Hello!

So, I’ve done a lot of website updates recently, in terms of infrastructure. Now, infrastructure is probably boring to most people, unless they’re the one who did the changes to the infrastructure, but just know that a lot of it is done and available. A part of that is the neat little “Book Categories” thing on the left side somewhere over there (<—-).

Unfortunately I don't have much in those categories yet, but those are what I wanted to set up initially in order to just um… set stuff up? Most of my books/website posts will fit in those categories, and if not, I can add more.

Now, what's different about these categories, is that they aren't going to lead you to books, per se. It's not like Amazon or anywhere else where you click them to get a listing of books, you know? That'd be neat, and I do plan on having some things like that, but if you want to browse for books, you can do it on Amazon or B&N or wherever pretty easily. (Just for completionist's sake, I'll add iTunes, Kobo, Smashwords, ARe, Sony's Bookstore, a bunch of libraries, Diesel… Audible? I think there might be more, but I don't know all of the tiny ones).

Anyways! The categories over there will lead you to posts about books in those categories. Or just posts about stuff that could fit into those categories. It should be fun to explore. Want to read some things about paranormal romance? Just head on over to that tab I have and, voila! You've got it.

I like this set up because I can add things that I think should be added, too. With that last one, you'll notice that I have "Zombies" listed under paranormal romance. Now, generally speaking, you might say that's an odd choice. And, yes, I agree with you. It is. The thing is, though, I wrote one because I wanted to. At the time, Warm Bodies had just come out, and people thought it was so interesting and neat. I thought it was interesting and neat, too, so I decided to see if I could take a different twist with zombies and try to make them more romantic. It's weird, sure. I won't deny that. I think I did alright with it, though. I've gotten some good feedback about it, at least.

(Quick field trip side note)
For random reference, because people ask this a lot, my version of zombies aren't dead. There are lots of versions of zombies, and some are dead people who came back to life, while others just suddenly became zombies because of some kind of disease or virus or plague or what have you. Some are a mix, like The Walking Dead, which is sort of virus that brings people back after they die. Mine is just a virus, so the "zombies" aren't dead, but they're somewhat bewildered/cold/all of that. There's a pretty good reason for it, and it's hinted at in the Soulless series, but I didn't want to come right out and say what it is exactly. I don't know if I ever will or not, either. I do plan to write a sequel book/series eventually, but it's on the back burner for a little while until I finish up some other things. I just don't want to get the story bogged down by some paranormal science fiction information and all of that, you know? I guess I could do a side story style quickie e-book for those who might want to know all of the details, though.
(Field trip is done!)

Being able to make my own sub-categories within pre-arranged, standard categories gives me a lot of leeway in those regards. As another example, Amazon didn't used to have sub-categories to paranormal (or not many), so vampires, werewolves, witches, demons, all of those… were just stuck under Paranormal Romance. They still don't have much in the way of historical romance, so like… Victorian era is mixed in with Regency, with Medieval, and with Colonial/Civil War/the 80s/everything.

How do I plan on filling these up? Glad you asked! (If you didn't ask, let's pretend you did)

I read recently about this thing that some people do in order to warm up for writing. It makes sense to me, too. I type very fast, because I've been doing it for um… forever. A very long time. I first took typing classes in my Freshman year of high school (1997 or 1998, I think). I've been typing ever since, and have owned a computer for most of that time, so I've gotten kind of good at it, I guess. I can usually manage about 80+ words a minute (sometimes closer to 100 if I'm on a role and warmed up). Creative writing is a bit different because you're not just directly transcribing, and you can only type as fast as your thoughts are, but usually I can still manage pretty good. That's a bit more mentally tiring, but it's not too bad.

So the thing I read is to basically write ~750 words as a warm up, and then get on to the rest of your writing. I used to kind of do that, but I'd use the big writing as a warm up and the main thing. I don't know if doing a separate warm up will be better or not, but 750 words doesn't take that long to write (according to WordPress website editing thing, this post is currently 907 words long, but I think they're a bit off sometimes).

Basically, I'll do some warm ups (this is my first), and talk about things going on. I might do these every day, or every so often, but I do want to update my website more, so I'd like to get in the habit of doing these things anyways. I'll categorize them with those neat categories on the side, which are currently a bit barren, so if you ever want to come by and find something neat that I have hidden away, or if you want to spend awhile browsing through things, you can. I like interactive websites like that, and that's kind of what I want to make mine into. I like updating people with information, but that doesn't really give anyone a reason to play around with the website too much, you know?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on it! I tend to ramble a bit sometimes when I get excited about things, but I think that kind of rambling is interesting (I like when people ramble like that, at least), because it's usually something they're passionate about, you know?