Thursday, May 30, 2013

New and Shiny!

As most of you know, this year I FINALLY got a fiction book contract (with Berkley Publishing for my paranormal romance series, The Baba Yaga). After seven years of working towards that goal, actually achieving it was fairly momentous. It also felt like a good time to make some changes. Seven is one of those magical numbers, for one thing. Plus, my writing career is shifting in a different direction. In the past, most of my public focus was on the nonfiction witchcraft books from Llewellyn. Now, the focus will be on both fiction and nonfiction.

So what does all this mean, you ask? (Of course I can hear you. I'm amazing that way.)

NEW WEBSITE!!!!!

Sorry. I'm a little excited.

My wonderful friend Robin created my old website for me, back when my first Llewellyn book came out (2007, or maybe before), and we've made a few changes in the meanwhile. But it was on a webhost that required all sorts of fancy code and such, which meant that I was always dependent on someone else to update it. Also, of course, it was based on the "old" author image of me, instead of the "new" one. (Shockingly, I still look the same. But you know what I mean.)

When Robin got busy with her new business (she runs a daycare...multi-talented woman that she is), my writing partner Lisa DiDio hooked me up with her web person, the fabulous Annette Beecher. Annette initially took over maintaining the old site, and when I decided I was ready for a new one, she built me one on WordPress. It ROCKS. Just you wait and see. The woman is a genius. (And very reasonably priced, to boot. Which is good, since I'm still paying for rat clean-up.)

Here is what the old site looked like, in case you don't remember (or, GASP, never visited it):
It was nice, but a little dark. It also had the address deborahblakehps. com (because deborahblake.com was already taken, dammit). HPS stands for high priestess, which made sense when I was only doing witchy books.

The new website will be www.deborahblakeauthor.com which is a little more general. Go take a look and tell me what you think.

I think it is beooootiful! Or as they would say on Firefly: SHINY!

What do you think?

Oh, and if you ever need anything done online, Annette has a business as a Virtual Assistant at http://www.jaromarbles.com/ -- I couldn't recommend her more highly. She was fast, easy to work with, really good, and not expensive!
 

7 comments:

  1. I like the new website. It's easy to find the information, easy to read (important to my aging eyes) and I love the little kitties. I like the open feeling and the author photo is great. It looks fresh and modern and looks like a website that can be changed slightly from time to time if you feel like something a bit different without making radical updates.

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    1. Cathy, you say all the right things! I love you :-) That's exactly what I was aiming for.

      We started out with white writing on black, which looks cool, but is really hard to read. I think this is pretty easy to use and looks nice too.

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  2. I like it! I really like it! I'll eat it up with my magic spoon . . .

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    1. Don't eat it up! We just got it up and running!

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  3. Deb, the new web site is awesome! It's beautiful and as Cathy M says, easy to read. I, too, like the various little kitty drawings. Really wonderful site. Good job to your site developer!

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    1. Annette did an amazing job. And didn't mind when I kept saying, "Oh, and could you just make it...."

      (I like the kitty drawings too. They're Magic the Cat approved.)

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  4. What a complete website! I love your orange-red header with the dice-like Twitter/Facebook buttons!

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