I was totally thrilled this week when my website – this very website – won the Viewers’ Choice vote in the West Houston RWA Romancing the URL contest.
Because I also run the RNA website, and because of my somewhat uber-geek background, a lot of people ask me what makes a good website. Well, now that I officially have one of those, here are some thoughts.
I have a website to connect with readers. That’s it in a nutshell.
This blog is an important part of that connection. It’s where I can be me. Talk about the things I do, the places I go, knitting … and books. All the things that interest me. It’s where readers can leave comments, ask questions and talk to me. I love talking to people generally and my readers in particular.
The book pages are more than just a list of my published works. Each book has some ‘bonus’ pages in which I talk a little bit about how I came to write the book, or the settings for the books or some of the ideas behind them. Hopefully those pages will add to the experience of reading a book.
There are free reads too, where people can get a feel for the type of things I write about and the way I write. I don’t want to ask people to spend their hard-earned money and their valuable time on my books without giving them a chance to see if my work is their cup of tea.
You’ll notice that the award this website won was a viewers’ choice – and that’s exactly what I want. I want visitors to enjoy the site.
The background is a photograph I took of sun-baked earth on the edge of the desert. I really think it really gives a feel of the type of outback stories I write. The banner is made from my most recent book cover. I get such lovely covers from my publisher Choc Lit that the banner is always awesome. A new book means a new banner (and here’s a hint, there will be another new banner later this year).
I like playing at photography so I use a lot of photos that I take on the site. The images of Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Craig and Sean Bean aren’t my own. I would love a chance to take photos of them, but I think that’s called stalking…
I don’t have bells and whistles and whizz-bangs and things flashing on and off the screens. I am not trying to impress the other uber-geeks out there. I am trying to connect with people. I want my site to be easy to navigate. I want the pages to be easy to read. OK, it’s confession time … I am as blind as a bat without my glasses. I find some websites really hard to read, because they use a fancy font, or the colours on the site are too overwhelming. I didn’t want my site to be like that.
Most important of all – I want you to feel at home here.
So, thanks for stopping by. I put a new post up here every week, talking about all sorts of random stuff. I hope I’ll see you again soon.
Thank you everyone who voted for me and a extra thank you to webmaster John who did such a great job of turning my ideas into reality.