At long last, I have an official author website, which you can view here. As for why this is such a big deal, you can view the site I had from July 1 until last night here, and read the story of WHY it looked like that here.
My husband built it, but we've mutually agreed that in the future I'll hire someone else to design and manage my site. It's the first time I'd tried to work with a family member on something of this nature, and while I know several cases where a spouse or child designs a writer's website, for us it didn't work well. Not because we have a bad marriage--we love each other, and we work together well on all the ordinary couple things like paying the bills or picking paint colors for the house or flying across the country to see the in-laws.
This turned out to be more of a challenge for us. I found it hard to be the boss of my website--to say that I needed X, Y, and Z, and that it had to be up by such-and-such date or else--and balance that with being an understanding spouse, especially when I knew dang well what was slowing him down. I was either living through the same stressors myself or watching them up close and personal. So I realized that I need a web person I can fire at will without feeling like I'm a bad person...and that's just not going to be my husband.
But for now I'm happy with my site. I especially love the way Mr. Fraser incorporated a Waterloo painting as a backdrop, since it's perfect fit for the military setting of most of my writing, and because I was already planning to get a print of it to hang on my office wall, along with my Celtic cross and my commemorative photo of Ichiro's 2001 AL MVP season. (Yes, I'm that into baseball and military history. You don't HAVE to be a girly girl to write romance...)
Well, I loved the first site, but the new one has a nifty look, too. :-)
ReplyDeleteSusanne, my husband did my first website, too, but his problem was different in that he tinkered and tinkered and tinkered with it, only to be forced to throw up a less than perfect site when I started screaming that the book would be released NEXT WEEK. He also was not blessed with your husband's sense of humor. Mine really wanted to make the best site ever, bless his heart, but knew nothing about marketing books or what the conventions of romance author sites were like. He didn't much like updating, and, although he showed me how, I kept messing it up. Needless to say it was not a pleasant experience for either of us. I'm still sorry it didn't work out, but I am extremely happy with my Waxcreative website.
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