Look Ye At The New Design

As you have perhaps noticed, my official website now has a new design and layout; shorter header, wider content, etc. The main new stuff is the front page, which I’m still working on a bit to get out some of the bizarre busyness, though I suppose it could also serve as a good comparison to my life at the moment. I can’t wait until summer break, and those glorious months of time to actually get caught up on things. My to-do list has been monstrous and disorganized lately, as displayed in this nifty little illustration:

Don’t ask  me why summer causes my life to turn into something resembling modern art, but at least it’s more organized than the beastly thing to the left.

The redesign of the site is part of my new self-help program to get me to blog here more often than in recent months. Of course, to blog here something interesting and epic has to happen: after March 6, I have a feeling there’s going to be lots more of those types of things going on, since stuff will really get moving for the book. On March 14, I’m officially getting my author photos done by a professional, and I’ll be posting the results of that soon after as well!

FYI to all, I’ve got a live BlogTV show coming up this Saturday (Feb. 28) at 7PM CST on my channel. These shows are always loads of fun — they’re mostly centered around my TwilightGuy readers, which is why I haven’t announced them here, though as the slow transition goes into getting ready for the book, there will be loads of shows focusing on the release and news (perhaps one on the fateful and upcoming March 3, which will be exactly 6 years after I first started the book!).

Planning ahead for this Fall, I had an idea for a possible release party for The Farfield Curse as a live BlogTV show (one of those things I’ll be discussing at the publisher’s meeting in Chicago next week) which would mean anyone from any country could attend. Plus, having it online would mean I get to avoid the inevitable event of showing up at a bookstore with a table of my books, a smile, and a signing Sharpie; only to have no one but the store manager and my great-aunt Tootsie show up, my Sharpie go dry and unused, and my smile to slowly melt into a morbid frown, as I stare blankly ahead at what I suddenly envision as the long and tortuous future of the New Author In Town.

Not My Aunt Tootsie

Nightmarish happenings aside, I can confirm certain going-ons with The Farfield Curse, namely that I have received a number of pencil sketches from the illustrator, one of which will become the cover of the book in nary a few months (done in full color, of course, as our secret illustrator has won awards for I might add). Also, I have gotten word that pre-orders of the book could start as early as May/June. Exciting? MUCH.

Other exciting news: TwilightGuy.com just passed 3 million hits last week, around the same time my Youtube videos passed 2 million combined views. I love the word million, especially when referring to such things as web hits/views/copies sold, etc 

And, if you haven’t seen Slumdog Millionaire yet, you should do it before something awful happens and you miss your chance. Honestly one of the best films I’ve ever seen.