Happy New Year! Ok, I know it’s already February, but this is my first blog of the year so I still get to say this. I hope your Christmas was a good one. Looking at the figures from my website, I can see that twenty-five of my Advent Stories were downloaded; more than half of them were actually downloaded in December, which surprised me, but I’m happy for my stories to be used in different ways. I would love to hear from anyone who used the stories – any feedback would be respectfully received. Obviously I would be thrilled to read some glowing testimonials, but working on my own as I do, I would still be grateful for constructive criticism, or even suggestions for future stories.
But now that Christmas is done and dusted, it is time to move on to new things. I decided that my website needed refreshing. I launched it in 2017 and haven’t really altered anything since then, so the time for change had definitely come. Last weekend, I thought I would experiment with a new look, thinking I could try out some different presentations in draft, at the same time as brushing up my very rusty IT skills. Back in 2017, I was at home during the day while my children were at school and I had plenty of time to work slowly through the online tutorials that come with WordPress. Come forward in time to 2020, with just a couple of hours spare between the housework and laundry and cooking the tea, as I was last Saturday, I didn’t anticipate getting much done but at least it would be a start. Then, to my horror, I realised that I had published my initial tinkerings and replaced my personal website with one full of filler text and stock photographs. With much swearing and shouting (apologies to my husband), I had to face the fact that I had lost the original and so needed to complete the new as quickly as possible, relearning forgotten skills as I went along. It was, in short, a complete nightmare.
However, it turns out that I am not such a Luddite after all, and so, lo and behold, my new look website. There are some parts that I’m really pleased with, like the slide show of my novels on the Home Page. There are also some niggly mistakes that I just can’t quite fix, and I know that makes it look less than professional, but hey, I’m not a professional. I’ve done my best for now, and it does the job I was aiming for.
Now all I need is a new novel to go with it…
M J Schofield 