New Look

Summer's almost here and I didn't want to edit, so I played around with the look of the blog. If you'd like to see it and are reading this in a reader, you'll have to click through. Let me know what you think!

As the web changes and what we expect it to do for us expands, static webpages seem to be dying out. When I first started as a published author (in 2003), having a webpage was a necessity and their purpose  simply announced information. Like museums, viewers looked, but they did not touch.

Now, however, it isn't enough to have a simple web page, an author must have a web presence.

Presence. As in attending. As in "present and accounted for" as well as "actively participating." As in not absent.

A webpage that only talks at people doesn't fit that description. People who venture out onto the web now expect to be more social. Authors are expected to provide interactive experiences or, at the very least, allow a more immediate way for others to speak their minds. Social media has exploded and the author who isn't "here" is missing a great opportunity to communicate (We'll set aside the question of whether or not that communication is needed or not. That's a blog post for a different time).

My website is an old-fashioned, static webpage that hasn't been updated in months. Mostly because my webmistress is busy and my one attempt to find someone new to take it over fell apart. And I don't know HTML and am not going to learn it. One makes priorities in life, doing what one can and paying others for what one cannot. I'd pay someone for their knowledge, if I could find someone willing to take on the job.

But that begs the question: what good is a website that isn't updated in a timely fashion and that readers can't really communicate with anyway? A very good question and one that's gotten me pretty much convinced to abandon the old site and re-direct the URL to this blog instead. Blogger's tools have gotten more sophisticated than when I first started with them all those years ago. All the information I have there, I can have here. Cheaper. And faster.

All this is in warning: before the end of summer, I plan to implement a re-direct of that site so the same address now points here. Visit "The Official Diana Hunter Site" and let me know what pieces are there that you want to see me re-create here. Do you like the author's links? What about the puzzles to download? Would you miss the reviews of each book?

Comment or send me an email, my quiet readers. Help me make this site a more effective, more interactive place!

Play safe,
Diana