starting to get a goodly queue of submissions to review, of fiction and poetry. In fact, the number of submissions is starting to exceed my ability to manage them in a timely manner.

As I mentioned, we need volunteers only … The Fab is entirely volunteer run, and while we imagine a future where we pay people, writers as well as staff, that future is not yet upon us. We’ve never worked with slush readers before, so in addition to anything else, I welcome any advice on setting up slush workflow, expectations, etc.

- Steve

Introducing MuseHack!

Remember Fan To Pro? Well that was a site I and my friend Bonnie founded to speak on geeky careers and the fan/geek/otaku path to prodom. But we found it limiting over time, so we “evolved” it with the expanded staff to . . .

MUSEHACK

MuseHack is about people using, applying, improving, and owning their creativity, inspiration, and passion. Jobs are a part of it, but we wanted to go further. We call it “Geekery Applied.”

So there will be plenty of career stuff (courtesy of yours truly), our creative columns from Scott and Serdar, the return of Bonnie, more from Rob, and new guest and regular columnists. Well be covering:

Careers – Using what you love to make money. Also all the old Fan To Pro content is at the site!

Creativity – Getting your mind moving, improving your creativity, and odd and interesting things.

Community – Great events, conventions, and building community.

Capability – Improving your skills and abilities, and taking control of your life and career.

So be sure to job by, and subscribe to the RSS feed or newsletter! In fact we may want you to write for us!

- Steve

Thanks For The Artists Who Applied!

I’ve gotten a LOT of response on my call for artists – thanks everyone! However the person I’m helping now has more than enough talent for their project!

Thanks again to everyone who wrote in!

- Steve

My Latest Book Is Out!

OK it’s not entirely related to Seventh Sanctum but . . . it’s out! My guide to creating resumes as a creative act, “Epic Resume Go!” I figure you’d be interested because a lot of my audience is writers and artists!

This is my philosophy, originally in a different form at Fan To Pro, that resume creation can be treated the same as composing and promoting a piece of literature! It’s more effective and far less boring to do it this way!

However it’s also a short, sweet, and focused book. No extraneous content, this is about getting moving and doing your resume!

Best of all it’s in just about every eBook format possible, and it’s only $2.99! There’s even a sample, so give it a look!

- Steven Savage

A CALL FOR ARTISTS

OK gang, I got a friend who is looking to get some art done for a game project. Now the pay is going to be low-to-paid-in-reputation, so we’re not talking heaps of cash. But he’s a good guy with his own vision, a Kickstarter plan, and an opportunity. So if you’d like to get involved, ping me here!

- Steve

Seventh Sanctum Updates

Hey guys, as you may have noticed the Dragon Contest was delayed as I had to migrate servers. Fortunately my new provider gave me a great setup, better load balancing, AND a better price. I think the site should be more stable.

In fact, I managed to put comments back in finally! Which really was “get off my butt and wire in Disqus.”

Now, that being said, some more news!

First, I am planning to make improvements to the site. It’s been awhile and though the code is stable, the interface is stale and I can make it cross-device much easier. So for the next . . . well however long it takes, yours truly is going to be tweaking and poking and making Seventh Sanctum version . . . er, well I’m not sure. But anyway, an upgrade to a slick, somewhat larger-fonted, better-laid-out interface. I want this to really feel like a utility.

Second, I am going to look at a variety of other features people suggested. Now as I’m using this as an excuse to stretch my creaky coding muscles, no promises on what goes in or out. But we’ll see – people had ideas ranging from oekaki, to a tumblr, to jam sessions, to podcasts . . .

Third, because this is going to be some work, I AM putting contests on hold for awhile. I’m not sure what form they’ll be back in or if I may replace them with something else. Basically I want to stay focused – and they can take surprising amounts of time, depending. The current winners will get their prizes (in fact I’m mailing them out as we speak).

Fourth, I do want to try and build some more community here, so suggestions welcome!

Fifth, I may be tying this in to a few other projects, partially as a way of realizing your requests. Just stay tuned for some hopeful surprises . . .

That’s it gang, so keep on generating!

- Steve

Dragon, Aim, Fire Updated

Here’s the results of Dragon, Aim, Fire: [link]

The winner is Greatwreck the Venomous: [link]

The Runners up are:
Falsemelt: [link]
Venomtoothed Slayer: [link]

Congrats to all!

- Steve

Site Updates

Hey gang, as you saw I was busy updating the site. So the contest results are delayed a day or two more. Sorry on that.

First, new server setup that should be easier to monitor and maintain. It’s new, it’s updated, and it gives me more fine control over the system. I’m monitoring it now to see what kind of maintenace cycle it might need.

Secondly, because you wanted it – and because I want the feedback, I put in Disqus comments. Now I’m not thrilled with these yet as they don’t entirely integrate into the design very well – they tend to dominate and are a bit limited in formatting. At the same time, hey, COMMENTS.

I’m thinking of jacking the font size of the site up slightly, let me know what you think.

So come on gang, give me feedback!

- Steve

Site Update

I decided to switch hosting providers, so the site is transitioning over. Eventually you’ll see an alert at the top of the page. If all is stable, I’ll take that down in a day or three.

Let’s see how this goes!

And, yes, the contest is delayed. Sorry!

- Steven Savage

Site Working

Site issues solved. The contest results will be delayed a few days while I watch stability!