Bill Hiatt's Blog, page 4

Blast from the Past: Wizardry 8

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As you might expect, aside from being an author, I’m also a voracious reader–but that’s not my only recreational activity. Sometimes, I’m a gamer. And since I write fantasy, it should come as no surprise that I like fantasy role-playing games.

I’m also a nostalgic gamer. While I admire the ingenuity and breathtaking graphics of recent games, I spend most of my gaming time playing my old favorites, including Wizardry 8.  What tends to differentiate such games from their modern cousins is that they are more likely to be turn-based and to feature multi-member parties. It goes without saying that the modern games have better graphics, but they often focus on a single character, eliminating the strategic thinking required to create an optimally balanced party and possibly reducing replayability. In addition, the realistic combat is great if you have good reflexes and hand-eye coordination. For people like me who don’t, a slower pace that doesn’t rely on reflex and puts more emphasis on thought is preferable.

That’s not to say that modern games don’t provide scope for thinking, but the battlefield pace certainly makes it more difficult. Both styles of gaming have their advantages and disadvantages. If you like the modern approach, the purpose of this post is not to convert you. I’m just sharing some of my experiences with my fellow nostalgic gamers. Those of you who aren’t nostalgic (or weren’t alive when Wizardry 8 came out in 2001) but who like variety might be interested in giving it a try.

By the way, for those of you who want to play or replay Wizardry 8 but don’t have the original product, it’s available on both Steam ( https://store.steampowered.com/app/245450/Wizardry_8/ ) and GOG ( https://www.gog.com/game/wizardry_8  ), both of which have a lot of other retro game content (between them probably all the games that are legally available at this time).

Wizardry 8 Introduction

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Wizardry 8 is the culmination of Sirtech’s Wizardry series, which began way back in 1981. It’s part of a trilogy that also includes Wizardry 6 and Wizardry 7, which took the franchise in a different direction. Unlike most fantasy rpgs from that era, the trilogy gradually incorporates elements of science fiction. Wizardry 7 is set on the planet Guardia. Wizardry 8 begins with a flight from Guardia to Dominus. the spaceship is shot down by the Dark Savant, a villain introduced earlier in the series, but the player’s group of characters survive the crash and must try to thwart the Dark Savant in an unfamiliar and often hostile environment. It’s possible to import a party that finished Wizardry 7 but just as good to start with a fresh one, since the character classes have changed somewhat.

A player begins with a six-person party, into which two NPCs  can be recruited. The eligible ones are called RPCs (recruitable player characters). The original six can be drawn from several different races. Humans, dwarves, elves, faeries, hobbits, lizardmen, and gnomes are familiar from many other games. To that mix, the later Wizardry games added dracons (human-dragon hybrids),  felpurrs (humanoid cats), rawulfs (humanoid wolves),  and Mooks (wookie-like natives of Guardia). The party meets a wide range of other groups with different agendas and capabilities. The Higardi (the humans of Dominus) have an uneasy relationship with two races unique to the planet, the Trynnie (humanoid mere cats or hamsters is the closest I can come to describing them), and the Rapax (humanoid bulls reminiscent of minotaurs). All of these groups are joined by other races from Guardia, including the Mooks, the Umpani (humanoid rhinoceroses), the T’Rang (humanoid spider-slug combinations), and the Rattkins (humanoid rats). In different ways, each group seeks the same thing–three mystical objects that enable someone to enter Ascension Peak and ascend to the Cosmic Lords, godlike figures who will bestow similar status on anyone who can reach them. The Dark Savant is determined to make himself the only one to ascend.

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As with other role-playing games, characters play different roles based on their profession. Fighters are pure warriors, and rogues are pure thieves. Gadgeteers are technicians who can build and use various gadgets that produce a variety of effects. Bards achieve a wide range of effects through the use of different musical instruments. There are four different kinds of magic users, each of which has some unique spells and abilities: mages, priests, psionicists, and alchemists. There are also hybrid classes, part fighter and part magic user: samurais (have some mage abilities); monks (have some psionic abilities); ninjas and rangers (have some alchemical abilities); lords and valkyries (have some priestly abilities). Another type of hybrid, the bishop, has the ability to learn spells in all four schools of magic.

With that many combinations, you can see why it can take a lot of experimenting to find the party that best fits your playing style and gives you the best chance of winning. Wizardry is unusual for its era in the number of choices it gives for race and class. Nor is that its only appeal. Players adventure through a wide range of different areas, find a variety of equipment and encounter a myriad of different opponents. The plot is interesting, but it doesn’t force linear play.

Introduction to Wizardry 8 Mods

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All of that said, Wizardry 8 as originally marketed is a good game rather than a great one. To be fair to the developers, from what I’ve read, the company ran out of funding, forcing them to complete their work in a hurry. As a result, there are some odd features, like monsters being able to do things player characters can’t, such as fire spells around corners or through solid objects. I doubt that was intended behavior. I’ve even seen monsters walk right through solid objects. This kind of glitch would doubtless have been fixed if the company had stayed in business. There are also some balance issues, as well as underutilized features in the game.

Enter the modding community. When I played Wizardry 8 back when it was first released, modified versions didn’t yet exist. A key development that made Wizardry 8 mods (and 6 and 7, for matter) possible was Mad God’s development of the Cosmic Forge Utility in 2004 ( https://mad-god.webs.com/ ). The Cosmic Forge makes many Wizardry 8 features editable, and it wasn’t long before several brave souls sought to improve on the original game. The process for making major changes can be time-consuming, however, and so only a few large-scale mods were ultimately created. You can find the downloads for these mods on one convenient page, maintained by Snafaru at http://www.zimlab.com/wizardry/mods/wiz8mods.htm. I haven’t played them all yet, but the ones I have played all bring the original game from good to great. Which one or ones a player might prefer depend on individual taste. They are vastly different from each other, and each brings at least one unique innovation to the game.

The Christian Coder’s Mod

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The Christian Coder’s Mod (developed by Jeff Ludwig) is a good choice for a player who wants to play a mod with the feel of the original Wizardry 8 but with more varied and balanced options. RPCs no longer have the odd area restrictions that make them less useful in the vanilla game, the variety of weapons has improved considerably, and some of the character professions have been revised. Bards, for example, can cast mage spells as they were able to do in Wizardry 7. The monsters are a bit tougher, but a variety of opportunities help to compensate. For instance, modern weapons are available much earlier in the game. In vanilla, you weren’t likely to see a modern weapon too much before midgame, and then it was a musket at best. The few more powerful options, like the frontier phaser, might never show up at all, and if they did, they typically showed up too late for a character to train to use them effectively.

Deathstalker’s Mod

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Deathstalker’s Mod (developed by Deathstalker) is a good choice for a player who wants a much more nuanced game world. In the vanilla game, certain races, like rattkins, were always evil. Not so in DM, where each race has several factions, and mobs tend to be composed of a wide variety of creatures, rather than just one or two. DM also introduces a subplot revolving around creatures who have escaped from a fey plane of existence to wreak havoc on Dominus. There is also an assassin’s guild that didn’t exist in the original game. In general, the challenge level is much higher because the monsters are much tougher. DM maintains balance in three ways. First, the weapon options, even the early ones, are far better. (This mod particularly shines in the number of innovative ranged weapons that don’t require ammo.) There are also merchants in a number of new places, and some of them even early on sell impressively good gear. Second, there are a wider variety of RPCs, and they are available much earlier. There are three choices in the monastery (first area) alone. In the vanilla game, a player had to complete the monastery, get all the way down Arnika Road, which is tough for low-level parties, and reach Arnika to find the first two–and one of those was a character who wouldn’t travel with the party into most of the really tough areas.  Third, there are roving parties of good guys, and they are as diverse as the monster mobs. As a results of all these changes, fights that would have been impossible get scaled back to very difficult. (The first approach to the Umpani base is so incredibly tough that no party will survive–unless it’s smart enough to wait for the Umpani war machine to lumber into close proximity before approaching the fort.)

Dodd the Slayer Modd

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Dodd the Slayer Mod (developed by Adrian Dodd) has a completely different feel from DM but is just as innovative. In the beginning, the game feels similar to vanilla, though there’s an RPC gadgeteer waiting to be recruited pretty close to the opening–the first sign that DSM places a bigger emphasis on the gadgeteer’s unique abilities. The second difference a player might notice is that the mobs are a little bigger. Where you might have met two slimes before, you’re now facing five. Then you notice that some monsters are appearing earlier. For instance, the monastery is infested with ghosts and seekers, two types of adversary that didn’t appear in vanilla until somewhat later. The difficulty keeps escalating faster than in vanilla. The bosses may be tougher themselves and always have tougher henchmen. The random mobs, though, are truly horrendous and scale rapidly as the player characters level up. The difference is conspicuous in Arnika. In the vanilla game, Arnika has mobs of various kinds of Savant minions and an occasional group of Higardi outlaws. In DSM, Arnika is like the wild west. You have to sneak around town to avoid getting ripped apart by a party that’s too high-level for you to possibly beat. At around level 18, I once encounters a large group of level 45 rapax knights.

As in DM, DSM balances the monster difficulty with greater resources. The weapons aren’t better in the very beginning, but there are some key differences as the game progresses. First, DSM introduces an amazingly well-developed crafting system. In the vanilla game, there is a little crafting. For instance, a gadgeteer with high enough engineering skill can merge two light crossbows into a double-shot crossbow and add another for a triple-shot crossbow. Gadgeteers can also merge what looks like random junk into useful gadgets. Alchemists can make potions, and anyone with alchemical ability can combine potions into more powerful or more advanced products. And…that’s pretty much it in vanilla. DSM, on the other hand, lets everyone get into the act. There are a number of upgradeable weapons and armor, and a wide variety of skills are needed. Some upgrades take wizardry skill, while others may need divinity, psionics, or alchemy, and I can think of it least one that takes different skills at different levels. Some even require a specific weapons skill to upgrade, like swordmanship. There are also upgrades that involve combining two lesser weapons into a greater one, usually with artifacts skill. Gadgeteers have upgradeable gadgets, and even bards have upgradeable instruments.

Another way in which DSM makes some otherwise impossible battles winnable is by accelerating the process of leveling up. As with weapon improvements, a player won’t notice this change at the very beginning. By midgame, though, the difference is obvious. DSM doesn’t tinker with the number of experience points required to level up. Instead, its high-level monsters greatly increase the available supply of points. I’ve sometimes earned a million and a half experience points from one battle in Arnika. In the vanilla game, leveling was pretty draggy at high levels. In DSM, it’s much easier to reach a higher level faster. As a result, the game feels more fluid and exciting.

Unlike DM, which adds some subplots but keeps the main plot the same, DSM somewhat changes the sequence of the main plot, introducing additional quests that delay some main plot elements, though the basic structure remains the same. For instance, the entrance to Ascension Peak in now blocked by Zorcan, a level 50 ally of the Dark Savant. An RPC named Lana gives three quests that require exploring the retro dungeons (which were optional areas in vanilla). Completing them helps Lana assemble a weapon to defeat Zorcan and join the party. It is possible to bypass that sequence because Zorcan can be beaten without the weapon if a party is high-level enough, but if you want to play the mod as the designer intended, you have to go through the retro dungeons. But there’s more–the entry to the retro dungeons now involves defeating three high-level packs of outlaws to obtain what you need to enter. There are a few other points in DSM in which the path to victory has additional obstacles. There are also new areas, such as Rapax Island and Ravinia Bay, to explore.

Wizardry Reforged

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Wizardry Reforged (developed by Qusari) is by far the most ambitious of the Wizardry 8 mods I’ve played. Like the others, it makes game play more challenging and increases resources to meet that challenge, though it does so in a somewhat different way. Like DSM, WR introduces new regions, including the Ninja Fortress and Necromani Realm (optional areas), as well as new areas required to complete the main plot (Ice Canyons, Dwarven Country, Pirate Island, Primary Rocks, and Savant City, the last two of which are in outer space.) The main plot is rearranged to a far greater extent than in DSM, and it’s wrapped in a brand new series of quests that affect the structure of the whole mod.

Nor does WR stop with that. Some of the vanilla areas (most of Trynton, the Rapax Castle, and the retro dungeons) are gone, their necessary elements dispersed to other places. Most of the vanilla areas that remain have been remodeled. The game starts in a new building (Father Pontifex’s odd little home, complete with its own dungeon) rather than in the Monastery, though it’s still there. Nearby is a desert region that didn’t exist in vanilla. Every area now has added elements. The look is as different as the structure. The modder uses different textures in most places. If you didn’t know it was a Wizardry 8 mod, it might take you a while to figure that out. Some people have called it the closest to Wizardry 9 that we’re ever likely to get.

I don’t know how long it took the other modders to create their mods, though I would suspect it was long time. In Qusari’s case, it took a year to develop Lunastralis (an earlier mod that includes some of the new areas) and two years to develop WR. Having poked around in the Cosmic Forge utility, I can see why. Almost everything is editable, but revising the terrain can be tricky. It’s easy to create seemingly viable landscapes where open areas can’t be walked through or where solid areas can be. (The motions pathways have to specified independent of the terrain itself.) That’s just one of many possible complications. I think it would take me months just to to get marginally proficient with that kind of editing.

Anyway, the monsters are the toughest I’ve seen (with the possible exception of a few optional encounters at Ravinia Bay in DSM). If I recall correctly, the other mods cap their monsters at level fifty. In WR, monsters above that level are common, with some going as high as one hundred. Random encounters don’t escalate the way they do in DSM, but the boss fights more than make up for that. As a consequence, the weapons are also the strongest I’ve seen. This mod is particularly great for modern weapons, some of which are usable early on, so characters can develop skill with them. There are also modern weapons powerful enough to be useful in those final battles.

WR also includes new epic weapons that do huge amounts of damage–with the caveat that you also have to have high stats to use them. This is a mod that definitely rewards a balanced party in which the fighter types specialize in different weapons and have trained with that weapon from early in the game.

Nor does WR neglect the magic system. The mod also includes some new high-level spells that, while they won’t take down a big boss, will do better than the vanilla ones with the henchmen. Unlike the earliest Wizardry games, Wizardry 8 has a consistent problem with offensive magic losing effectiveness during the late game. No mod completely mitigates this problem, but WR makes a good effort.

Which Mod Is Right for You?

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I like all of them, but different players will have different tastes. Here are some quick reminders of the most obvious features.

If you want a playing experience as close to the original game as possible, CC is the one for you. The one you’re least likely to like is WR, since it departs most radically from the original.

If you want a longer, richer playing experience, WR is the best bet, but DS and DSM are also worth a look.

If you want a more nuanced society with all kinds of new factions, DS is the best choice.

If you want the most sophisticated crafting system, DSM is the best choice.

If you want the widest possible variety of RPCs, with choices even at the beginning of the game, DS is the best choice.

If you want modern weapons to reach their full potential, WR is the best choice.

If you want the hardest possible encounters, WR has the toughest boss fights. DSM has the toughest random encounters by late game.

All of the mods lead to longer game play, enable you to reach higher character levels than you’re likely to in vanilla, and have a wider variety of experiences.

By their nature, mods increase the possibility of a game crash, and the more elaborate the modifications, the more likely you’ll hit an occasional glitch. You can reduce this problem by saving frequently.

What Comes Next?

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Looking for more mods? This post doesn’t include mods I haven’t played yet, like Flamestryke’s and Lunastrilis. I’ll add them once I’ve played them.

The developer of White Wolf has more time now and may make a final version of the White Wolf mod, definitely something to look forward to from what I’ve read. Earlier versions are still available, but the discussions I’ve seen suggest that they have some glitches, though they are apparently playable. Let’s keep our fingers crossed, since this mod does have some very innovative features and would be well worth a final version.

Qusari wanted to come out with a new version of Wizardry Reforged but couldn’t find the time. However, Townltu, someone who worked closely with Qusari, has been working on a new version. Townltu knows the mod inside-out, going back to his days as a beta tester, and he’s putting a lot of work into it, so that’s definitely worth looking forward to.

Beyond that, good Wizardry 8 mods are so time-consuming to make that I doubt will see any more of them–unless of course a hardcore Wizardry 8 fan with enough time (maybe you?) takes up the challenge.

Future Home

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In the next few weeks, posts from billhiatt.education will be migrated to this site. Stay tuned for details.

A Halloween Too Far?

(Caution–spoilers!)

Am I the only one who is growing a little weary of reboots and alternative timelines?

Up to a point, I’ll accept a certain amount of adjustment during a franchise, but, for at me at least, the 2018 Halloween (recently release in various home video formats) may be pushing the idea too far. (For those of you unfamiliar with the complexities of the Halloween timeline, I recommend a quick look at Den of Geek’s explanation, which will bring you up to speed nicely.

To give you some context, though I write fantasy, it’s not the only genre I enjoy reading or watching. Horror has always been one of my favorites, and the original 1978 Halloween is a movie I’ve watched several times over the years. I’ve seen every other film in the franchise at least once, and usually more. All of the other movies (except for the unrelated-except-by-name Halloween III and the Rob Zombie remakes of the first two) use the 1978 movie as their beginning, and rightly so. It is a groundbreaking classic whose influence extends far beyond the franchise.

I should also mention that I like many elements in horror besides just the fear-provoking ones. We don’t always think of horror as an inspiring medium, but it can be. For me, one of the best parts about the original Halloween was Laurie Strode’s heroic defense of the kids she was babysitting. Wounded as she was, she could have run screaming down the street and gotten away from Michael Meyers (who was always walking) or at least attracted the attention of the police. Instead, after a failed attempt to get help from the neighbors, she ran back to the house where she was babysitting and did what she could to protect the kids. Frightened as she was, she was able to get them out of the house and away from Michael, putting herself at greater risk in the process.

Fast forward through the unfortunate Halloween 4 through Halloween 6 to Halloween H20, which discarded the plot line from those three movies and instead picked up twenty years after Halloween II. H20 was a worthy successor to the original. Laurie Strode has had a rough life, but she still manages to pull herself together enough to save her son and conquer her demons (literally and figuratively). That would have been a good place to stop. Instead, we got Halloween: Resurrection, which undid the ending of the previous movie to bring Michael Meyers back–and kill off Laurie Strode in the first few minutes.  Though not a terrible movie if treated as an entirely separate entity, it was a far less satisfying continuation of the franchise. I wouldn’t have minded an H40 that ignored Resurrection and picked up twenty years after H20. There would have been a symmetry to that. The original film was Jamie Lee Curtis’s first. H20, if I recall correctly, was Josh Hartnett’s first movie. I could see a mother-son sequel in which their characters discover that Michael’s spirit has somehow returned to the world and have to conquer their demons one last time. Instead, we got Halloween and an entirely new timeline that ignores everything after the first movie.

The new Halloween is far from being all bad. Jamie Lee Curtis, for example, is still as great an actress as she ever was, and the movie avoids any of the really silly departures that characterized some of the earlier movies. In fact, the script is good. It’s easy to see why Curtis and John Carpenter both see this movie as a worthy successor to the original–in very many ways, it is.

So why am I complaining about it? Because of one nagging detail that I can’t get out of my mind. Try as I might, I can’t see how we get from Laurie Strode in the original to Laurie Strode in this film. One of the things H20 did well was enable us to see in a believable way how Laurie’s paranoia had persisted over the years. It was able to do this because it didn’t discard Halloween II, though it did massage the ending a little. In H II, Michael dies in fiery explosion. In H20, a point is made of the fact that his body was never recovered. A viewer could understand why Laurie had obsessed over the idea that Michael would still be out there.

Alas, the new Halloween has Michael captured right after his first murder spree (discarding his disappearance at the end of the first movie). Instead of being understandably spooked by the idea that Michael is still out there somewhere, as in H20, Laurie Strode is obsessing over a killer who has been in custody for forty years and has never once, in all that time, made even a single escape attempt.

Laurie Strode in H20 has her problems: paranoia over a killer who could be dead, suffocating overprotectiveness toward her son, alcoholism. However, she has good qualities as well. She seems to be an effective headmistress of a private high school, she cares about her students, and she really cares about her son–enough to try to get her paranoia under control. Contrast this with the Laurie Strode of the new Halloween. She’s a great military strategist and knows how to handle weapons, but otherwise, she’s a total basket case and even refers to herself in those terms. Her attempts to raise her daughter in a military-boot-camp atmosphere is enough to get child services to intervene, and Laurie loses custody permanently. Leaving the lost childhood aside, did the daughter benefit by being able to protect herself? No, Mommie Dearest had to come and rescue her. Even in terms of what she was trying to accomplish, this Laurie Strode is a failure.

One might question whether she’s even a good person, particularly when she talks about praying Michael will escape so she can kill him. Wouldn’t it be better if he never escaped? Then there’s the whole idea of evacuating her family to the “safety” of her fortresslike home–where she believes Michael will come. Honestly, except for plot necessity, does that make any sense at all?

One might argue that Laurie is redeemed by the fact that she’s right. The only problem is that there’s no reasonable basis for her fear. One of the things H 4 and the later members of that trilogy did well was try to create a supernatural explanation for Michael’s resilience. There are a few hints of the supernatural in the new Halloween, but no clear indication that Laurie has some special psychic ability or any other way to know Michael would eventually break free and leave a trail of bodies.

I think you see where I’m going. Laurie Strode in H20 has some reason, however unsubstantiated, for her fears. Laurie Strode in the new Halloween hasn’t the slightest shred of justification, and her fears are several times stronger than the fears of her H20 counterpart. She ends up looking like a psychotic who is rescued when dumb luck proves her right and puts her in a position to save the day–which she could have done without making her family miserable for years and then putting them at risk.

All of that said, I would have far less objection to the movie if it had been about someone else dealing with paranoia after being victimized by a serial killer. It’s not that I can’t imagine anyone behaving as she does, and Jamie Lee Curtis plays the role perfectly. It’s just that I can’t imagine Laurie Strode, as portrayed in the other movies, behaving this way. I wanted the Laurie Strode of H20, who rises above her problems, not the Laurie Strode of the new Halloween, who sinks beneath them. Sure, each one kills Michael–but the new Laurie Strode leaves a disturbing amount of collateral damage.

Halloween is still a good movie–it just isn’t a great one, and it could have been. Even knowing that, I’d still see it, and I’d recommend any genuine lover of the franchise should see it as well. (I imagine most of them already have.) I find myself praying that there won’t be a sequel, though. Maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe a post-Halloween Laurie Strode could gain the control of her life she doesn’t have in this movie. That might be a more suitable end to the franchise.

 

 

Haven’t seen Halloween yet and want to check it out for yourself? Click below to see it on Amazon.

Amazon July Giveaway

Whether you’re thinking about summer or the starting of new ventures in the fall, this is a good giveaway for you!

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

Prize: $200 Amazon Gift Card

Co-hosts: The Mommyhood Mentor® // Mama’s Mission // Surviving Mommy // Dorky’s Deals // Coupons and Freebies Mom // Jenns Blah Blah Blog // Capri’s Coupons // Lipgloss and Crayons // Ottawa Mommy Club // Java John Z’s // Show me Ashley // Made In A Pinch // Misadventures with Andi // Mahogany Closet // Heartbeats ~ Soul Stains // The Frugal Free Gal // Kathryn Anywhere // Mommies with Cents // Ditch the Heels // Sparkles and Shoes // Angie’s Angle // Mom and More // Improve Your Mental Health // The It Mom // Oh, The Places We Travel! // Here We Go Again Ready // The Ramblings of an Overtired Mama // Coupon Blessings Now // Southern Momma’s // The Dress Matters // Mommy Blog Expert // Linda’s Lunacy        

Giveaway organized by: Oh My Gosh Beck!

Rules: Use the Rafflecopter form to enter daily. Giveaway ends 8/18 and is open worldwide. Winner will be notified via email.

Are you a blogger who wants to participate in giveaways like these to grow your blog? Click here to find out how you can join a totally awesome group of bloggers!

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Whit’s End: Family Drama at It’s Finest

Whit’s End is a refreshing addition to books about realistic family drama. Though these kinds of books are not necessarily intended to to keep you on the edge of your seat, this one certainly did for me.That’s because the two women who are the viewpoint characters, Ava and Meg, are so engaging. As with all the other characters, they come across as real people addressing real problems.

Another reason the book is so compelling is that neither of them have easy solutions to their problems. In fact, they both appear trapped in situations they are powerless to resolve. Despite that, the author manages a twist ending that was plausible, yet unexpected.

This book is not in a genre I read very often–but I’m certainly glad I did this time.

Want to check the book out for yourself? You can find a preview to the right.

The Problems of Running an Author Website–and How to Avoid Them

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If you’ve been watching during the last couple of days, you’ll notice that the appearance of the website has changed several times. That’s because I’ve been doing some long-needed maintenance and making some tough choices. Going through that process reminded me of how difficult it can be for those of us who aren’t programmers or professional web designers. I was also reminded that I didn’t really talk about websites in What a Beginning Self-Publisher Should Know. Well, now is as good a time as any. An author website can benefit you greatly–but only if you know how to configure it and how to use it.

Why Bother with a Website?

Having a website/blog is a good idea because it’s the only piece of Internet real estate over which you have any real control. The Amazon author page is nice, and you can write your own biography for it (as well as feeding your blog posts to it), but otherwise the layout is completely out of your hands. Even something as simple as whether or not to emphasize paperback or ebook editions is decided for you. (Even though most indie authors sell far more ebooks, it’s usually the paperback that is displayed more prominently.)

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In my earlier post, I touched on the importance of social media, and that’s still true. You also have a lot more control over a Facebook author page than you do over an Amazon author page–right now. The problem with social media is that the rules are always changing. The one thing that probably won’t change is the importance of social media, so we have to put up with it. That said, if social media is your only online presence, you may be missing out on some ways to interact with an audience. Particularly if you have worthwhile ideas to share, social media sharing is a pretty ephemeral thing. People are seeing what you tweeted today, but they couldn’t dig back to what you tweeted two years ago if their lives depended upon it. Facebook and most other social media work the same way. Looking too far back for something someone else posted very rapidly feels like swimming upstream. By contrast, substantive blog posts can easily be referred to months or even years later. A typical author blog post isn’t likely to go viral–but the attention it attracts over time may be be worth it. Besides, it’s easy these days to automatically feed your blog posts to your social media accounts, killing the proverbial two birds with one stone.

Web Hosting: Free vs. Paid

What kind of website should you create? That depends to some extent on your budget and on your desire to create (outside of your book writing). Free alternatives like Blogger and WordPress.com will get the job done, but your options are limited. Something like self-hosted WordPress gives you an experience much closer to a blank canvas on which you can create pretty much whatever you want. Of course, that kind of latitude can also lead to frustration, as I’ll explain below.

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There is also the issue of speed. With a free website, you aren’t going to get the best possible server performance, and as I’ll talk about below, server speed is more and more of an issue these days. Typically, though, paid hosting plans have several tiers, and you don’t need to go with the top one to get acceptable performance.

Shared hosting is the least expensive. In a shared hosting environment, several websites are hosted on the same server, which means fewer resources available to each one. Using Bluehost (my provider) as an example, current shared hosting prices (per month, assuming a three-year contract) are $7.99 for basic, $10.99 for plus, $14.99 for premium, and $23.99 for pro. Each increase in cost involves having to share a server with fewer other websites (80% fewer for pro than for basic) and some additional perks. The pro plan also involves a more powerful server. Check here for more details. With most hosting providers, you can upgrade whenever you want, so a budget-conscious approach would probably involve starting on the lowest tier and upgrading only if necessary–and if the site is doing enough for you to make the extra cost worth it.

Even on the basic plan, I had no problems with Bluehost, but be aware that all providers don’t do an equally good job. With my previous provider I had sufficient slowdowns and outright downtime on a basic plan to make me walk away. The other provider wanted me to invest in a more expensive plan, but I’d already done business with Bluehost on a basic plan without issue, so I decided to take the money I was spending with the other provider and invest it in a better Bluehost plan. If you are considering a paid hosting plan, be sure you check out possible providers very carefully. Some do a much better job for the same money than others.

Website Design: Quality, Speed, or Both?

(licensed from www.shutterstock.com and copyrighted by Rawpixel)

This is where managing your own website can get frustrating. That’s because you will get conflicting advice. You will be told that your site needs to be visually appealing. In other words, you need to catch a viewer’s eye, not just pitch your text at them and hope for the best. In that sense, creating a website is more like designing a picture book than writing a novel. On the other hand, graphics, as well as other methods of engagement, tend to make a page load more slowly–sometimes much more slowly.

Short Answer: Both!

The problem is that you need both quality content and quick loading. It doesn’t matter how fast your site loads if it doesn’t interest your potential viewers. However, those potential viewers won’t wait for your pages to load for very long. Some authorities argue that if viewers can’t interact with a webpage in about three seconds, they start bailing out in droves. Others argue that even two seconds is risky. Check out the excellent kissmetrics blog for an infographic on the subject. (The blog also has a number of good articles on how to increase speed.)

Speed Can Be Complicated–but Worth It!

The speed issue is complicated by the fact that you can get radically different assessments of how fast a post or page on your site is. I just tested my homepage and got these results:

Pagescoring.com (test environment not specified) 8.98 seconds to full loading
dotcom-monitoring (twenty-four locations all over the world), avg. of 6 seconds, median of 5 seconds, low 2.2 seconds, high 30.2 seconds (!), all US sites were 3.9 or lower
testmysite.thinkwithgoogle.com  (testing in a 3G mobile environment) 5 seconds
webpagetest.org (desktop, cable Internet)  4.992 seconds
Pingdom (test environment not specified) 2.54 seconds
KeyCDN (test environment not specified) 2.5 seconds
Uptrends (test environment not specified) 2.5 seconds
GTmetrics (desktop) 2.3 seconds

(Thanks to PageSpeed Pro,  creators of the WordPress plugin, Above the Fold Optimization, for making it possible to have one-click access to such a diverse array of tests!)

(licensed from www.shutterstock.com and copyrighted by Makarova Viktoria)

Based on these tests, it’s clear my home page is either a race horse or an old nag–or something in between. That’s because any number of factors between a website’s server and the tester could affect how fast a site loads. There could even be a glitch on the test machine. As you can see from the dotcom-monitoring results, location of the test site also has a great deal to do with the speed at which a site loads–more about that in a minute.

Even more frustrating in some ways is the fact that the way in which different tests evaluate the same page often doesn’t correlate well with page speed. Look at the results from sites that gave numerical scores:

Google Page Speed Insights (which doesn’t provide a load time) 94 mobile, 90 desktop
Pingdom 94
GTMetrix 89 PageSpeed, 90 YSlow

Yes, that’s right: the test site at which the page scored the best time gave it the lowest grade, though not by much.

With so much variance in loading times and disagreement about how to view them, is it even worth trying to fight that battle? Short answer: yes!

At the beginning of the month I took a much-needed look at my websites  and was horrified to see how they were performing. The same homepage that tested at 2.3 seconds on GTmetrix today tested at 11 seconds on June 1 (64 Pagespeed, 86 YSlow)! The page was also 3.5 megabytes bigger and made 113 more requests. Google Page Speed Insights, the only other test I ran at the time, gave me 10 for Mobile and 14 for desktop. There was no question then that the homepage was a nag–and headed for the glue factory.

I’m no expert in how to increase website speed, but when I saw figures like that, I learned quickly. I’m not a programmer, so I couldn’t start rewriting the site’s code, but I could do research to see what tools were available. Sites like GTmetrix provide enough data to identify the problems, and a number of plugin makers had already come up with solutions. (I’m going to talk about the plugins I’ve used, but there may be other fine ones available for the same purposes.)

How to Improve Site Speed

(licensed from www.shutterstock.com and copyrighted by Sergey Novikov)

Optimize JavaScript and CSS

I already had JCH Optimize Pro installed, but I hadn’t turned the setting up all the way because of compatibility issues. I tested, the issues had been resolved, and I cranked the plugin up to its maximum level, Optimum. The plugin performs a wide variety of different tasks related to the speeding up the loading of JavaScript and CSS (cascading style sheets). I won’t go into all the details, but that change alone cut my loading time to about five seconds.

Optimize and Lazy Load Images

I didn’t stop there, however. I made sure every single other program setting was at the highest level possible, and I took advantage of its image optimization routine to squeeze the extra kilobytes out of all my images without sacrificing visual quality. (That’s something standalone plugins often do, but JCH Optimize Pro includes a decent routine for it. I was using the free version of Smush, but because the more robust paid version is only available  as part of a package that includes a license for all the company’s products–at $45 a month–I went with JCH instead, and its image routine was good enough to do the job.) I also turned on lazy loading of images (meaning images not visible on screen initially don’t load until they’re needed).

Lazy Load Videos

Having a video on the homepage also added to page loading time, but I’d found out that linking to a video on another page wasn’t working well. Besides, the video would slow the loading time for whatever post or page in which it was embedded. However, websites that use video tend to attract more viewers than those that don’t. Fortunately, there was an easy solution.  I had been using ARVE (Advanced Responsive Video Embedder) for a long time and liked it, so I bought the pro addon, which among other things can lazy load videos. (It loads the page with an image from the video. The actual video loads only if someone clicks on the picture.)

Use Caching

(licensed from www.shutterstock.com and copyrighted by Sergey Nivens)

Having heard a lot about the importance of caching programs, I explored several and ultimately went with WP Rocket. As with websites, speed test results vary, and there are some free alternatives that might be appealing as well. If someone didn’t already have JCH Optimize Pro, WP Rocket does most of the same things with CSS and JavaScript, as well as lazy loading images. To these capabilities it adds eliminating some small problems, such as query strings, and it can lazy load videos like ARVE Pro. It can even lazy load iframes (like the book previews Amazon lets you embed on your website). It also processes the page in such a way that the viewer’s machine doesn’t have to communicate with the server as much.  (That’s the actual caching part.)  Caching and other adjustments brought my five seconds down to three seconds.

Use Economical Social Buttons

(licensed from www.shutterstock.com and copyrighted by rawpixel.com)

All of that still left some fine-tuning to do. Almost everyone agrees that those social buttons that expedite content sharing help to boost visitor engagement and get your content spread around much more effectively, but it turns out that when they display a share count, the way the Jetpack ones I was using did, they lengthen load times. I found a bit of code that would block Jetpack from updating that way, but I still had a problem. Jetpack is great for doing the work you’d need several plugins to do–but the Jetpack buttons aren’t exactly eye-catching, and those floating share buttons I’d seen on other sites were inviting. The problem was finding a plugin that didn’t slow the site down. I went through a large number, each one of which either lost me some of my speed gains or had some other problem. When I was about to give up, I found Social Warfare. Even the free version is pretty good, and the paid one has incredibly sophisticated features for letting your visitors share content in the most effective way on each social network. Amazingly enough, it doesn’t affect load times at all, at least judging by the before and after tests I ran on GTmetrix (but see the note at the bottom of the post). Part of the secret is that Social Warfare updates share counts in the background instead of making requests while the page is loading. It was the only plugin I could find that didn’t have some problem with loading speed or with playing well with the other plugins on my site.

Don’t Use Sliders

That just left the elephant in the room that I had hoped to spare: the slider. Sliders are visually appealing, and the movement should attract more eyes than stationary content. That said, they can have a hard time with CSS and JavaScript optimization, a process that invariably broke my slider. The result was that its CSS and JS had to load separately, and a number of its components were still dragging along after everything else had loaded. Also, there is some evidence suggestion that sliders don’t draw that many clicks, though I don’t think that’s necessarily a universal truth. Anyway, I thought Layerslider was incredibly well-programmed and capable of creating an impressive variety of visual effects. It’s definitely the slider I would recommend if someone was determined to have one. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get it to load fast enough, and when I experimented without it, the site consistently loaded faster. Not only that, but although it claimed to lazy load the images it used, they all appeared to load early, contributing more than half of the page’s bulk. Regretfully, I deactivated it and am trying to get used to its absence. (I had been thinking that three seconds was fast enough. The problem was that the slider impact varied from test to test, sometimes causing considerably more delays than others. )

Don’t Use Background Images

This morning I made one more change, dropping the background image (which isn’t even that visible on mobile) in favor of a background color. The change reduced the page size considerably but had little effect on load time. I’d still recommend staying away from background images, though. They have a potential impact, even if it doesn’t show up every single time.

Use a CDN

(licensed from www.shutterstock.com and copyrighted by sdecoret)

I have been using a CDN (content distribution network) for some time, so I almost forgot to mention it. What it does is mirror a site on severs in various parts of the world to reduce the impact of location on loading times. The test results on dotcom-monitor show that even a CDN can’t make a site’s load time exactly the same everywhere, but most of the times were within three seconds of each other. Without the CDN, the variations would have been much bigger. While it is true that most authors sell more in their home countries, none of us want to completely abandon the international market, right? Then a CDN is highly desirable.

These days a lot of hosting companies provide CDN access as part of the package. For example, Bluehost partners with Cloudflare. Bluehost customers can get access to basic Cloudflare service for free and also have access to a plus plan that incorporates many of the features of the business plan for a lesser cost. CDN providers also plans to individuals directly. As with caching plugins, comparison shopping would be a good idea.

(licensed from www.shutterstock.com and copyrighted by Undrey)

Post Writing Best Practices

As I noted earlier, it doesn’t do much good to have a speedy site if you aren’t offering your viewers anything they want to see. My advice in this area is less technical, but just as important.

Use a Variety of Content, and Advertise Sparingly.

The most important advice is the same as it is for social media: you can’t just advertise your books. Obviously, you need to do that sometimes, but your viewing audience is much larger than the rabid fans who want to hear about what you’ve written 24/7. Everyone else visiting your site may be looking for content of more general interest.

Appeal to the General Interests of Readers

You can assume that the members of your audience are readers. If someone who isn’t interested in reading drops by, you don’t really need to hold that person’s attention. The people you do want to hold are those who may be interested enough by what they see to give your writing a try. That means you need to ask yourself what readers in general and readers of your genre in particular might find interesting. Presumably, you are a reader, too, so ask yourself what kind of articles would be appealing to you. Here are some possibilities:

book reviews and recommendations (of other people’s books, but probably in your genre)
suggestions for how readers can get the most out of the experience
reviews of other media with a literary tie-in (like book-related movies)
book-related news (particularly if it’s exciting)

(licensed from www.shutterstock.com and copyrighted by Syda Productions)

You can also include some posts that might appeal to fellow writers, as this one (hopefully) does. Other authors are probably readers, too, so you might pick up a fan or two that way. Other authors are also likely to share content they find useful. Remember that social sharing is becoming more important in SEO (search engine optimization), so getting your content shared is always a good thing.

Discuss Your Own Writing in a Variety of Ways

When you do refer to your own writing, do more than just commercials for your books. Here are some possibilities:

talk about yourself (what inspired you to write, how your life influenced your work)
explore your genre(s) in general, both from a writer’s and a reader’s perspective
if relevant, discuss the historical or other background, particularly if it’s interesting and not generally known.

When you do advertise, keep your ads short and engaging. If you want, you can have a section of the website with more extensive information on your books. That can be useful for visitors who are already fans.

The Amazon previews that can be embedded in your pages and posts are also useful, particularly since they include purchase links and encourage impulse buying. Since they display the book’s cover well, they also reduce the need for you to insert the cover yourself. If you’ve never done this before, it’s easy. Amazon provides a link to the embed code for any ebook on the right side of the product page, just a little below the buy box in the same line with the sharing icons. The embed is an iframe whose code you paste into the text view of your post or page. The result should look like this:



As you can see, there are various ways to wrap text around the iframe so it doesn’t have a big white space to its right. In this case, I used the code I found in this article . In the past I’ve also used Visual Composer‘s ability to switch the layout back and forth among different numbers of columns, though the exact amount of white space is harder to control in that way. That said, Visual Composer is a great page design program that enables you to be do complicated layouts without knowing coding.

Create an Appealing Layout

I’m not an expert graphic designer by any means, and I’ve made my share of mistakes. However, there are a few things I’ve learned to do (and not do).

Work for the Broadest Compatibility You Can

First, make sure your layout works well on all devices and major browsers. These days responsiveness (ability to automatically adjust to different screen sizes) is built into most WordPress themes and plugins, so I almost don’t need to mention it, but there are some exceptions. Tables, for example, typically aren’t responsive. Neither are embedded PDF files. You can minimize problems with these by making their frames relatively narrow, but it’s best to avoid having a critical element of a post or page that is nonresponsive.

On the other hand, since most of your elements will be responsive, there’s no reason to create posts and posts in a narrow ribbon. That approach works fine on mobile devices but can look silly on a desktop. I don’t know about you, but that kind of layout makes me feel claustrophobic

Browser compatibility is also pretty much a given, but it’s wise to test your layout on several browsers. I have occasionally spotted compatibility issues that way.

Second, arrange your text so that you don’t have large clumps of it.  Keep paragraphs short. (I need work on that one myself!) Images and other elements can be used to keep text from filling the whole screen if the viewer is on a desktop.

(licensed from www.shutterstock.com and copyrighted by ESB Professional)

Third, use engaging, relevant images. A graphic may look good, but if it isn’t connected to your content in some way, it may be perceived as filler.

Fourth, use a sidebar to give viewers easy access to features you want them to use, like browsing your books or signing up for your newsletter. However, having one on each side of your content my be overkill–that’s something else that makes me feel claustrophobic.

Fifth, organize your content in a way that makes using it as a reference as easy as possible. If the post is long enough, heading are a must. Another worthwhile addition is the Table of Contents Plus plugin that I use on this site. Using it enables a reader to easily locate any section of the post and navigate to it from near the top of the sidebar.

Sixth, keep ads tasteful and relevant. There’s nothing wrong with trying to monetize your site, but barraging a viewer with ads that are overly obtrusive or that aren’t connected to your site is just as bad as incessantly advertising your own books. Most people don’t come to a website to read ads, and most don’t come to an author’s website to buy diapers or lawn furniture.

To Website or not To Website?

As you can see, a lot of work has to go into a website. Given the other time-consuming tasks of the indie author–including writing the next book–is it really worth it?

I think so, but it isn’t quite a no-brainer. This is the kind of question everyone needs to answer for himself or herself. However, I recommend that everyone at least try using an author website. It can be a useful way to generate public awareness. Whether or not it really will you can only learn from experience.

Note: The paid version of Social Warfare does actually make a difference in load time with a call to admin-ajax.php. The impact varies a lot. The site achieved that 2.3 second speed on GTmetrix with the pro version active. The next morning the same test produced a 4.2 second time, though. However, I’d still somewhat more cautiously recommend Social Warfare. That’s because the ajax delay happens after the page is already interactive, meaning a viewer probably wouldn’t notice the difference. (GTmetrix provides an onload time–page ready for viewer–and a fully loaded time–additional resource calls by JavaScript are complete.) The 4.2 second test, for instance, showed the page would be interactive in 2.5. The mostly hypothetical delay may be worth it to me to encourage social sharing. If the plugin turns out to not have that effect, I can always go back to Jetpack without the sharing counts.) 

War of the Worlds: Retaliation–Taking Sequels to a New Level

The idea of a sequel of War of the Worlds would never have occurred to me, but it clearly did to Gardner and Rust–and they did it brilliantly in War of the Worlds: Retaliation.

Science fiction has covered a lot of ground since H.G. Wells wrote the original book, and readers’ expectations are quite different, but the authors managed to bridge that gap successfully with out abandoning Wells’s original premise. As a result, the book successfully evokes some of the feeling of the original without becoming a rehash or seeming stale.

Though I think the book would appeal to most science fiction fans, it should be especially interesting to fans of military science fiction. Here Gardner’s military background is noticeable. Battle scenes have an immediacy, and strategy discussions seem realistic.

I also particularly liked the portrayals of various historical figures. What would men like Patton and De Gaulle have been like if there early years had been shaped by an alien invasion rather than World War I? This book provides some interesting answers. The focus is more military than personal, but I still got a feel for what each major figure was like.

Want to check out the book for yourself? You can find a preview on the right.

June Weekly Giveaway

(copyrighted to Syda Productions and licensed from Shutterstock.com)

Giveaway rules are below, and further down you can find the Rafflecopter widget. To the right of the widget, you may also find links to other current giveaways and items of interest. Good luck!

Giveaway Rules:

Each new week’s contest will open at 8:00 am Pacific Time on Monday and close at 8:00 am Pacific time the following Monday, when the new contest opens (with the exception of the first one listed, because of the time the site was done.
Each contest will be a week-long rafflecopter, with the widget on this page. The rafflecopter will be open all week, so you can answer the question about prize options whenever you want. Each day I will add a new entry option, as explained below.
Just as with the daily winner contests, one of my posts/tweets during each day will contain a four digit code. It won’t be marked as that day’s code, but it will be fairly easy to spot. (A quick scroll through the FB posts or the tweets in my Twitter profile each day should quickly do the trick.) To enter, you need to make a blog post comment with that day’s code. Then you access the rafflecopter widget (or link, if the widget is being cantankerous) and record the fact that you made the blog post. The difference between this contest and the daily winner contest is that, instead of being over in one day, the contest will run for seven. Each day I will add the entry option to input that day’s code in a blog post. You can input the code for a particular day on that day or wait until later, as long as you input it before the contest ends. You only need to input the code for one day to be eligible for a prize, but the more days for which you input a code, the better your odds of winning are.
At the end of each contest, fourteen winners each day will be selected randomly from among those who submitted the correct code for at least one day.
If there are not enough people with a correct code, the unclaimed prize amount will be added to the prizes for the following week.
As with all my giveaways, this one is void where prohibited. Entrants must meet the usual eligibility requirements, must correctly complete the entry option(s), and musts provide a valid email address in order to receive a prize. No purchase is necessary to enter, nor will making a purchase improve the odds of winning.
Each person is limited to being one entrant [though that single entrant may earn multiple “entries” (as Rafflecopter uses the term) by using more of the available entry options]. However, no person may register as more than one entrant by entering under different names and/or email addresses. A person who creates multiple entrants in this way will be disqualified.







Rafflecopter, Week of May 29:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

May Weekly Winner Giveaway

(copyrighted by Nerify and licensed from www.shutterstock.com)

Giveaway rules are below, and further down you can find the Rafflecopter widget. To the right of the widget, you may also find links to other current giveaways and items of interest. Good luck!

Giveaway Rules:

Each new week’s contest will open at 8:00 am Pacific Time on Monday and close at 8:00 am Pacific time the following Monday, when the new contest opens (with the exception of the first one listed, because of the time the site was done.
Each contest will be a week-long rafflecopter, with the widget on this page. The rafflecopter will be open all week, so you can answer the question about prize options whenever you want. Each day I will add a new entry option, as explained below.
Just as with the daily winner contests, one of my posts/tweets during each day will contain a four digit code. It won’t be marked as that day’s code, but it will be fairly easy to spot. (A quick scroll through the FB posts or the tweets in my Twitter profile each day should quickly do the trick.) To enter, you need to make a blog post comment with that day’s code. Then you access the rafflecopter widget (or link, if the widget is being cantankerous) and record the fact that you made the blog post. The difference between this contest and the daily winner contest is that, instead of being over in one day, the contest will run for seven. Each day I will add the entry option to input that day’s code in a blog post. You can input the code for a particular day on that day or wait until later, as long as you input it before the contest ends. You only need to input the code for one day to be eligible for a prize, but the more days for which you input a code, the better your odds of winning are.
At the end of each contest, fourteen winners each day will be selected randomly from among those who submitted the correct code for at least one day.
If there are not enough people with a correct code, the unclaimed prize amount will be added to the prizes for the following week.
As with all my giveaways, this one is void where prohibited. Entrants must meet the usual eligibility requirements, must correctly complete the entry option(s), and musts provide a valid email address in order to receive a prize. No purchase is necessary to enter, nor will making a purchase improve the odds of winning.
Each person is limited to being one entrant [though that single entrant may earn multiple “entries” (as Rafflecopter uses the term) by using more of the available entry options]. However, no person may register as more than one entrant by entering under different names and/or email addresses. A person who creates multiple entrants in this way will be disqualified.







Rafflecopter, Week of May 1:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

April Weekly Winner Giveaway

(copyrighted by Kinga Kijewska and licensed from Shutterstock)

Giveaway rules are below, and further down you can find the Rafflecopter widget. To the right of the widget, you may also find links to other current giveaways and items of interest. Good luck!

Giveaway Rules:

Each new week’s contest will open at 8:00 am Pacific Time on Monday and close at 8:00 am Pacific time the following Monday, when the new contest opens (with the exception of the first one listed, because of the time the site was done.
Each contest will be a week-long rafflecopter, with the widget on this page. The rafflecopter will be open all week, so you can answer the question about prize options whenever you want. Each day I will add a new entry option, as explained below.
Just as with the daily winner contests, one of my posts/tweets during each day will contain a four digit code. It won’t be marked as that day’s code, but it will be fairly easy to spot. (A quick scroll through the FB posts or the tweets in my Twitter profile each day should quickly do the trick.) To enter, you need to make a blog post comment with that day’s code. Then you access the rafflecopter widget (or link, if the widget is being cantankerous) and record the fact that you made the blog post. The difference between this contest and the daily winner contest is that, instead of being over in one day, the contest will run for seven. Each day I will add the entry option to input that day’s code in a blog post. You can input the code for a particular day on that day or wait until later, as long as you input it before the contest ends. You only need to input the code for one day to be eligible for a prize, but the more days for which you input a code, the better your odds of winning are.
At the end of each contest, fourteen winners each day will be selected randomly from among those who submitted the correct code for at least one day.
If there are not enough people with a correct code, the unclaimed prize amount will be added to the prizes for the following week.
As with all my giveaways, this one is void where prohibited. Entrants must meet the usual eligibility requirements, must correctly complete the entry option(s), and musts provide a valid email address in order to receive a prize. No purchase is necessary to enter, nor will making a purchase improve the odds of winning.
Each person is limited to being one entrant [though that single entrant may earn multiple “entries” (as Rafflecopter uses the term) by using more of the available entry options]. However, no person may register as more than one entrant by entering under different names and/or email addresses. A person who creates multiple entrants in this way will be disqualified.







Rafflecopter, Week of March 27:

a Rafflecopter giveaway