Welcome to Spring 2023

Yes, it’s Spring 2023 for everyone above the equator. Those south of the equator, you are sliding into Autumn, and that’s also a wonderful time of year. Horny birds outside are singing loudly, the air smells fresh and clean. I can walk outside in a T-shirt and shorts, and enjoy the budding of spring flowers. Yes, Spring 2023 is a delightful time of year, and welcome after dealing with snow and ice everywhere.

Website Design

You can see that my site has a new look and feel since you are reading this entry to my online blog/journal. I spent the last several weeks working it out, redesigning it, and trying to make it load faster and reflect my style.

While I write dark, suspense thrillers that portray in graphic detail sex and violence, that is not who I am. And before we get into the discussion of how I can write what I write and not subscribe to the behaviors, I don’t know the answer to that question.

This I know

I know this about me. I am a healthy, mature guy who recognizes he has a masculine and a feminine side. Don’t get me wrong. I embrace my masculinity. However, I acknowledge that everyone, male and female alike, has the traits of the other sex built within their DNA. Since I know I have feminine qualities; I won’t ignore or deny them.

That brings me to my website theme. Bored with my older site designs, I needed to catch up on my previous site’s color and material scheme. All the black, red, and orange, while strong masculine colors representing the material my books contain, never made me happy. I was okay with them, just not thrilled.

I rebuilt the site using new attributes that closely reflect my identity.

Designing the site

With a cup of coffee in hand, I began. What prompted me to put in the work was a design by a fellow writer. Her site inspired me and taught me ways of presenting my materials to engage new and existing readers. As an IT engineer, I knew it was important to write to the audience. I do that with my novels. Doing it with my website turned out poorly. Despite all my efforts to make my site easy to read and follow, over the years, I discovered so many people needing help to navigate the site.

“Uh?” I would think to myself. “It seems okay to me?”

I was wrong, and my adult niece, Debbie, drilled into my head how bad it was. That started me on a journey to check out my competitor writers and review their sights. I focused my search on bestseller authors not associated with a publishing house. I found quite a few, and since I want to grow my audience, I studied and learned a lot about them. I found one that I particularly liked and used that site as a high-level model for mine. I love the results.

Mermaids

As you can tell from my new site, I focused on my books and an interest I enjoyed all of my life, that of mermaids. True to almost everyone, they are mystical creatures created out of ignorance or fantasy. To me, they could be real. Our oceans are still a mystery to us and virtually unexplored.

It was easy to focus on my published novels. I wanted a platform to make it easy for people to read and learn more about my writing. More importantly, I want people to buy and read my stories.

However, I wanted to incorporate another interest, mermaids. The site’s theme caters to both and allows me to share my interest with others. Yet, if you’re not into the whole mermaid thing, that’s alright. It’s my books that I hope will keep you interested. To learn more about my interest in mermaids, check out this page on my site.

Goals

One day, I would like to get listed in USA Today, The New York Times, and other bestseller lists. I would also welcome a movie studio to license one or more of my stories. Wouldn’t that be cool? Or, how about making the book tour rounds and finding me as a guest on one of the late-night talk shows, such as Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Fallon, or even Bill Maher’s show? Exhausting, yes, I know. But by then, I could finish the tour and return to my dream home on the beach, drinking margaritas, writing my stories, and making love in the ocean surf.

I hope that this fresh vision of my site does that and more. Thanks for reading. I appreciate your time catching up on what’s happening with me. And yes, I continue working on my latest books throughout all this. Stay tuned. I’ll write up something about that in my next blog.

Stay well and stay happy, and enjoy Spring 2023.

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