Admin. Yawn. (OR IS IT?)

I’ve spent the last few days implementing updates to my website, which was a tiresome and unwieldy process, owing mainly to the combination of 1) I hadn’t updated the website since 2010, and 2) the website was designed when I only had ONE book series out with a few non-fiction works on the side, so the organization requires a lot of repetition. It includes nesting menu items and separate pages and such, which while fine when you only have one books series, when you have two series, two standalones (check out my pretty new FDSTS page!), and several short story collections, some of which are part of the existing series and some of which are separate…. well, it all starts to be this giant unwieldy thing.

For instance, if I have a new anthology out (which I do, go buy it!), but that anthology has a unicorn story in it (not Brave New Love, but stay tuned for April!), then that antho has to be cross listed on my new releases page, my books page, my unicorn page, and my short fiction page. (You guys, I also just realized that apparently, under my unicorn heading, I have an entire “short works” page devoted ONLY to the unicorn short fiction, which was originally just a mirror of my other short fiction page, because until this month the only short fiction I’ve published is unicorn stuff, but seeing as that is about to change drastically this year……. GAH.)

Why did I do it like this? WHY??????

I mean, I know why. Things were a lot more simple, category-wise, when I designed the website. I’d published three books and two essays. And to be honest, I’m still not sure of a better way to do it. Fantasy vs. contemporary? Adult vs. YA? But still break out short fiction? I know I need a new site design, eventually, but I’m hoping to hold off on that for six months or so…

Anyway, after hours and hours of messing with links and updates and resizing images and fixing widgets, I kind of threw up my hands and decided I’d rather finish my taxes (YES I WOULD) than check any more links, which is why my printable booklist page is still a little out of date, and some of the widgets need adjusting, and there are links to non-existent Borders pages throughout the site. Sorry. Don’t click the Borders links.

So then I finished my taxes, and did a whole other admin thing I’ve been putting off for far too long.

Boring, right? I mean, not my website. My website is all very pretty. Go check it out in full.

And realize that the whole thing is probably going to be changing AGAIN in the next few weeks, as I receive final word on not one, but THREE secret projects that will be available in April/May that I will have covers and such to show you soon soon soon.

And possibly four. Stay tuned.

~Diana