Month: November 2007

Astute visitors to my website may have noticed it’s undergone a change.  For years I’ve basically done all the heavy lifting for the site myself, but now the tools have gotten so good that it no longer seems efficient.  I was also never that good at it; although my day job is working as a technology trainer at a university, I’ve never been a true Web designer.  Plus you have to know so much more these days to do it well — Flash, javascript, etc.  Simple HTML is no longer enough.

I switched over to a WordPress site, which allows me to update it from anywhere without having to use specialized web editing software.  Anywhere I can get on the Web, I can update it, and I like that.   I did some behind the scenes work to customize it a bit, and that was a fair amount of work, but it should be easy from here on out.  It’s not all that fancy, but it’s easy to use and it accomplishes the primary goal — which is to let people know about me and my work.  Whether you’re a bestseller or just someone with a few story sales, I don’t think there’s a good excuse for a writer to not have a website these days.  It’s the lowest form of soft sell advertising, and once it’s up and running, the time commitment is pretty minimal. 

I still don’t think of myself as a true blogger, and I don’t think I’ll ever be one.  I stand in awe of those who do it well (here’s one and here’s another), and I have no doubt it helps certain writers expand their audience, but I’m always trying to find ways to get myself off the Internet since I waste too much time on it as it is. 

Yet I also know that no one will ever take a writer’s career as seriously as the writer itself, and if there’s going to be information out there about me and my writing, then there should be at least one place where there’s no middle man between me and getting the word out.  Plus I wanted to have a tool that was easy to use and I think I found one. 

Either that, or I just wanted another way to avoid doing any writing, which is often the case.

Some exciting news . . . I’ll be releasing my first collection of stories with the fine folks at PS Publishing, a very prestigious press out of the UK. It won’t be until late next year, possibly even early 2009, but I’m so stoked about it that I wanted to share the news. It’ll be part of their PS Showcase series, which puts out “mini story-collections – priced as per our novellas at £10 / $20 (approx.) for the hardcover and £25 / $50 (approx.) for the signed, jacketed hardcover – from writers whom we believe are deserving of more attention.” And judging by the first one they released, they really look like they’ll be incredible books.

Tentatively titled A WEB OF BLACK WIDOWS AND OTHER TALES OF LOVE AND LOSS, the collection will most likely feature four all new tales and two reprints. The reprints, “Front Row Seats” and “The Woman Coughed Up By the Sea” appeared in the excellent online magazine Chizine several years ago, so they have never before appeared in print form. They also both received honorable mentions in the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror.

The title novelette is a dark tale involving a grieving tattoo artist on a cross-country road trip to see the Pacific Ocean as a way to pay tribute to his deceased wife, who meets a pregnant woman on the run from her disturbed husband and strikes an unusual friendship. A little bit of suspense, a little bit of horror, and a little bit of magic realism thrown in for good measure — this one doesn’t fit neatly into any category, and I’m thrilled it will be the focal point of this collection.

The other tales will all involve love and loss in its various forms, all of them set in the modern world with a bit of a fantastic twist — a great purchase for a little Halloween reading. Or Valentine’s day, if you’re feeling a little blue and all the red hearts and candies aren’t doing it for you. I’ll post more details on the website as the collection comes together.