My New Blog

Mar 302010
 

Sometimes you just have to do it yourself. I didn’t start out to be a webmaster, but that’s how it turned out. In early 2008, when I wanted to erect a website on the domain I’d registered a few years earlier, I couldn’t get in touch with the computer guru who designed and managed my first website in 1993. So I downloaded some basic web design software, decided what I wanted the website to look like  and figured out how to make that happen. A couple of weeks later — presto! — I was back on the web with the original BQB website. Flash forward almost two years and it’s déjà vu all over again.  About three weeks ago I started work on converting my website to a WordPress blog and — presto! — here it is. Here it mostly is. A bunch of the links on TRAVEL aren’t yet live. And I may be adding more links to Mail Tribune stories on NEWS.  Both NOVELS and ABOUT are in for more tweaking. And I have some pages from the original website — notably those under Notes on Fiction and Notes on Mystery — which haven’t found a landing spot on the new website. But the most important feature of the new website — an easily-updated blog — is actually running, and this is my first official post. My theme for the blog remains the same — Nothing In Particular. Whatever I wanna say. Whenever I wanna say it. — with the clear intention of having something to say a little bit more often. How will that turn out? We shall see.

An old novel, a new novel and 50 new students

Mar 192010
 

Archive of My First Blog – 16

An old novel, a new novel and 50 new students
December 31, 2009

Only seven blog posts for the entire year of 2009 – not very impressive. I’m hoping to do better in 2010, especially when – if? – I redo the website with blog software. But before I undertake that project, I have three others that take priority. First up, the 50 new students I’ll be meeting on Jan. 5 in the two sections of English Composition II that I’ll be teaching winter term at Rogue Community College. The class focuses on argument and research, and is my favorite. Next, I’ll be finishing up work on my first novel, Alliances, which comes out in a new edition early in 2010 from Straight Up Press. Finally, I’ll be writing, rewriting and polishing the first pages of my new novel, Perfecting Eden, which I reluctantly put on hold last summer so I could concentrate on my re-entry into academia. I put the writing of the novel on hold but not the daydreaming, and I think the delay has actually benefited the book. Returning to my first novel, over which I daydreamed literally for years, has reminded me how much some stories gain from a long, slow simmering. Perhaps that’s especially true of novels with multiple viewpoint characters such as Alliances and Perfecting Eden. Just occurred to me that both also happen to be historical novels. Hmmm – coincidence? Perhaps I’ll discover the answer in the new year. In the meantime, I’ll make use of all the gloomy and drizzly days of a southern Oregon winter to do my best on both novels, old and new.

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