Mike Fleming

Hiveword Outage Notice

UPDATE 2: If you are having trouble getting to Hiveword then this update is for you. Hiveword is indeed available but the nature of the upgrade (a new hosting provider) means that the location of Hiveword on the internet changed. There are directories all around that world that know how to find Hiveword (or any web site). But when the location changes, the change of address has to ripple through all of these directories. Tech babble, I know, but worst case it can take up to 48 hours to update everywhere. These directory updates are out of my control but there are some things that you can try to re-establish contact:… Read More »Hiveword Outage Notice

Generating a book query with Hiveword

As a developer, it’s fun to see how others use your software in unexpected ways. For example, my previous post was about how power users do cool but surprising things.   Jeremy Menefee is another power user who says that Hiveword produces “world-class content for a book query.”   I thought, “It does?” 😉   Turns out that Jeremy convinced me. What I thought of as a simple backup mechanism to prevent lock-in actually serves a secondary purpose.   Who knew?

Tips from Hiveword Power Users

Hiveword’s birthday celebration continues! I thought it would be fun to get some tips from power users on clever ways they leverage Hiveword. I’ll start! 😉 Generating Exotic-Sounding Names for Characters or Locations If you’re writing fantasy but you’re having trouble coming up with character or place names then look no further than the Location generator! The location generator allows you to pick a country for which to show places. For English speakers, selecting a country like Morocco or Azerbaijan produces exotic-looking names that can be used for characters or setting names. Now, you probably wouldn’t use the names as-is (since they are real places, after all) but it’s easy… Read More »Tips from Hiveword Power Users

Hiveword Five Year Retrospective

Today is Hiveword’s fifth birthday! Or anniversary. Whatever you call it it’s been five years of helping writers achieve their dreams. I’m both excited and proud of that. This post is a bit of a retrospective. There will be behind-the-scenes information and maybe even a baby picture. Tomorrow I’ll have some great tips from Hiveword power users so be sure to check that out, too. But for now it’s time to get retro. In 2008 I conceived the idea for Hiveword. Man, was it going to be cool! However, I didn’t start development until 2009. Sadly, 2009 passed by. Then 2010 and still Hiveword was not available to the masses. I’m… Read More »Hiveword Five Year Retrospective

Hiveword Birthday Giveaway!

It’s hard to believe that Hiveword has been helping writers organize their stories for five years. Other Hiveword tools such as The Writer’s Knowledge Base and Knockout Novel have been doing the same for roughly the same amount of time. So, in honor of Hiveword’s momentous day we’re giving away three subscriptions of Hiveword Plus and three copies of Knockout Novel to six lucky winners. See here for how to enter. The drawings happen on November 28th. Please tell your friends and help spread the word. Thank you for your support all these years!  

Article Categorization in the WKB

Today I’m at author Elizabeth Spann Craig’s blog talking about a cool new feature in the WKB: article categorization. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Image Uploads in Hiveword Plus

It’s here! You can now attach pictures to your characters, settings, and just about anything else in Hiveword. In my last post, I provided a preview of the features around image uploading. Everything there still applies but I’ve tweaked a few things to make the experience smoother. Those sorts of changes don’t convey very well in screenshots, though. The screenshot above is new, however, and shows how you can easily filter images by story, type, and tag. This filtering is consistent with scene and note filtering. I won’t waste your time with a rehash of the last post but please check that out and see what you can do with… Read More »Image Uploads in Hiveword Plus

Image Upload Preview

One of the most popular feature requests for Hiveword is uploading images. I’m pleased to say that it will be released soon! In the meantime, I thought I’d give you a taste of what you can expect. This is early access, of course, so things may change a little. (You can click on the images for a bigger view.) Let’s get started with the Image Browser: The image browser screen shows thumbnails of all the images you’ve uploaded. The idea here is that you can quickly browse through the images to find what you want. In all of the screenshots, clicking on the image itself will take you to the image’s… Read More »Image Upload Preview

New Character Types

Just a quick update about some new character types. Previously, the character types were Protagonist Antagonist Neutral Those still exist but there are now two more: False Protagonist False Antagonist These are useful when you have a character that isn’t what they seem at first. This post would be prettier with a screenshot, don’t you think? Hiveword user Josie F. requested this change. Now it’s your turn. What’s your great idea for making Hiveword better?

Assign chapter from scene page

Hiveword user Kevin H. recently suggested several features. The first one to be implemented is a way to assign a chapter to a scene within the scene page itself. Previously, you had to do that from the Scenes by Chapter page. (You still can, of course.) Have a look at the screenshot below: The new piece is the Chapter dropdown. All of your chapters are in the dropdown in the correct order. You can assign the scene to a chapter or remove the chapter assignment altogether. The dropdown will only appear if you have chapters defined. If you are like me and don’t use chapters then it won’t be in… Read More »Assign chapter from scene page