New, Streamlined

The site is getting a bit of a makeover for the new year. In many respects, I was tiring of the old page. It was too big. Too garish. Too fucking obnoxious, really.  Also, I wanted something new to go in conjunction with my new venture over on Smashwords, where I'm offering more of my titles (both previously published and those that never could find a home but are still damn good yarns, I promise) up for sale. As more stories become available, I will be adding them to the sidebar. The next one is my creepy-crawly story called "Vermin," which ran in Reflection's Edge last year. Be on the lookout for that. You may also expect to see my funny urban fantasy novel, Scarlet Letters, up for sale soon as well.



Formatting stories for e-publishing has been a bit of a crash course for me, but I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Designing covers is not my strongest suit, but GIMP has been good to me so far and I've been able to make pretty good if limited use of its features. The documents themselves haven't been too difficult at all. That's due mainly to the minimalist education I received in formatting manuscripts over the years. No fancy fonts, no unusual paragraph styles or headers, and avoiding the tab key like the plague goes a long way toward prepping your manuscripts for converting to ePub and other electronic formats. The less you have to mess around with Word removing extra artifacts (that shouldn't have been there in the first place if you have been a student of proper manuscript formatting), the better off you'll be.



At any rate, I hope you like the new design. Yes, it's a bit monochrome. But I like monochrome. In a way, it reflects what I write, which is what I always strive for. If I'd put weeping puppies up on the background, you might have been a little thrown when you opened your copy of "Dust" and started reading about little gray particles of matter eating people alive. Anyway, even if you don't have a Kindle or a Nook (or the corresponding device apps), my stories are available in all formats, even HTML or PDF. Soon, Smashwords should be distributing the stories to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Apple store, and other retailers. And then I shall RULE THE WORLD! Or be a few bucks richer anyway. We must take what we can.