There are, as mentioned in the first blog, two books from other authors that will be published before my next book, and I won't try to predict which one it will be, but as soon as I know, I will post it here.
In the meantime, I will explain how this site evolved. When I first began tinkering with ideas for a website, I visited a great many author's home pages, and I found at that time lots of "bells and whistles" on the websites of the most famous authors. I think many of those websites were probably designed by professionals working perhaps for large publishing houses (just a guess). In the course of that research, I came across a website created by young writers in New York. They had canvassed hundreds of children's authors websites, and to my surprise, not one of the "bells and whistles" sites made the cut into their top ten author site category. I reread the young writers' comments and visited the websites that had made their top ten list.
The New York teens were attracted to the sites that let them get to know the author. When I thought about that, I realized what was missing from the "bells and whistles" websites. There was little, if any, of the author's personality on them. I had felt quite let down, myself, when I visited J.K. Rowling's site. It had this amazing desktop and you could navigate all around by clicking on objects on the desk, etc. but I learned almost nothing about the author, herself. Now, I do not mean this as a criticism of J.K. Rowling or any other famous author, and over time, I think the "experts" who designed the sites learned a lesson, because when I recently returned to those sites, most of the embellishments I had seen earlier had disappeared. There weren't things flying across the screen and loud noises blaring, etc.
Another factor is that I think a lot of writers are introverts, which translates to the idea that they are very private people. (JD Salinger is probably an extreme example.) I know that is true for me. I think most of us will readily give up the task of designing our own websites to someone else and that the closest we get to self disclosure is what a reader can deduce from our novels. I have done the best I can to stretch myself and share what I can on this site with interested readers. For other writers who are developing their own websites, I recommend looking at the New York youth's website (they are in their twenties by now), but keep in mind that all the websites that made their top ten have changed, at least I think they have, in the several years since the top ten were selected—from what I observed when revisiting them. One must simply rely on the general statements about what they liked on author websites.
The reason I included my Unusual Visitor's page here is that I felt it captured something about me that would not otherwise be reflected on my website. When I was first designing it, I would have been horrified at the idea of including what I had done for the Flat Stanley project as a page on my site. It seemed too unprofessional. Okay, I'm going to stop now. This is getting way too long
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