Merging Lenses, New Idea

I've started merging about eight of the Celtic music lenses with their corresponding video showcase lenses. Since I made the video lenses in 2008, Squidoo added the ability to make lenses with more than one page. I decided to cut down on the total number of lenses by putting the videos on page 2 of the main lens and delete the video showcase lens.

I started out with Celtic Music: Altan because it's the first one on the Celtic Music: Lenses lens. I deleted all but one video on the showcase lens and added a note with links to the main lens. I was going to do another one, but went out for a walk instead because it was a nice day, i.e., not raining.

While out walking I got an idea about doing a lens about science fiction grand masters. The Science Fiction Writers Association, which gives out the Nebula Awards, has been awarding the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award since the 1970s, although they didn't name it for Knight until after he died in the '90s. It seemed like a good way to make a lens with lots of links to Amazon for the all-time best writers in the science fiction field.

I got a list of all the Grand Masters in a text file and added links to their Amazon pages if they have them or searches on their names at Amazon if they don't have a page. Then I decided to make it more interesting by adding links to their books that have won the Hugo and/or Nebula awards. I managed to get through to 2000 and I'll most likely finish it up tomorrow.

It's still just a text file now, but I've found that by doing a lot of this type of lens with multiple Amazon links as text files is easier than working in Squidoo's lens workshop. I did find the Hugo Award Winners: Novels lens very helpful since I've already created the links to both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in that lens, so I just copy them over to the text file.

I'm hoping to be able to find photos of the authors either on Amazon or Wikipedia with Creative Commons licenses so I can use them. Also I'm hoping I can get the lens published tomorrow. Usually I don't write about stuff in progress just in case something changes. Occasionally I'll start a lens that seems like a good idea, then get bogged down. If I don't say anything before publishing, nobody has to know. But this grand master lens looks like it's definitely going to happen.