Ahoy! It’s been a while since I’ve run cleanup on this ship and I’ll be honest, some maintenance and cleanup is a bit overdue. While I’m prioritizing writing, I also want this place to be a nice representation of what I write, so I’ll be taking some time off from words to do some digital housekeeping.
Most of the site won’t be changing, just getting thorough updates. There are book pages that are missing titles. I used to have an art gallery where people could see art for my various book series, and it vanished a couple years ago. I’d like to bring it back, as well as establish well-organized sections for additional information I’ve put together for each book world through the years. All my fantasy stories have world maps, but they’re not available? What’s up with that?
So those are a couple things that will be changing. The other section that’s going to get a complete overhaul is the little area on the menu labeled Dolls. I’ve had a lot of people ask in the past why I don’t separate my doll stuff off to its own website. There are a couple reasons.
One, I don’t see my dolls as something that can be separated from my writing, since the doll hobby started as a way for me to bring to life some unique physical representations of the characters in my stories.
Two, keeping a separate website and keeping it updated is clearly a terrible idea, because I already struggle with keeping this one! It’s way easier for me to keep it all in one place, and if you don’t want to see the dolls, they’re sequestered to their own section of the site that’s easy to ignore. Mostly. They do make their way over here sometimes, when I have photos I’ve taken that I particularly love, or when I’m tackling a super-big project that I just can’t wait to share with the world. Mostly, though, they stay in their own space. 😉
Three, a lot of the people who ask are those who want a better experience going through my archive of free sewing patterns for dolls. If that’s you, then here’s a good news/bad news for you: Improving the pattern archive is one of the things I want to do. But it’s also staying here, because if you get my patterns for free, you have to see the reason I started sewing in the first place. Which is the books. The books the dolls that need clothes are from. That’s it, that’s the deal. Not too bad, I promise.
But I’ll be completely changing how the pattern archive is managed, making it easier to navigate, easier to see what you’re getting, all that jazz. I’ll also finally be updating my collection list to share info about what characters the dolls represent, what series they’re from, and a little fun biography type stuff.
So why tell people I’m going to be updating instead of just updating?
Because this site has been online, without interruption, since 2007. I’ve been doing internet stuff long enough to know that I am going to break something, and it may take a while for me (or others) to discover what it is, so it’s best to let everyone know ahead of time that something will break and it will take a while to fix.
Through the month of October, I’ll be updating things a little at a time, trying to ensure as little as possible gets broken. But if you happen to come across something that is very clearly not what it’s supposed to be, or if you have suggestions for how site navigation can be further improved, please do let me know!