It's Almost In Site

[Writers Plot]

Posted by Lorraine (L.L.) Bartlett

I have a beautiful website. Go ahead, go visit it here. I've been working with Blue Hound Visions for four or five years. We've gone through a couple of iterations and you can see them by visiting both sides of the site.

The original site is here. It was set up when I was a finalist in the St. Martin's/Malice Domestic contest and thought that cozy mysteries would be the springboard for my writing career. Well, it didn't exactly happen that way. When I sold my first novel, a psychological suspense, MURDER ON THE MIND, I realized that my cozy little site wasn't appropriate for a series with an edgy tone. Yet, I was pretty sure that cozy mysteries were still in my future. Hence, the two halves to the site.

There are LOTS and LOTS of pages. You could probably stay on the site just digging deeper for several hours. Unfortunately, Extreme Tracker tells me most people visit my front page and then my Buffalo page. (Murder On The Mind is set in Buffalo.) There are links on that one page that take you deeper in the site, including to my "extras" page, where I have drawings, character sketches, a map of Jeff's Buffalo, and the (spoiler alert!) "deleted" epilogue (that didn't make it to the published version of the book).

I figured I was set. Jeff was taken care of, and I was ready for my future cozies.

Then I got a contract to write a series of cozy mysteries, but...under another name. My cozies will be published under the name Lorna Barrett. Method to my madness, eh? Using the same initials. And yet...I still hope to sell a cozy mystery series under my Lorraine Bartlett "brand." (Kinda makes me feel like I'm competing with Kraft foods or something.)

What to do? Establish a separate website for Lorna Barrett. The problem was...I no longer have a day job. I'd been paying for my original website using my "mad money." (From my hobby as a vendor at an antique co-op.) Only my mad money has considerably dried up thanks to our sliding economy. With nothing else to take up the slack, all my promotional activities have to be paid for from my minuscule writing income.

YIKES! I'm a mid-list author. We're not exactly drowning in dollars. So I decided to create Lorna's website myself. (Insert hysterical laugh here.)

I bought some software, and Sheila (yes, our very own Writers Plot) Connolly walked me through setting up a site. And you know what? It looked bloody awful. (Certainly not Sheila's fault.) Instead of going back to the drawing board, I went back to Blue Hound Visions, explaining my financial situation. BHV did a fantastic job putting together a template for me, based on the first book's cover. But I was under one deadline or another and I didn't have time to devote to the site.

Until this weekend....

There's a very good reason to PAY someone to do this kind of work for you, especially if you really don't have a feel for it. The frustration factor is enormous simply because A.) the software comes with no manual B.) the software is no longer supported by the manufacturer (who still sells a LOT of it), and C) don't be tempted to yank hanks of hair out of your head, because you'll be bald in an hour or two.

Thankfully, BHV walked me through the process, which ain't easy over e-mail. We found a couple coding glitches (now solved) and we successfully tested the pages late yesterday afternoon.

MAJOR RELIEF. (Yes, that was worth yelling about.)

Of course, the current content sucks, and I haven't yet uploaded the pages to the Internet. (They're in a folder on my old website.) I figured I'd better get moving and start working on that aspect of the site before I forget how to do it. (Another reason not to work on the WIP today!) But I feel a lot more confident about the site, and I'm really proud of the job Blue Hound Visions did for me and for Lorna, and the patience it took to walk me through the process.

Oh, and BTW, Blue Hound Visions IS my friend Doranna Durgin. (Yes, from right here on Writers Plot.)