Whaddya think of the new site? Wild, huh? Consider this my mid-life crisis…a few years late. I figured this would be the last time I restructure/rebuild my site, so I wanted to go bold.
Did it work?
The next question, of course is…why? Let me tell you what caused the change.
- I’ve had issues with Patreon, namely who owns what. How much of my IP is mine when I post there? I’m also leery about posting anything too outrageous there in case The Powers That Be decide to drop me like a rock for the more risqué scenes.
- Plus writing hasn’t been a whole lot of fun for some time. I miss the days where I could throw out a short story or a PWP scene with abandon, write what I want to read and so on. Added bonus: readers would actually comment or email me! Which brings up the next issue...
- I have a handful of hardcore supporters on Patreon who subscribe both to read my current work in progress and support my bardic ways. Unfortunately, there’s no community there, no way for folks to discuss stories or daily life with each other. (Admittedly, there isn’t much of one here yet either, but I plan to open up my Discord to all takers if anyone is interested.)
- Next up is AI and plagiarism. Holy smokes, both are a pernicious pain in the derrière! Thanks to an eagle-eyed author, I found Alaskan Bride reconstructed (most likely by AI) and posted on AO3. Worse yet, most of my books are pirated, which means I’m generating next to no income for published material.
- Lastly, I attended the World Science Fiction Fantasy Convention in Seattle earlier this year. One of the panels was on newsletters. I never understood the reasoning for newsletters until that panel, despite having one earlier in my career.
So… I required a website with membership capability, to process monthly newsletters and to protect my writing from being taken, whole cloth, and peddled as someone else’s work (or given away for free.)
After months of research, I settled on the Ghost.org app. It has all the bells and whistles above as well as so many others.
I’ve set up a three tiers of membership, the first one free, for access to most of the site. All of my blog entries and all short stories to date are on this tier. The free membership will also include a monthly newsletter update.
Warning! Similar to Patreon, there are two paid tier levels.
The $3/month tier has the same benefits as the free membership. This offers you an option to support the website and writing if you have the desire.
The $5/month tier allows you to receive chapters of my current work in progress. Additionally, I will sign and send to you your choice of one of my books every year. If a work in progress has been completed and not published, I’m more than happy to print up and sign a bound copy of the manuscript instead.
Blog entries will be more frequent. There are so many thoughts and bits of information that I want to catalog… I’ve decided my blog will be my commonplace notebook. Rather than scribble on paper, I’ll scribble on here! Lucky you!
So…are you interested? Want to see the inner workings of my convoluted and confused mind? Want to get monthly updates regarding writing, daily life, works in progress? Want to take a random journey with me down a rabbit hole?
Come on! Keep up! Let’s play!
