Be a Man

There’s a new poem, “Be a Man” in the poetry section. I have a short story in progress that has a lot of promise and hopefully will have it finished and up soon. You may also notice the counter has changed again. This one is hosted by a Christian site and updates when anyone else but me visits the site. Please visit often as a lot of hits will rank me higher on some of the sites I’m listed at, and that in turn will bring more new traffic here. I know the site is still relatively new, but it can be discouraging to work so hard on a site and not receive any feedback, much less any traffic at all. Oh, well. Have to start somewhere, right?

Rate me

The biggest change is the new 5-star rating system in place for the short stories and snippets. The first snippet still has yet to be written as I’ve been concentrating on the site itself. You can see each story’s rating at a glance from the Short Stories index page, and add your own rating to the average from each story’s individual page (“Whispers” can be rated on page 10).
I’ve changed the counter to a hosted script so now it doesn’t update every time someone refreshes the page. With it being smaller, too, it’s now less intrusive.

For the world to see

The site is live now! It is coming up on a few search engines already, with many more to come. A couple reader reviews have been added to the “To Every Thing a Purpose” section, so you no longer have to take just my word for it that it’s a good story. The short story section is up and running with the exception of the snippets, and the idea is already brewing for my first one. I’m trying to figure out how to add a poll to each on so readers can rate them. (Besides, who doesn’t like a good poll?) All in all, some pretty good progress these past few days.

Some initial downloads

Added some downloads to to the Downloads page. It has the complete text of the novel, and the short story ‘Whispers’, as well as companion files to the novel for anyone curious in behind-the-story type stuff. I tried to adjust the Past Updates archive so it opens up in a window without tool, address, and status bars, but the javascript didn’t behave properly, so I’m leaving it out for the time being. I might put it back in when I upgrade to FrontPage 2002 if it supports it, but it won’t be a priority.

The Status page has been updated with some new information regarding the upcoming conferences, as well as some items I’ve listed on eBay to help finance them. One item already has a bidder!

I still need some posts on the feedback forum. Please stop over there and help me out. Thank you.

Edit: The forum no longer exists.