From today's New York Times comes this gem:

…an American Express cardholder whose maximum has been reduced to $1,000 from $1,200 has that much less to spend on clothing or meals out, purchases that lift the economy.

I really hope the New York Times business section gets better writers.

An American Express cardholder whose maximum has been reduced by $200 and thus is unable to spend that amount on clothing or dining out has no business buying clothes or dining out in the first place. An economy floating on debts that people can't pay back can't sustain itself. That's the main reason for the current financial crisis. People in America are generally overextended. That's why when they lose their jobs for even a couple of months, they're unable to pay their bills and fall behind.

It's astounding that some people are still advocating unsustainable consumer spending as the primary means of “fixing” the economy.

If you haven't already done so, please read the first and second installments titled Identifying Your Site's Purpose and Audience, Go-Live Date, Your Budget, and Your Technical Aptitude and Identifying Your Website Needs and Design Preferences a.k.a. Doing Your Homework before reading this week's article.

By now you should know what your site to have (at least have some ideas) and know which designers have worked on your favorite author sites.

It's time to write out your requirements to send to potential designers. Write out the timeline (when you want yours launched), the type of technical solutions you seek (CMS, WordPress, Joomla, template only v. installation included, maintenance needed or not, etc.), and deliverables (graphic files, actual codes, Photoshop files, training if any, other documentation, etc.).

Once you have this, you can email designers and ask them for quotes.

In addition, you can also use a site called eLance to get quotes from other web designers. The registration is free, and there's very little risk to the people who hire freelancers there.

Here's a list of designers I found by surfing author sites. The list is nowhere near exhaustive. If you're a professional designer and want to be included, leave a comment with your designer site info and/or where people can find your portfolio. I will not include you on the list if you don't have a portfolio and/or experience.

Disclaimer: I'm not endorsing and/or promising anything by listing designers here. The only designers I've worked with are Frauke from CrocoDesigns and Tara O'Shea, and I like them. If you want to ask any specific questions about either of them, contact me.

• CrocoDesigns — Frauke from CrocoDesigns did my site. She has a waiting list for WordPress templates and/or full site design, although she still has some open slots for print and/or MySpace designs. (If you need a site launched ASAP, you can contact her and ask if she can do it. If you have a very good reason, she may work with you.)
• Tara O'Shea — She made the cover for my free serial A Happily Ever After of Her Own. She is very professional and punctual.
• Hot Damn Designs
• Rae Monet
• Clearly Computers
• Austin Designworks
• Rock the Rock Design
• Amberwing Design
• Waxcreative Design
• Swank Web Style
• Dream Forge Media
• Web Crafters Design
• Twilight Industries
• Elle Media
• Nytshadow Designs

Next week, I'll talk about evaluating quotes and designers.

Lynn tagged me.

The rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. List 6 unspectacular quirks you have.
4. Tag 6 bloggers by linking them.
5. Leave a comment on each person’s blog to let them know they’ve been tagged.

Six Unspectacular Quirks About Me:

1. I don't make eye contact with anyone unless I want to deal with them directly.
2. I can be absent-minded about real life things when I'm working on the first draft.
3. I have an extreme mottephobia / lepidopterophobia.
4. I usually almost always sleep on my left side. It's near impossible for me to sleep on my back.
5. I'm very sensitive to noise when I'm trying to fall asleep.
6. I love action and/or spy movies. They don't need to make any sense. They just need to have a lot of gratuitous violence.

Tagging: Jennifer, DD, Chelle, Barbara, May, and Portia.

Status: Am feeling a bit better about life in general. I realized that I had a little more cash than I initially estimated, so that makes me feel relaxed about it, somewhat. (see below for why)

I'm convinced that there's some kind of evil retrograde somewhere.

Why?

My RAM died. The merchant's being as difficult as possible with the return.

My dishwasher died. It needs to be replaced, most likely, since the current unit's old. This is a completely unexpected and unplanned expenditure, but it must be spent.

Yesterday, my site died. It was the new plugin I installed for WP, and it killed my blog. MySQL refused to import my back-ups. I almost died until I found a file that it would import. If you see any errors on the site, please let me know!

Despite it all, I'm trying to stay optimistic. I'm going through the latest draft of Slayer. I can't believe I missed some of the continuity errors that occurred when I made some changes to the story. I was 500% embarrassed when I discovered them. :oops:

One thing that's really difficult for me is the amount of work that is required for the newly added materials. Unlike some writers who I envy, I'm not the most polished writer. It takes me a while to get it to flow just right. So the new materials take several days before they're on par with the other more polished scenes.

Currently I'm using iPod Touch to review my manuscript. I downloaded an app called Files. It works great for me because it can read *.doc and not destroy all my formatting. (I'm very particular about formatting.) So I'm saving money on paper & printer cartridge. The price of paper went up about 50-100% in Japan, depending on what grade, size, etc. So I'm trying to find ways to reduce the amount of paper, etc. I use as much as possible. Does this mean I'll never print my entire ms? Nope. I like to see stuff on papers. I catch different things on different medium. But Files is one of the tools I can use.

If you haven't done so, please read the first installment titled Identifying Your Site's Purpose and Audience, Go-Live Date, Your Budget, and Your Technical Aptitude before reading this week's article.

Once you know your website's purpose, your audience, go-live date, your budget and technical aptitude, you're about halfway there.

Now go to Google or professional writer's organizations websites. Search for author sites. View as many sites as you can. This isn't just procrastination, folks. You have to take a lot of notes while you surf. Note what draws you in. Pay special attention to readability, ease of navigation, loading speed, etc. If something's hard to read or access, make a note on why that may be.

Also almost all author sites tell you who designed them. If you see something you like, find out who did the work. Conversely, if you see something fugly, make a note of that too.

I also found the following articles written from reader / bookseller POV very useful:

• What Every Author's Website Should Contain
• The Importance of Easy Access Websites for Authors
• Top 10 Peeves from Booksellers and Readers about Author Websites
• Wondering about Websites
• Websites
• I Didn't Know You Wrote Books Too!
• Eight Things Every Author Should Know About Her Own Website
• Websites: Web-Winners, Web-Weenies, and the Space Between

Now make a list of all the things you want for your site. Start with color schemes, contents (bio, books / projects, blog, etc.), layout (horizontal menu or vertical / left or right sidebar?), etc.

A few rules of thumb:

• KISS: Keep it simple stupid.
• Readability is king: Black or very dark font against pale / light background works the best. Your font should be big enough to not cause eye strain. Remember, your audience — be it agents, editors, booksellers and/or readers — probably read a lot. So be kind to their eyes.
• Fast loading: Too many complex and big graphics will make your site virtually impossible to load. If it doesn't load within 3-5 seconds, people will leave.
• Easy navigation: Don't get cute and label your bio navigation button “The Great Epic of My Life” or some such. People won't get it.
• Google-Friendly: Don't do a ton of flash or other bling-bling animations. Don't do stuff that turns Google off. Google is your friend.
• Be flexible: You may have some “cool” ideas, but the designer you hire may veto it. Trust your designer's aesthetic sensibility. That's what you hired her for.

P. S. While you are browsing author sites, think about whether or not it makes sense for you to have the cool feature you saw on Author Suzie's site. Maybe Suzie has a huge forum. Do you need one if you're a debut novelist or an aspiring author? If you don't need it now, don't put it on the requirement list. It'll only make your site more expensive to launch. Start out with basics first, then move up when you can afford to or need to.

Next week, I'll talk about the actual process of requesting quotes and some of the sites and resources I used.

Pre-Historic Era

Doubled RAM. Worked great for one week. Everything's fast. Holy cow.

Fateful Day 1

I get the blue screen of death (BSOD). It tells me a bunch of numbers. Advises me to update my drivers. I do that and run the virus scan, just in case. Virus scan comes back clean. Everything looks fixed. I feel happy. Go to bed at around 3:00 a.m. after the win.

Fateful Day 2

Another BSOD. A slightly different combination of numbers that make no sense. Win refuses to stay operational. Everything shuts down. Force OS to not shut down. Run a ton of diagnostics, which takes about five hours. Finally decided to do a clean install on everything. Still fails. Finally it turned out that I needed some update installed first before installing a different update. This wasn't anywhere in the online manual. Feeling angry. But do another clean reinstall.

The day ended at 5:00 a.m. with another BSOD.

Fateful Day 3

Get up at 9:00 a.m. Hero Material almost becomes collateral damage. Another clean reinstall. Google every error message I get. MS Update won't update. I'm ready to go Kill Bill on IT.

Do a ton of regsvr32 commands for a ton of *.dll files. It turns out that the RAM upgrade is the one that went bad. In exactly one week after the upgrade. Take out the new RAM, put the old RAM. Hardware diagnostic says everything looks great.

Redo install. I'm getting very good at this now. I re-customize everything, esp. the default Outlook profile.

The day ends at 4:30 a.m. with MS Update downloading everything, but refusing to install highly critical security patches. Give up after trying about ten different fixes and workarounds. My eyes refuse to stay open. The war appears hopeless.

Fateful Day 4

Get up and test the final fix for MS Update. Downloads very slowly, but finally installs everything. Run a complete virus scan. The system's clean.

Casualties

• Four days of productivity.
• My sanity.
• Sleep.
• Rambo I — was going to watch it with Hero Material, but I couldn't pay attention and Hero Material got annoyed.
• All the King's Women Ch. 1 — dead; not recoverable.
• The Last Slayer notes update — dead, not recoverable.
• The Lat Slayer master file — managed to salvage. Must make another copy, just in case. (This was backed up via gmail, but gmail told me that the backup was corrupted. I almost died on the spot. Hero Material had to valiantly stop me from bashing my own head in.)
• All my customizations for Office & Win — not recoverable; must recreate everything.

If you sent me an email and never received a response, it probably means I never got your email in the first place since Outlook went a bit wonky during this period. Resend please.