Odds and Ends

Well, folks, this is my last scheduled blog post until after the new year. I'm officially going on hiatus until then. Unofficially, of course, I'll still come back and post if I have anything to rant about or share, but I'm not going to be sticking to my regular schedule for the next few weeks. Too much going on, both for me and for you, I imagine.

One of the things I'm going to be doing is working on a new website. I've narrowed it down to a couple of layouts/designs, and need to pick one and get started. It's a little--okay, a lot--scary, because I'm going to be doing it myself (I had planned to pay to have one designed, and still hope to at some point, but for the moment I just can't quite justify the expense, and since I'm not sure exactly what I want anyway...sigh.)

So, does anyone have any suggestions for what you'd like to see on my website? What do you like to see on any writer's website? I'll have excerpts and release dates (what release dates I have, anyway, which isn't any at the moment, sorry), and FAQs and stuff like that. But I'm trying to think of other fun features and things to put in there. I do have one thing planned which I'm not going to share at the moment, but if it goes well it will become a regular feature and should be pretty cool (at least I think so.)

Another thing I may do--something I've been thinking about for quite a while--is switch my main email from the December account to the Stacia account. Right now emails sent to Stacia get forwarded to December, and I may switch that. Because Stacia gets more email.

And also...because I've been thinking of phasing December out entirely.

See, here's the thing. In another corner of the internets, I mentioned--quite without thinking--that I haven't written any new erotic romance in over a year. And it kind of hit me a little later that day, that that was correct. I haven't written any new erorom in over a year. Accustomed to his Fangs was the last December release for at least some time; I don't have any new erorom ideas percolating. It's not really where I'm focused these days.

And I'm not really sure what that means for me or my career, honestly. But at some point, unless I start writing erorom again--which is entirely possible, I'm not saying at the moment that I never will, just that as of now I don't have any real plans to--there's no point in keeping my erotic romance pen name.

So I'm not really sure what to do about that. I imagine it's something I'll make a decision on in the next few months; I'm not worried about it right now. But it is a concern for me, or rather, it is something I'm thinking about.

And on a totally different note, hubs and I were very interested to see the Broward County PD has now officially closed the Adam Walsh case, and declared Ottis Toole to be the guilty party. We're not really sure how we feel about this, given that Toole has long been a suspect but has also long been doubted as The Guy.

And here's the thing. Of course it's not bizarre for us to be interested in the Adam Walsh case--really, who among us who were children in 1981 doesn't remember it? But we have a particular interest in it, which is a little chilling. See, while in 1981 I was safely tucked up in the suburbs of St. Louis, the hubs was living in Davie, FL. And the Sears from which Adam was taken was less than fifteen minutes from his house. And of course, hubs was the same age as Adam. And, in fact, just a day or two before Adam was stolen from that Sears, hubs's Mom had taken hubs to that exact same store--and left him alone in that exact same toy aisle while she did her shopping. Kind of chilling, isn't it?

I know, it's hard to remember now that there was a time when parents used to leave their young kids unattended in the toy aisle. But they did, all the time. We used to stay in the car, too; I have lots of memories of reading in the car while my Mom ran into one store after another. Nobody thought anything of it, or worried about it at all; it was perfectly normal. Whereas now... It's a very sad commentary on what the world has become, isn't it?

On a cheerier note...I got my coat back from the dry cleaner's today, thus ending my weeks of substitute-coat misery. (Remember, I fell on my ass in Tintagel mus?) My coat is nice and clean, and they fixed the rip in the lining too. Yay coat!

And, BFF Cori sent us a package, which arrived today, so we now have the entire first season of The Big Bang Theory on DVD. This makes me very happy, because I adore this show. Yay DVD!

And I guess that's basically it. I keep thinking I had another topic to bring up today, but I don't.

So I will be here, but only sporadically (the good news is this means I can spend more time *visiting your blogs* than I normally get to have), and if you have any thoughts or ideas or suggestions for my nifty new website--which I will NOT be using GoDaddy's horrible WebSite Tonite program for, thank you very much--please, share them! I'd love to hear what you guys like to see in a website.

Have a wonderful holiday, everyone, no matter which one you celebrate. You all have made my days brighter over the last year, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your comments, emails, and thoughts. Mrs. Giggles did a post on her blog not long ago about my blog readers, and what a great variety of clever, cool people I have (no, seriously, she did!) and I can't agree more.