Author Websites?

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triceretops

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I've decided to create a website that is primarily for Young Adult works. I'm using a non-de-plume and I've switched genders. I kind of want a fresh start because I'll have a number of YA books coming out, and I do want to specialize. I know, I know, I should have thought of this years ago. Anyway, can you suggest a very simple free or very low cost domain website/template that is easy to set up and hold a few graphics here and there? I would like to avoid costs if possible since I'm paying out so much for other apps and programs. But free is not necessary.

You can include your site as an example and I'd be glad to check it out.

tri

ETA: For those of you who have various author names for different genres (and or websites), how far did you take it to disguise yourself or adapt another persona? I know that JK and Stephen King did such a thing, and they were eventually found out, but how elaborate a process is that? Is it even necessary?

Haven't ever done this before.
 

Cobalt Jade

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Hmm. I have two names, this one for erotica, horror, and more "Adult" fiction, and another for more mainstream SF and Fantasy stuff. For the moment, my website and all social media interaction comes through this one (Cobalt Jade.) Why? It's a little more offbeat I guess, and already a disguise whereas the other name is more like my real one and I don't want to match up my real and writer identities 100%.

My website is Wordpress-based. I pay Dreamhost yearly to keep up my domains, email system, and hosting space. When I develop a site for my other name, it will be on the same bill with its own domain name. I've been doing Wordpress for ten years now, so it's second nature to me. It is free through Dreamhost.
 

stephenf

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Hi
Personally, I believe you will benefit from avoiding any offer of the free web site. Register your domain in your own name. Pay a hosting company, you only need the minimum package. Load Wordpress. Google Wordpress and you will find all the help you will need to create your site. It takes time and money to create a successful web site. It can be an enjoyable challenge. It is for most people too challenging and a waste of time, good luck
 

triceretops

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Well, I sprang for the Wordpress site and I do like it. Although it's so tech heavy I've mangled it so far. Can't get a theme page, nor links to different categories in a sidebar, all subjects and titles have dropped down to foot bar. Now I have to take a training course to get this damn thing right. Any suggestions? Would somebody go to my sig and click on Christy's Young Adult Imagineers, and give me their impression?

I would be grateful. I need a sound thrashing!
 

Laer Carroll

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Hi
Personally, I believe you will benefit from avoiding any offer of the free web site.

I personally AND professionally disagree (I was a web site professional among other jobs at Boeing). A free WordPress.com site is as good as a paid WordPress.org site. You only need the latter if you want to add to your free site functions the free site does not make available.

You can create a free site and then easily transition to a paid ("self-hosted") IF if you need those extra functions. Most people don't.

DO spend the $18 to buy through WP.com a web domain such as PenName.com. I'd suggest you also buy the private option for an additional $8 so people cannot identify you and send spam and threats to you via your personal email.
 

shadowsminder

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Stay alive! I'm bringing you medicine.
Here are my first impressions of your current website, along with suggestions for improvements.

The URL is too long. Can you still get "christysyaimagineers.com"?
The first image I see makes me feel as I've landed on a site targeting business professionals, not teens or YA readers. The header image acts like a book cover. It should appeal to your target audience and suggest what's available on your site (or within your books).
What is Blue-Shift?
The (inconsistent) capitalization of the long subtitle on the latest blog post is off-putting. A shorter or easier to read subtitle would look more professional.
There's no value yet in your Archives widget. All that would've done is make me wonder if your site is new or if you'd recently deleted all your posts without leaving a notice.
Did you steal someone else's photo to use as your own? You said you've "switched genders" but are using a photo. Using a model's profile as yours is dishonest and possibly illegal.
Your bio is too much long to be on every blog post. Regardless of size, it doesn't need to be shown twice on each page.
Are you using tags or categories? I don't see how your posts are connected.
Visible site stats remind me of the 1990s. I question the value of that on a blog.
Please cite or (cold) link the source of photos in your posts!
Your follower count is surprisingly high for a site that's not linking to social media. Seeing that inspired me to look for an About page, which you don't appear to provide. Your bio doesn't show any social media icons, either. Where else do readers find you?
There's a part in your bio that make you sound as if you're out of touch with YA trends. "Today, young adult lit needs a resurrection. How soon we've forgotten about Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Divergent and Twilight. Oh, the mania! Where has it gone? Are we losing our young readers?" I'm not sure who you're talking to or why that's in a bio, but I think the bigger issue is that it's dismissive of readers who've been hyped up in the past few years over YA books. That part can be expanded to explain why you're writing what you do or cut.

Okay? Uh... :e2poke: (I didn't speed up your dying, did I?)
 

shadowsminder

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You're welcome to poke around my website(s). My recommendation is to note what you love, like, dislike, and don't understand about each author site you visit, including mine.

Shadows in Mind isn't an example of an ideal author website but might inspire ideas. As I'm also using Wordpress, I can answer questions about what's on the developer side.

For those of you who have various author names for different genres (and or websites), how far did you take it to disguise yourself or adapt another persona? I know that JK and Stephen King did such a thing, and they were eventually found out, but how elaborate a process is that? Is it even necessary?

Adapting to a persona is usually unnecessary. JK Rowling, Stephen King, and other authors with big brands created new personas to avoid riling up readers who expect works and publishing schedules to match up with what's already established in the bigger brand. Separate pen names for different genres is a common practice, but separate personas aren't necessary. Unless you have safety concerns, the best persona is your real one. [ETA:] You might want to keep in mind what kind of PR Rowling and King had to navigate when their other identities were revealed. They had more funds and support than most authors ever will.

My situation is odd. I have multiple pen names in separate groups represented by two websites. I've thought about combining them to save time and energy. My issue is that I'm not sure explaining why my real life persona is so broad and complicated will take less energy while trying to guide readers to works of interest wastes time. A scarier risk is in not controlling for biases that can impact my family and health. So I maintain separate personas by sharing different (real!) details about myself under different names. That separation is frequently irritating, so you know. I envy the authors who are comfortable using one name for everything.
 
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-Riv-

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Did you steal someone else's photo to use as your own? You said you've "switched genders" but are using a photo. Using a model's profile as yours is dishonest and possibly illegal.
Apart from everything else... this.

The photo you are using is of a model named Doutzen Kroes. You can't simply lift an internet photo and say it's you and expect no blowback--especially when using it to sell your product, nevermind that it's someone with a high public profile. You're inviting legal trouble. That's not even touching on the ethical issues of doing so. Please consider removing the photo ASAP.

All the best,
Riv
 

CathleenT

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Just a thought here, although it might not be a usable one. I only go online as me, so I don't have a lot of experience with alternate identities.

If you're going to go with a fictional online presence, you need an image, I agree. I've used this site to create a cartoon avatar in the past: https://avatarmaker.com/. Or you can use an image like this one from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/images/search/female forest sprite/.

The point is that no one will feel lied to or misled by these images. It's like saying this is fiction, so now I can tell all the lies I want. Since everyone knows I'm lying, I'm not, not really. It's just an avatar at that point, like Little Red Riding Hood. Lots of people use them. :)

ETA:

As far as the About Me, you need one, and you're going to have to lie, or at least segment yourself into separate people. I don't know how you'll handle that.

In general, what I've been able to glean is that there's less risk if you don't change sex. And for heaven's sake, stick to your birth ethnicity and your real sexual orientation. Straight writers writing as LGBT have gotten blowback when the truth comes out, and I think it would be professional suicide in the current climate to claim an ethnic group you don't actually belong to.

If you're a straight white guy in real life, I really think it's your best bet to present yourself as a straight white guy. If you use a different name, no one will be riled much by that. But anything else is dangerous, IMO.

You could skirt this perhaps by picking an androgynous image and an androgynous name, like these: https://www.mother.ly/child/top-50-gender-neutral-baby-names-youll-obsess-over-.
 
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Enlightened

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Here are some issues you may want to address....

1. No navigation bar at the top of the main page. I had to click on your name, on the blog, to get to your author page. On it, it is not just an author page, it is material replicated on other pages added to it. THe author page should just have information about the author. I know there is a "Categories" section buried in the right column, but some people may never spot it. If you can, adding a navigation bar to different sections (at the top) would help with user interface (UI).

2. The Chris Stevens book image is 607 kilobytes. For people on dialup, and there are still people who use it, you are inviting them not to want to come to your site (or visit too often) with image sizes like this.

3. There should be an about page, in addition to the author page. Who are Christy's "YA Imagineeers?" Are they kids you want to attract to your blog? Are they a group of YA writers; if yes, who are they? Something else?

4. As noted before, the domain name is extremely long. If you cannot change it, ok.

5. Your two blog names sound very polarizing (Warfare and Imagineers). Some people might be put off by this; others may not care. Your Warfare blog looks a lot better, but I understand the new blog is under construction still.

Check out other blogs and see what they do. There are LOADS of them. How are you bringing traffic to your blog: traffic from your Warfare blog, word of mouth, and AW signature link only?

This image may help if you want to change color schemes on the new blog.... https://writerswrite.co.za/the-psychology-of-colour/

UX and UI are important terms, at least for me. UX is "user experience" and UI is "user interface." For me, site design should be about making the user experience the least confusing and off-putting as possible. Make it user friendly (which includes making the interface appealing and easy to navigate).

Overall, I am confused with the purpose of the blog site; i.e. who is the demographic and what did you do to cater to their interests/needs?

I know it is still under construction. I know you put some work into it so far, but there is room for improvement. Of what is there, I think it is great that you posted an entire chapter for free. This will give users a sample of your writing.
 
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eqb

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I agree with everything aspirit and Rive said.

The design has a 90s look, but more important, it's very cluttered. I also get more of an MG vibe, rather than YA. (Especially the URL.)

I just revamped my website to use Wordpress, in case you want to poke around: www.claireodell.com
 

cornflake

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In addition to everything else, Imagineers is trademarked (though not by Disney, which is why I looked).
 

Cobalt Jade

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I took a quick look.

1. I don't like the pepto-bismal pink background. It's a very off-putting color. Plus, it makes it difficult to read the gray text of the column on the right.

2. I'm assuming Doutzen Kroes is just a placeholder and not really intended to be a photo of you. I hope...

3. If this is a writing identity I don't think you need to include a photo at all. Many writers don't.

4. The photo in the header is very blah. The typeface of the header as well. If you join a stock photo site on a trial basis, you will probably be able to grab a whole bunch of better photos for free, as long as the trial lasts.

5. When blogging, you don't need to indent your paragraphs. The space between them indicates they're new paragraphs.

Take a look at Claire's site, it's very well-done and informative.
 
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cornflake

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I looked around the site a bit... in addition to things others have said, like the pink, yikes, (also your paragraphs are all over the place btw. You have spaces between graphs but then some are indented and some aren't. Pick a thing You have punctuation issues as well.), there's stuff all over the place not seemingly categorized (which may be because you're still working on the site, I realize) some of which is ... odd?

There's something labelled a picture book, non-fiction which has no pictures and isn't non-fiction. I'm not sure if that's an error due to fixing up the site or what.

Is the pic at the top something that came with a template? It looks like that, and also looks like it's some kind of tech dev site. The blue shift I don't get in relation to ... anything? I know the term only as relates to physics though.
 

-Riv-

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I was looking through some of the site pages. This one is troubling.

The photo and text are verbatim from this page, (text at top and bottom, photo at bottom), related to dreamcatchers.com

If you aren't also the dreamcatchers.com author, there's a serious problem with your blog page. There isn't even attribution (not that that would fix the problem). This really isn't okay.
 

AW Admin

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There's so much wrong with the copy, never mind the site design, that you would do better to scrap it and start over.

Use a pen name, sure; don't create an alternate personality. Don't lie about who you are. It back fires. Every Single Time.

Web scraping and using a licensed image that you didn't apparently license, are so incredibly wrong that I'm gob smacked that you would do it. It's really not OK.

And there's some pretty cringe-worthy cultural appropriation stuff going on.
 
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triceretops

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Gotcha, gotcha. there is a ton to read here and I'm battling with this because I've never done it before. The image site was a stock free face photo download and that's where I got it--same with the elephant--others require author or title credit and are deemed fair use. But they did warn about possible copyright. I traced her back to two modeling sites, and a legal site and asked about permissions. Using it as wallpaper or a place holder with no context leans heavily to fair use (said one of them), but I'm deeper than that because I give her MY bio. So she might have to go and my niece might step in for face shots. If I don't get an answer soon, I'll pull it quick.

I can't lie and don't even do well with chicanery. I do real well with dumb-dumb and ignorance in tech situations. With 4,500 friends and followers in the media who know exactly who I am, and have for 14 years, I can't pu;; wool over anybody's eyes when I belong to over 20 major orgs, groups and display sites. Truthfully my genre shotgun approach has ruined me. I'm so diffuse, spread out, I don't specialize in any category or genre. I've never been trusted to stay in one place and deliver the same type of story. Only the pen name appears on the cover. The readers I'm targeting are the spontaneous or impulse buyers that say "ah, neat premise, I'd like to see what she does with it." 65% of all books bought and read are by women--that's a business fact. I'd say 75% of all interns, readers, asst editors and senior editors are gals--that's business--dollars--The CEOs might be men, but they are sooo in the background of the front lines that they spend their time lunching with the marketing people.It's kind of a shame that both the owners and senior execs have to bow to the marketing Gods.

Why am I hiding behind a skirt and denying my age? That is what you are asking isn't it? In case you missed it, or didn't know, right down to the marrow, I'm dying. One foot in the terminal grave, the other in the critical hole. I'm on 15 meds a day, four liters of constant oxygen, antidepressants, injections and a habit of crawling on the floor wherever I have to go. A Massive pulmonary embolism killed me twice--destroying both lungs. What's left over sits hunched back in this chair typing these words, with precious little oxygen getting to his brain and trying to figure out if these words are spelled right.

I can only learn these days by making mistakes, over and over again. It is almost too much to bear. I have to tear things down and start over. If that's what it take I do it. Chris is not here anymore. I'm hanging on until the end. I and agent have sold five books in one year. The editing caseload is deathly. But I won't stop until they're finished, or I am.

The gender change--#2. That was real easy. It wasn't too long ago that I visited a romance thread here. I got a lot of advice and then I started getting too much. I was the only guy in there, I think, and it was my first steamy romance. Things got real detailed and technical, everything of mine, my motivation, my talent, my hopes, dreams, theories, technical know-how, deft insensitivity was rolled over in a rut. There is nothing that I did right. I was not of worth to anyone. My welcome introduction became a scathing critique, and the words misogynist were tossed my way by two, if not three posters. I was told that the words feisty, exotic pole dancer, female and other descriptors were blatantly offensive and sexist. They'd actually jumped at the chance to read three of my chapters, and heaven help me they poured it on me, and me alone. Odd man out (a human being) given the ax because of the very ideals of sexism itself.

I took screen shots of that thread before I had a severe attack. You know, when you're suicidal, any type of panic or anxiety will set set off congestive heart failure. So I was down for a week wondering if I should get up. My editor got me up with a call and I had to explain what happened. So the Owner, two editors and the publicity agent got me on a conference call, and low behold my agent was in on it. Everybody got angry at the circumstance. All of us are over 60 years old and when those ladies read those comments, some cussed, some laughed and other rolled their eyes. My agent was spit-fire mad and wanted a scalp. I wouldn't have any of that. They all said the same thing--Chris, you're man and they foremost resent the fact that you're crossing into their turf.You will never be left alone."

I nodded. "That sounds like the way we kicked the girl fantasy writers out of the Science Fiction Writers of America back in the 90s."

I remember Hugh Howey and I exchanging emails in the Kindle Cafe. We talked about how many women were in are agent stables compared to the men. It was hard for us to male bond. Our listeners came up in a huge swaggering swell and just powered over us. It about 200 of them. Hugh split the scene fast. I was stupid and tried to explained what we met. Didn't work. We blown out of that forum together. In fact, I remember when Hugh Howey was blow out of this forum in his early days. Then he got rich

Didn't know Disney had that moniker. Just when I thought I had something original. Now Disney? They are Monsters in copyright and patent litigation. They scare me more than anything. That's a strike. Thanks for that tip--they would have got to me sooner.

I have no concept of what are apps, widgets, blocks tags, gravatars, icons and all those terms that I never had to learn because I didn't get past Word 7 premium. Those are the things I can hammer out piece by piece by trial and error. Grammar, caps, fonts, colors, pallets, footers, sidebars etc. But even these tutorials sometimes needs tutorials. I'll check some of your guy's sites and compare things. I want to look for patterns and even space. I'll chop if I have too.

But I will never go back as a man and face condemnation like that again. Not for the next five books. From anybody.

Oh, Lisa, are your referring to Native American Culture segments in there? Can you pinpoint cringe worthy aspects that bothered you. You know something that a sensitivity reader would flag me for. They pounced hard on JK. Rowling for similar issues. It's a tough, tough topic. I have a half ojibwa FMC and had to tread very lightly with here. and guess what? There's no such things as Indian jokes about each other

I rewrote the Cloud Catcher and the Moon Girl. It was a horrendous wreck. It still needs some tweaks. The dreamcatcher legend is public domain.

I know there's more and I'll pick up again. It's been a very long day and I need to pack it in.
 
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cornflake

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Gotcha, gotcha. there is a ton to read here and I'm battling with this because I've never done it before. The image site was a stock free face photo download I guarantee is was not. I mean I understand you thought it was, but it wasn't First, she's a working fashion model with an International agency. Someone uses her pic, they pay. Second, the place you linked is a blog, not a stock site.
and that's where I got it--same with the elephant--others require author or title credit and are deemed fair use. By the copyright owners? Fair use is determined by a court. But they did warn about possible copyright. These two sentences together don't make sense to me. I traced her back to two modeling sites, and a legal site and asked about permissions. Using it as wallpaper or a place holder with no context leans heavily to fair use (said one of them), but I'm deeper than that because I give her MY bio. So she might have to go and my niece might step in for face shots. If I don't get an answer soon, I'll pull it quick. I beyond guarantee you will not get permission to use a known model's photo attached to a bio that doesn't belong to her, on a site saying she's writing things she is not.

I can't lie and don't even do well with chicanery. I do real well with dumb-dumb and ignorance in tech situations. With 4,500 friends and followers in the media who know exactly who I am, and have for 14 years, I can't pu;; wool over anybody's eyes when I belong to over 20 major orgs, groups and display sites. Truthfully my genre shotgun approach has ruined me. I'm so diffuse, spread out, I don't specialize in any category or genre. Why would this 'ruin' you? I've never been trusted to stay in one place and deliver the same type of story. Only the pen name appears on the cover. The readers I'm targeting are the spontaneous or impulse buyers that say "ah, neat premise, I'd like to see what she does with it." 65% of all books bought and read are by women--that's a business fact. I'd say 75% of all interns, readers, asst editors and senior editors are gals--that's business--dollars--The CEOs might be men, but they are sooo in the background of the front lines that they spend their time lunching with the marketing people.It's kind of a shame that both the owners and senior execs have to bow to the marketing Gods. I'm confused about what the breakdown of the sexes here means.

Why am I hiding behind a skirt and denying my age? That is what you are asking isn't it? In case you missed it, or didn't know, right down to the marrow, I'm dying. One foot in the terminal grave, the other in the critical hole. I'm on 15 meds a day, four liters of constant oxygen, antidepressants, injections and a habit of crawling on the floor wherever I have to go. A Massive pulmonary embolism killed me twice--destroying both lungs. What's left over sits hunched back in this chair typing these words, with precious little oxygen getting to his brain and trying to figure out if these words are spelled right.
This is all very sad.

I can only learn these days by making mistakes, over and over again. It is almost too much to bear. I have to tear things down and start over. If that's what it take I do it. Chris is not here anymore. I'm hanging on until the end. I and agent have sold five books in one year. The editing caseload is deathly. But I won't stop until they're finished, or I am.

The gender change--#2. That was real easy. It wasn't too long ago that I visited a romance thread here. I got a lot of advice and then I started getting too much. I was the only guy in there, How do you know that, exactly? I was in there. Did we discuss my sex at some point? I know we did not. I think, and it was my first steamy romance. Things got real detailed and technical, everything of mine, my motivation, my talent, my hopes, dreams, theories, technical know-how, deft insensitivity was rolled over in a rut. There is nothing that I did right. I was not of worth to anyone. No one said any such thing. We were talking about the writing sample you shared. My welcome introduction became a scathing critique, and the words misogynist were tossed my way by two, if not three posters. No, it was not. I was one of them, and said there were things that sounded misogynistic, or that the writing made it seem like... I was told that the words feisty, exotic pole dancer, female and other descriptors were blatantly offensive and sexist. They'd actually jumped at the chance to read three of my chapters, and heaven help me they poured it on me, and me alone. Odd man out (a human being) given the ax because of the very ideals of sexism itself. Or people were trying to help you with your writing, which is kind of much of the point of the site. If you'd like people to just tell you stuff is great and not point out problems they think will hamper your chances of landing an agent, a deal, or selling books, AW isn't it. If you'd rather not have critiques of your work, don't ask, and participate in other ways. That's fine too.

I took screen shots of that thread before I had a severe attack. You know, when you're suicidal, any type of panic or anxiety will set set off congestive heart failure. So I was down for a week wondering if I should get up. My editor got me up with a call and I had to explain what happened. So the Owner, two editors and the publicity agent got me on a conference call, and low behold my agent was in on it. Everybody got angry at the circumstance. All of us are over 60 years old and when those ladies read those comments, some cussed, some laughed and other rolled their eyes. My agent was spit-fire mad and wanted a scalp. I wouldn't have any of that. They all said the same thing--Chris, you're man and they foremost resent the fact that you're crossing into their turf.You will never be left alone." Yeah, no. Let me repeat: NO. What turf? That's not what happened. No one, but no one, cares if you're a man writing romance or anything else. People were trying to help you with your writing, as you posted asking for help with things relating to the book.

I'm sure they're great, supportive people, but the publisher and editor and whatever who let your book go out in need of as much editing as it is? Those people are NOT helping you in any endeavour related to writing, and if they tell you 'everyone is just jealous,' they're not helping you twice. They should be ashamed of calling themselves editorial staff.


I nodded. "That sounds like the way we kicked the girl fantasy writers out of the Science Fiction Writers of America back in the 90s." What?

I remember Hugh Howey and I exchanging emails in the Kindle Cafe. We talked about how many women were in are agent stables compared to the men. It was hard for us to male bond. Our listeners came up in a huge swaggering swell and just powered over us. It about 200 of them. Hugh split the scene fast. I was stupid and tried to explained what we met. Didn't work. We blown out of that forum together. In fact, I remember when Hugh Howey was blow out of this forum in his early days. Then he got rich

Ok, if you have some problem with working with women, or with the fact that women write and agent and edit, and that some of them may not like your work, that's your problem. That's not hordes running off men.

Didn't know Disney had that moniker. Just when I thought I had something original. Now Disney? They are Monsters in copyright and patent litigation. They scare me more than anything. That's a strike. Thanks for that tip--they would have got to me sooner. I said Disney does not have that trademark. Two other concerns do (one has the singular, one the plural. I assumed Disney did, as that's what they call a subset of their creative staff.)

I have no concept of what are apps, widgets, blocks tags, gravatars, icons and all those terms that I never had to learn because I didn't get past Word 7 premium. Those are the things I can hammer out piece by piece by trial and error. Grammar, caps, fonts, colors, pallets, footers, sidebars etc. But even these tutorials sometimes needs tutorials. I'll check some of your guy's sites and compare things. I want to look for patterns and even space. I'll chop if I have too.

But I will never go back as a man and face condemnation like that again. Not for the next five books. From anybody. Again with the man thing. You seem to have an issue. Also, no one is ferreting out your books or website to critique for fun. You ASKED.

Oh, Lisa, are your referring to Native American Culture segments in there? Can you pinpoint cringe worthy aspects that bothered you. You know something that a sensitivity reader would flag me for. They pounced hard on JK. Rowling for similar issues. It's a tough, tough topic. I have a half ojibwa FMC and had to tread very lightly with here. and guess what? There's no such things as Indian jokes about each other You don't seem interested in how it the other is offensive to women, so....

I rewrote the Cloud Catcher and the Moon Girl. It was a horrendous wreck. It still needs some tweaks. You can't just take someone's work, change some of the words, and call it yours. This is plagiarism 101. The dreamcatcher legend is public domain.

I know there's more and I'll pick up again. It's been a very long day and I need to pack it in.

I'm sure everyone hopes you feel better.

Again though, people were only attempting to help you when you asked for it. I'm guessing some of us won't make that mistake again. You don't seem interested in changing anything, or hearing what anyone thinks might be wrong with your writing, so I'd suggest not asking about that. At least don't ask from a site apparently full of nothing but jealous women (who knew?!).
 
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