Nathan Bransford - The Forums

John - oh, dear. Pen name. Definitely.

I have my blog, and have thought about Twitter. I'm not sure what the point of Twitter without a cell phone would be, though, since I don't walk around with my laptop strapped to my side and I don't really relish the thought of opening it in the evening/morning/5 minutes I can grab in between doing stuff with the kids and having to wade through a lot of slush to get to the stuff I'm interested in.

Any thoughts on that?

As for benefiting from my blog, I can't tell. I do have a secret blog-stalker among my followers, which is interesting. It could be good, or it could be creepy. I'm tending towards good, because I don't want to think about the creepy.

John Dillon wrote: And once you're there, don't forget to visit the section of the site labeled, "how do mermaids and sea-maidens reproduce?"

John, I wanted to, but I was afraid that it would be NSFW (the LOL is implied). Wow, Mr. Robert SeaMonkee Klein, just wow.

Ishta- not to be an alarmist, but be cautious around seemingly innocuous "stalkers". I used to blog at the NHL's website, gained a decent readership, which translated to "stalkers". Unfortunately, I had to move my hockey blog when one disturbed reader from Toronto vowed to come find me in LA.

John Dillon wrote: You have no idea. Check out http://www.robertkline.com And once you're there, don't forget to visit the section of the site labeled, "how do mermaids and sea-maidens reproduce?"

.....I want to burn that from my mind. Forever.

CV

I have a Blogger blog and a traditional website with my name as the domain (I built it myself). I'm not agented. I made it around the time I started submitting short stories.

The biggest gain is it increases the chance of retaining people who find me. By that, I mean that if they read a story they like, they'll visit the site to read more, subscribe to my blog, etc. If they see me on Twitter and want to know more, they'll follow the link.

Now that I've had a few shorts published, I'm starting to see people finding the site by Googling my name. Starting early meant I had everything sorted by the time people looked for the site.

Yup. I am very pleased with it too, http://josephlselby.com

I snagged a site with my name a while back and I'm so glad I did! I use Wordpress, but it's incorporated into my website. I think it's important to go ahead catch the domain name, even if you aren't ready to build the site. Personally, I have fun building sites and blogs, so it can't hurt me when I do decide I'm query ready. ;)

I don't think... :D

I have one - well, two actually.

The first is my name: http://www.kerrygans.com I'm in the middle of a complete revamp, so in a week or so it will look completely different. I have a link from it to my blog http://thegoosesquill.wordpress.com. It also links to my second website...

...which is my middle grade pen name http://www.pgkhanson.com I co-authored this book with 2 other authors, so we decided to use a pen name rather than try to squeeze 3 names on a book cover.

I have gotten the occassional email or blog hit from them, but so far I am using it more to have some of my work out there in case an agent wants to look at it after I query. Since it is so important these days to have a digital presence, I want my site to be there when people come looking. Meanwhile, I am working on getting people to my blog, hoping to build some sort of a following for the future.

Kerry Gans
http://www.kerrygans.com
http://www.pgkhanson.com
http://thegoosesquill.com

Wow, I am really motivated and impressed by all of your sites. Thank you for sharing. Regan- I love the sort of Interview format you use to give the visitor background- so much more fun than an "about me" section, and Joe- a very cool site- you should be pleased with it.

I still cannot get www.robertklein.com burned from my brain though, Curse you John Dillon, and Charlee if you have any tips? Thank gawd he stuck only to mer-people, and did not mess with unicorns.

My website, http://www.KathyBennett.com, has been up and running for almost 2 years. It was built for me and I have received a lot of compliments, and one award for it. I have a blog that write once a week (after many tries at finding what my schedule would allow). I write suspense.

I looked at a lot of websites by fellow writers to see what I like and didn't like and then came up with my plan. My website designer was fantastic, but unfortunately, is no longer in business.

Hey there.

I thought I would weigh in as I just got my new website up myself. As I am getting further along in writing my book-length novel and working on sending a bunch of shorts out various places (after a long literary writing hiatus--while I was working on more academic writing and articles) I decided that I wanted a virtual presence for this current state and work (I have had other sites for other things and still have one active in a completely different professional arena). I just finished the design and content for the basic site at: http://www.aliciabenedict.com

I was glad that the domain name was not taken as I have never tried to have a name-based site name before but for this purpose of creating a "brand" of a sort as well as (as many others have mentioned) a central location where I can be accessible related to my writing and more information on myself if anyone were interested :)...it seemed necessary to have the site be my name.

It is also linked to a twitter account. I created the site design myself and have it hosted through DreamHost for now (I have used other services BlueHost and GoDaddy but I am giving this one a shot because it had a one-click upload for a wordpress.org site format). My site is a wordpress.org site with a self-created/custom design template and I own the domain. I like having as much control as possible to the overall site and have a bit of html and techie knowledge that helps to fancy it up whenever I might want to fancy it up.

An interesting question and it is interesting to see other people doing what I am...getting out there and talking about the work even if not formally published (at least not in a book-length work) yet. Good to meet other fellow neophytes!

I also have my blog as my homepage for the site so that my running tids and bits about my life and writing process is at the forefront of the site (as someone else said that is for now but might shift with potential publication credits down the road as those would probably take front page--metaphorically and literally).

Alicia
http://www.aliciabenedict.com

I have a fledgeling blog http://writerbelle.blogspot.com/, but I'm not entirely sure what to do with it yet.

A question I have for those who are yet unpublished but have their own website is, how do you build your presence? Do people visit your blog or are you just blogging for yourself? And where do you get inspiration for blogging topics if you are blogging about writing?

It would be interesting to see people's responses to these questions.

Of the links I clicked on in this thread, people's websites look great!

My website (under various domain names) is coming up to its tenth anniversary in September - you can see the current version at: http://www.rikweb.co.uk - all of it hand-coded.

I tend to see my website as the primary place for my writing output, with hardcopy books taking a back seat - particularly for the poetry side of things: hardcopy chapbooks are available for those who insist on them, but all the poetry is available (for free) on the website.

As to the novel - well I wrote that mainly because I wanted to investigate a part of my constructed world from a human, subjective perspective rather than the drier, encyclopaedic tone I supply on the website. As such, the novel supports the online conworld rather than the website existing to promote the book. A very unorthodox approach, but I'm a bit wierd like that.

Anyways, somebody appreciates my website work. The British Library's UK Web Archive has just started capturing snapshots of my conworld work (here) - they must like the pretty maps and whacky scripts; they're threatening to archive the poetry side of things in the next couple of months (the masochists!).

JuiceinLA wrote:Ishta- not to be an alarmist, but be cautious around seemingly innocuous "stalkers". I used to blog at the NHL's website, gained a decent readership, which translated to "stalkers". Unfortunately, I had to move my hockey blog when one disturbed reader from Toronto vowed to come find me in LA.

Thanks for the heads-up, Juice. You've had a scary experience! It sounds like you did the right thing, though. It reminds me of the time some guy followed me when I was walking to the grocery store. (He pulled over and told me what he was doing. CREEPY!) I saw him park around the corner in a place where he could see the door, so I stayed in the store for an extra long time and then walked home via a different route, down a very, very busy street, looking behind me the whole time. He didn't follow me home, thank goodness! Creeped me right out.

As far as the secret blog follower goes, I haven't had any comments by this person, and I don't even know who it is. You know how you can follow a blog publicly, or privately? This person must have chosen the "private" option, so their name never appears in my list of followers; if, for example, I am listed as having 40 followers, there will only be 39 names listed, and one "private" follower. My previous experience (and mild paranoia) are the reason I don't really talk in exact detail about my family or where I live.

Since I haven't had any grief, and there's nothing I can do about it anyway, I'm just going to assume it's some well-meaning person who for some reason didn't want people to know he or she was following my blog. Sometimes I let myself fantasize about it, like maybe it's someone who's trying to make a name for themselves and doesn't want people thinking they'd follow a blog with a small readership like mine, or maybe it's a celebrity, or maybe an editor or agent who is just WAITING for my query to roll into the inbox! LOL! Probably not. But a girl can dream.

So, sort of related, but not. I purchased the domain name through go daddy, but do I have to buy a separate package of some sort to actually have a website at that address? Because when I type in the domain, it brings up a go daddy type of page that says it's my home page. And it did it when I tried to have my blogger blog hosted at the unique domain. I can't publish a site to the domain through iWeb either.

I'd like to have all of everything at one place, but for now it's all everywhere with links to everything else.

@stephmcgee You'll need to pay for a hosting account and then link your domain to the hosting. A domain name is just a road sign. You have to buy a plot of land on a rack server somewhere in a dingy basement, and the domain name tells people how to get to your little portion of internet real-estate.

This help article explains how to point your domain to your blogger account, but I can't vouch for how easy the process is or is not: http://www.google.com/support/blogger/b ... swer=55373