I don’t want to scare anyone unduly.
I’m fine with scaring people duly. The autocrats are demolishing human rights here and abroad. The wealthy are ever wealthier and more powerful. The Gulf Stream is petering out, with dire consequences for the whole planet. Children are inspired to vandalize through TikTok, and people’s hair is falling out in clumps. White ladies’, too.
So this isn’t that bad. The deal is, this blog is changing. At least the drapes and wallpaper, which smells like rose water and lilac, the sort of thing one suspects is masking an underlying old-lady hygiene issue. If we keep going at this site any longer, I’ll have to set out a dish of hard candies in the margin. I’ve been afraid for quite a while that if I keep my antique template and stick with Blogger for my host some horrible thing will happen. Like the whole thing will disintegrate from natural senescence and blow away like powder.
On the other hand, I’ve had reason to worry that if I do try to migrate my blog to something more up-to-date, there will be an explosion so serious that my words, every precious one of them for thirteen years running, will disappear altogether. Do you even know how many words I’ve jammed into this site? Hundreds. Maybe dozens. It would be awful.
On top of that, I have been solemnly advised that I need an Author Site. It’s sort of a fake-it-till-you-make-it thing, maybe, but also I am told that literary agents will invariably seek out your Genuine Author site if they’re even remotely interested in you, and there’d better by gosh be something there, so now there is.
It’s a simple site. I didn’t want anyone to click on it and have to wait for a bunch of artful creative visual content to unroll before them. It’s a Just The Facts Ma’am site. And my blog has moved in there. So, this here post is on there as well as here, if you want to check out how it looks—clean and simple, like me in the latter respect. The next post will be exclusively on the new site, and if you’ve been so kind as to sign up for updates, weirdly emailed to you a day late—don’t ask me about that—they have already directed you to the new site. If not, or if it doesn’t work, you can bookmark my new home, and I hope you do. At least one cool thing is ALL my archives are easily accessible from the new site, so if you want to read the very first one, you can! In fact you can order a box of Who Gives A Crap toilet paper and sit down and read the whole damn oeuvre in chronological order, if you’re a little backed up.
I’m sticking with this new platform, but I don’t know how everything works yet, so I want to hear from you if you have trouble commenting (do you get the irony, there?) so we can straighten it out. WordPress, my new platform, is a little more precious than Blogger, my old. WordPress’s default is to put a velvet rope around my blog and let in only the worthy or credentialed, and my default is to take y’all on no matter what, even if you’re nuts. So let me know if there’s trouble and we’ll see what we can do.
That’s the deal. I have been trying to attract the attention of literary agents and publishers for any of my six novels and one non-fiction work for a while now, and it feels like throwing spaghetti on the ceiling to see if something sticks. But although some pieces stick for a minute and then fall off the ceiling, mostly my pasta evaporates into thin air like a stream of urine in the Arctic. So now I have an Author’s Site. Is it like the Field of Dreams? If you build it, they will come? I have no corn field out there, just a field of standing spaghetti strands, but let’s see how it goes. If nothing else, maybe Kevin Costner will show up. “Bull Durham”-era Kevin Costner, as long as I’m dreaming, not present-day.
Oh, wow, and you’ve already migrated everything over from Blogspot! Good job.
Aww, Dale! I don’t know how you stumbled across my PREMATURELY PUBLISHED POST, but you’re my first official commenter! I’m so glad. (Thanks to our friend Lori who alerted me, I believe I have fixed the time-schedule issue, and everything from now on should pop in at 3am on Wednesdays and Saturdays.)
Murr, genuinely happy for you. I prefer Blogger for my own junk, but I always thought your thoughtful pieces deserved a more professional platform. This is nice! I look forward to doin’ some snoopin’. 👍👍👍👍
Thanks pal! I know anyone tripping over my old-lady template over there was going to immediately think “old lady” and it’s not that they’d be WRONG, but…
And lookit that…now I’m anonymous. Just yesterday, I wasn’t. Okay. Put my name in, see if my pic shows up.
More testing. I think I’ve got it now. Don’t know why my credentials slipped down a rabbit hole.
And also Dale, no I the hell didn’t–I did the smart thing and hired a lovely web designer who knows how to wrangle these things. I’m ever so pleased and grateful she’s managed to not lose my archives and all.
Hooray! Feedly successfully delivered this up to me , meaning you won’t fall off my radar. Thank god. Where would we be then. Congrats on the new site!
Hooray! I noticed MY new-post email had the whole post rather than a teaser, so I don’t know if that does anything to my visitor stats (anyone know?) and I hope people hit “continue reading” so they can get to the comments.
Nice. =)
Thanks!
I, too, successfully managed the “switchover”. I was afraid I wouldn’t. I don’t want to miss out on your writing or that of your faithful commenters (always half the fun). Congrats on the new site. It looks pretty spiffy.
I hope it wasn’t too hard!
I ceremonially relegated your old site to the trash. Sighed heavily. But it is fortunate that your new site is easy to navigate, as my brain doesn’t work as well as it used to. (Age and alcohol, baby.)
My old site now gets officially redirected to here (well, the home page) so you’ll never see it again. My designer did that. I find it startling but it’s probably slicker than me putting a final post-with-link thingy.
Is this the new site? I’m so confused. Lately that’s been a perpetual state of affairs.
It is! You’ve arrived!
Like this a lot!! I was never able to figure out why I couldn’t post on your old post, so will see what happens with this….
You’re here! Now, meanwhile, I was commenting here last night and my entire identity plus picture showed up in my comment, and now it doesn’t. There’s always SOMETHING.
I’m just commenting because I want to see if it’ll let me comment. I did get the email, noticed it seemed to be the entire post, but continued reading anyway. Just to – as you hoped – get to the comments!
I’m hoping everyone will figure that out.
Oh wow! Looks great. Nice & clean & super easy to navigate. Congrats!
Oh I’m glad. I haven’t figgered everything out yet. But that’s me.
Since my comment under this blog post on the other site did not transfer to comments on this site, here it is again: Your new site looks great! Well done! Did you construct it all yourself or hire a webmaster? (I had a skilled webmaster, but she joined a cult and became insanely irrational and hostile, so I dumped her. I could use another webmaster for the next time my site crashes for no reason I can determine.)
But as for literary agents, your chances, no matter how small, are much better than mine, since agents have no interest in poets (unless they are already famous). No money in it!
I’m so sorry to have to agree. The thing about poets and unpublished prosets is we’re going to do it anyway. When I fret that I’ll never get my books published, I remind myself: Well, what am I going to do? Quit? Clearly not.
It looks great, Murr and the transition to the new site, at least for me, has been seamless, comments and all. Congratulations!
I’m so glad! A girl worries!
Murr! At first, I was perplexed that it seemed that I couldn’t reply to commenters. (I know there are some people who dislike me doing that. Fuck ’em.) THEN, I saw there was a reply button in the line next to their name and date of commenting. I was so happy! I love you and all the commenters that follow you! I know that we don’t all “know” each other… but who does? I always enjoy not only your pieces, but the commentary. So excited about this new forum!
If you’ve read this thread, you know I had the same trouble but I found the reply button too. I think we’ll all work it out. I just worry that the ones who don’t work it out, we won’t be able to help them because we’ll never hear from them.
Thanks for pointing out that reply button. I might never have noticed it!
I didn’t at first. It’s SO tiny! But I was motivated, as I love to talk to y’all!
Agree totally! Fuck ’em indeed.
I found it, I found it! Now let’s see if it let’s me tell you that I found it…
We found you! We found you!
Where’s the heart emoji when you need it? Countless hearts to you, Murr!
Thanks! I think I’m glad we don’t have that.
I’m glad, too. I never know how to respond to emojis, so usually I don’t. I have trouble understanding some of the icons on my computer. I had to change it so that it comes up as a word as well as an icon. Some of them look nothing whatever like what they are supposed to represent (at least to me.)
I always recognize the beer icon.
You built it and I came! See how that works? Don’t know now if I could even start blogging again with all this newfangled techno stuff.
Some things never change, but most things do. Hopefully, as humans, we are still able to adapt. Evolving is probably too much to hope for. You lead and I’ll follow as long as there is a string tied between us.
I’ll always have a string for you, even if it isn’t always wrapped too tight.
I’ll follow you anywhere, Murr.
I’m super glad of that, Kat. I admire you.
Hello? Oh hi! Found ya! What’s everybody doing behind the couch?
I’m not anonymous, I’m me, and I want my picture back.
Sshhh! We’re behind the couch! Yeah, I know. I think you have to get a (free) account at WordPress to get your picture in, but maybe other people will have other ideas on the subject?
Why are we all behind the couch? Whose groping my butt? Ouch! Jono, you stepped on my foot! Okay, who has the booze?
How clumsy of me! I’ll pass you the bottle.
I like this! Makes me consider doing the same thing, someday.
You do know how long a period “someday” is, right?
I might be a bot, if this picture appears.