Small updates

Just a few more small updates. The buttons have been scaled down a little bit on the left and I’ve added a little bit of scrolling text at the top so anyone checking in can see where the newest information is. I’ve changed a few of the gradient graphics on the feedback page so the colors better match the scheme for the rest of the site. I was definitely surprised by how well it worked out. As you can probably see on the left, the short story section is coming fairly soon. I’ve already got material to put there, it’s just a matter of actually getting it done. Another feature planned for the near future is something I’m tentatively calling “Snippets.” Basically, it’s an effort to get myself writing on a regular basis, even if it’s not on something specific. They could be a self contained short story, a snippet of a larger story (hence the name) or just a simple writing exercise. Quality is not necessarily guaranteed, but I plan to post as many of them to the site as possible. There will, of course, be a section in the feedback forums as feedback is something I will always welcome. Not sure how I’ll work the navigation for that, but one thing at a time.

Edit: The snippets idea is still not a bad one. The beauty of this blog setup is that it perfectly allows for something like that to happen much easier.

A lot of tinkering

Hard to believe, but I’ve actually been able to update not just twice in one month, but twice in one week. Not bad, eh? The poetry section is fixed to better integrate with the new frames layout for the site. It’s also been given a new background, as the old poetry background didn’t work as well without it’s own navigation frame on the left. The frame boundaries aren’t as seamless as the background for the rest of the site, but since it looks like a paper crease I think it actually gives that part of the site a little more character. I’m happy with it.

The colors on the feedback forums have been adjusted to better match the color scheme for the rest of the site. A lot of trial and error there, but I was surprised at how well it looks. There’s still more to be done, however. There’s still some blue and silver in a lot of key places, and while it does look good, I’m still hoping to adjust them to match the rest of the site, too. They’re actual graphics, though, so I’ll have to run them through Paint Shop Pro, which will take some time. It’s possible I could end up designing replacement graphics of my own, but if it’s not too hard to just swap colors, I’ll probably just go with that for now as there really isn’t enough traffic to warrant that much work just yet.

I’ve also made a few minor changes. The “To Every Thing a Purpose” title on the sub-pages for the novel has been moved to the novel navigation frame. It’s a little less redundant, as well as providing a nice template for future novel sub-sites. A grammatical correction was made to the About Me page, and the Poetry intro page was updated. Oh, yeah, and I added a roll-over effect to all the links in the Poetry section, too. If FrontPage didn’t make all this so easy, I wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much done. Hope you enjoy the site. Thanks for stopping by!

Edit: It’s actually too bad the forums are down, in a way. I was pretty happy with the results of this tinkering. Now no one else will see it. Oh, well. Stupid hackers.

Another site redesign

Hello, again. Welcome to the new frames version of my site complete with all new navigation buttons. Just about everything is in place except for fixing a few links in the poetry section. That’ll likely be given a semi-major overhaul to keep it consistent with the main site, as well as less complicated to manage. I’m real pleased with the mouse roll-over effects on the navigation buttons, as that was where the bulk of the difficulty in the site redesign was. Of course, that I designed and created them myself might be worth a slight mention. You won’t see the archived updates just yet, as I am still figuring out where to put the links to those, but that’ll be taken care of soon enough.

Writing work is still slow going. I have picked up the novel to start editing again, and I am still waiting on a little more feedback to incorporate into what is hopefully the final draft. Time still doesn’t allow me to do much else, as there is a lot going on in my personal life that really prevents dedicating the amount of time needed for original writing. There is still much to be done with my car, and one of my brothers, bless his heart, is going through a very challenging time in his life right now. We would both very much appreciate your prayers.

So until next time, I hope everyone has a happy new year and stops by to visit again soon. God Bless!

Well, it’s pretty obvious I haven’t been updating as often as I had planned, but between a dead car transmission, a kidney stone, a full schedule, and an auto accident about a week and a half ago, you can understand how some things tend to fall a little prioritywise. Yet I must say that through it all God has been faithful in all of these areas, including the book. People are still asking me how the book is progressing, and I am still finding people who are interested in reading it and giving me feedback. What’s even more incredible about that is that most of them are people who have approached me, both personally and via email, asking for a copy. One of them was responding to a post I had made on a Christian writers’ website back in May. May. For what precious little work has been done with the novel these past few months, our awesome God has not let the project fade away or die. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I am richly and undeservedly blessed.

Ideas are still gelling for the next novel, and the main storyline is coming into focus. The next thing I write will be a short story entitled “Christmas Eve Mary”. Granted, it won’t be finished before December 25th, but I’ve been wanting to do a good Christmas story for a long time, and this idea even incorporates another idea I had come up with awhile back as well It will have a unique structure to it in that it takes place solely in one location with each of its scenes taking place on Christmas Eve of different years. I’ve already started a rough story sketch, which should hopefully give me a good idea how long it will end up being. The idea is to have something that, with little difficulty, should be adaptable into some kind of play. Whether or not it ever ends up being performed by anyone, I have no idea. It would be nice, but the biggest priority is fashioning a compelling story. Time will tell.

After the holidays and after things settle down a little bit, I hope to begin a redesign of the site and have everything in frames, much like the poetry section. That will enable the site to grow better as more stories are written so that it won’t be centered around one story. The old pages will stay up as a non-frames version of the site, should there be anyone who might prefer to view them that way. Granted, if you’re reading this, it’s probably as an archived update, as traffic is minimal at best right now. (That’s one reason I’m not concerned with frequent updates lately.) Traffic will definitely increase when I finally get published, and it’s better to have the site in place when that happens as opposed to having to come up with something afterwards and having no time to do it. The hosting rate is more than reasonable, and it provides a place for those interested in reading the book to download it. You can imagine how much paper and toner I’ve gone through giving out as many copies as I have already. I do have a couple really short stories I hope to post eventually, but I honestly don’t expect any more site updates until after the holidays. There’s just too many things going on right now.

Finally, Happy Birthday to my adorable niece, Callie, who is two years old tomorrow. The picture below is her “frownie face”. Quite the cutie, don’tcha think? Until next update, Merry Christmas and God Bless!

Edit: The Mary story also became part of Fallen Sparrows.

Romancing the (kidney) stone

Again, it’s been awhile since the last update, but a lot has been going on elsewhere and little has changed with the novel. Car trouble and a kidney stone top that list, so needless to say I’ve been a little distracted Rest assured, this project is far from dead. God has blessed and taken care of the finances that the car trouble caused, and outpatient surgery on the 30th should (hopefully) take care of the kidney stone.

With that said, I do want to point out that the Downloads page now has the latest version (3.0) and is nearly complete. There are a couple scenes in the last two chapters that need rewriting, and then I should be finished and ready to start the submission process. Please stop back soon as I will definitely be updating the site as the project moves forward.

Old novel, New (old) revision

A revision history for the novel has been posted on the Feedback forum. The contest is active, as well. It’s a topic under the To Every Thing a Purpose category. The fourth draft (revision 3) is complete, and the Status page has been updated to reflect this. I’m holding off on posting this as a download, as it may not be too long before the next (and hopefully final) revision is complete. For those of you wondering how the next story is progressing, the ideas are definitely starting to coalesce. It’s a low priority right now, as I really need to finish TETaP and start sending it out to publishers. I must say it seems the devil is doing all he can to distract me from doing this, which tells me he has to be scared of something or else he wouldn’t bother. Please continue to keep this book in your prayers, as well as its author. Thanks, and God bless.

Edit: As said in the previous post, there is no contest now, nor a Feedback forum.

Catching up

Wow. Has it really been over a month and a half since the last site update? If anyone’s been checking in since the last update, I apologize for not keeping up with it. It has been a busy few weeks, so let me catch you up and everything that’s happened since July 11th.

First off, you’ve probably noticed I have a static intro at the top of the page as a welcome for anyone visiting the site for the first time. I’ve posted the latest revision of the novel on the Downloads page. It’s a little over a page longer than the previous revision, and definitely flows a lot better than the original draft. The Status page has been updated to reflect the current manuscript status, as well as to remove the conference info, as they are no longer a factor at this time. Finally, I removed the under construction graphics at the bottom of the home page here since they are no longer needed.

I’ll be doing some maintenance on the Feedback page soon and updating some of the questions. I’ll be starting a contest to hopefully drum up some more input there. The prizes will, of course, be free copies of the published book. I’ll also create a topic to highlight changes between current and future revisions so anyone who wants to read them can, while anyone reading the story for the first time can remain surprised by the various plot twists.

That’s about it for now. I promise to keep the updates a tad more frequent than they have been. Honest.

Edit: The contest, like the forums, never took off. They no longer exist.

Not just one novel anymore

Finished the About Me page, which effectively completes the site. All that remains is to assign some search keywords to each of the pages so that people using Yahoo, Google, HotBot and other search engines can find my site. Since the Poetry section turned out so well, it’s likely I’ll eventually redesign the rest of the site in frames, though that will be after I’ve finalized the draft of the novel and started sending it out to publishers. I’ve also dug out a couple of my earlier short stories that are good enough to post on the site, so you’ll probably see those fairly soon.

Other than that, the only other news is that I’m over 90% certain what my next novel is going to be. The tentative title is Single Impact, since it will involve a singles Sunday School class like the one featured in To Every Thing a Purpose. Several characters may reappear in this new story, though that hasn’t been decided yet. While this is not intended to be a direct sequel to TETaP, this new story has the potential to be the beginning of a series. The only character name I’ve settled on is Holly Nichols, and her story has been lifted out of a previous story I wrote called The Avalon Brigade and will be retooled slightly for the Christian atmosphere of the new book. Not much more has been decided yet, and like any site redesigns, my current novel will remain my top priority. As always, keep this page bookmarked for any updates. I’m really excited about this one!

Edit: Wow. I hadn’t realized how long I’d been working on Fallen Sparrows. (What Single Impact had become.) I really should finish that.

Minor updates

Started work on the About Me page and activated the links on all pages to point to it. Some grammatical changes have been made to the novel, and the Status page has been updated to reflect this. The Downloads page, however, still contains the previous revision (1.1), although I did add a gif version of the novel’s cover for anyone who doesn’t have Publisher.

Car Trouble

This is my first update in almost a week, and what a week it’s been! My car broke down twice last Thursday, causing me to miss two days of work trying to get it towed and fixed, which thankfully it is. Unfortunately, I have had to use the money raised for my August conferences on the repair and towing expenses. While I know God may still yet provide a way to go, I will proceed as though the conferences are no longer on my agenda, at least for now. The upside of this is that I will no longer be rushed to revise my manuscript into its final form. God always knows best, so rather than complain, I will choose to praise Him. He is good.

Now onto the site updates. The Status page has been updated to reflect the above news. The Poetry section is now complete, and I finally figured out how to display the archived updates in popup windows like I wanted them to. Only the About Me page remains, and then I’ll be ready for the site to go live. I could still use some more Feedback in the forums, so please stop over there and put your two cents in. God bless!