Shining the light of God's word into our confused world.

Month: May 2015

JMBauhaus.com is not me.

So apparently someone has taken over one of my old domains and used the Wayback Machine to pull up one of my old website layouts and are using them both to impersonate me for some reason that only God can fathom.

Not only that, but they’re using my picture and they’ve scraped old blog posts of mine and changed wording in an apparent attempt to avoid (further) copyright infractions and made the writing terrible in the process. Just compare this blog post I wrote in 2011 to the one of the same title on the imposter site.

Even worse, until about 20 minutes ago they were also displaying photos from my Flickr stream. I went and made that private as soon as I discovered this site.

Here’s the imposter site. I hate to send them more traffic (or help their SEO rankings), but I’m hoping that if they’re tracking stats they’ll see this and know that I’m on to them and I’m going to shut them down. I’ve already reported them to both their web host and their domain registrar and if that doesn’t get it done I’ll get a C&D. And if THAT doesn’t get it done I’ll see about getting a lawyer because, seeing as how I make part of my living as a professional writer, this site could do a lot to damage my professional reputation and I may very well have a case for damages.

In the meantime, hopefully anyone who stumbles across that site will click through the link to my LiveJournal and see this post and know what’s up.

… to blog, I guess.

I’ve been thinking and praying a lot over the question of whether to continue my blog, and suddenly I’ve been flooded with ideas for stuff I want to blog about. So I guess there’s my answer.

So instead of doing anything drastic like eliminating my author blog or putting it on indefinite hiatus, I’m just going to relax and give myself permission to only post when I have both the time and the energy as well as something to say that’s worth spending those resources on.

It’s the first two things that are the most difficult to come by, of course. Or rather, the problem is that when I think of something I want to write a post about–which actually occurs pretty frequently–I don’t have the time or the mental energy to do it at that moment. I’ve tried jotting down notes about what I want to say for times when I do have more free time, but that just hasn’t been working. By the time I finally sit down to write the post, I read over my notes and just can’t get back my train of thought. So I still need to figure out what to do about that. But it’s not something I’m going to stress myself out over.

There will still be greater changes coming. My web hosting account expires this year and I hate my current host, so I won’t be renewing with them. And since my past experiences with other inexpensive web hosts haven’t really been much better, and I can’t afford a better quality of hosting services, I’m just going to move my site to WordPress.com, which has everything I need at this point for free.

At that point I may probably will go ahead and separate out my blog from my author site. I think part of what I struggle with here is that much of what I want to write about isn’t the sort of things one might expect or want to read from a paranormal romance and dark fantasy author, and that’s hanging me up. So when the time comes I will probably cease having an “author blog” and just set up a static author website with a link to my personal blog, which is a separate entity.

Where to host this personal blog (which will really still be this here blog, just with a different name at a new location) is the big question. The simplest thing would just be to make my LiveJournal my main blog, seeing as how I’ve been cross-posting there this whole time and everything is already archived there, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about cross-posting from another platform. LJ has its drawbacks, though, not the least of which is the difficulty of commenting for non-members (or their willingness to do so).

I had long been a proponent of Blogger/Blogspot–that was the first blog engine I ever used, back when it was a wee startup run out of Ev Williams’ garage, and I stayed loyal to it for much longer than common sense dictated (I’m even at this moment wearing a Blogger hoodie I received as a reward for my loyalty after Google bought them out)–but the fact that Google treats it like a forgotten step-child and the customer service is terrible to non-existent has cured me of said loyalty. Still, I’ve already got this old blog archived there, so starting that up again is an option.

I think the most attractive option is moving it to its own url on WordPress.com. By now I’m used to the WordPress interface, they make commenting pretty easy for everybody, and they also make it really simple for other WP.com users to follow you, which would make it easier to build the community I long for. Of course, I would still have to work out the problem of cross-posting to LJ for the benefit of the small community I’ve already established there.

Also there’s the problem of LiveJournal constantly getting hacked by angry Russians who take the whole site down for long stretches of time. So….

At any rate, these are the things I will be pondering as I gear up to move this site. In the meantime, you can expect posting here to continue, albeit sporadically.

What about you guys? Do you have a vote as to where I should park my blog? This isn’t necessarily a democracy, but feedback will definitely help my decision, and I always love to hear from my readers. So leave a comment and give me your two cents!

To blog or not to blog?

Well, when I said I was going to get back to a regular blogging pattern this month, I guess I kind of underestimated how many other demands would be placed on my time. It’s been a pretty hectic couple of weeks. On the bright side, things are starting to settle down, and it’s looking like I’ll get to take that long Memorial Day weekend like I was hoping.

Of course, when you’re a freelancer, “things settling down” usually is code for “I have no more work lined up so I’d better start hustling to find some before this latest infusion of money runs out.” Incidentally, if you need to have a book critiqued, edited or formatted, my schedule’s wide open after the holiday.

Sooooo…

I’m kind of at a crossroads as far as this blog goes. I’m writing this book about self-publishing, and yesterday I was writing about author platforms and how all you really need is a mailing list and a website where you can have people sign up to it. You don’t really need a blog, although it does have certain advantages, the biggest of which are that it gives people a reason to keep coming back to your site and it keeps your website relevant to the search engines.

And I stopped and asked myself: do I really need this blog?

And then I answered myself: I’m not sure.

Really, those last two reasons I mentioned are the main reasons I’ve been concerned about carving out time to update this space. But really, the only things I’m getting out of it at this point are guilt and stress. I’m certainly not getting a ton of traffic or a grounded community of loyal readers. I get a little interaction, but only from people I already interact with regularly on Facebook. For that matter, anyone who really cares about what’s going on in my life follows me on Facebook or Twitter and are kept fully abreast of how things are going, and anyone who cares about my writing and when I will finally get around to finishing and publishing another book is presumably signed up to my mailing list.

So exactly what purpose is this here blog serving in my life at this point?

I’m going to be pondering that question over the next few days, and what the alternatives are. I’m pretty sure I don’t actually know how not to be a blogger, at least long-term, so we’re probably not looking at a complete shut-down. At the very least, I may leave a link to the archives on a static author website, and update it sporadically when I’ve got news or just need to get something off my chest. But as far as spending the time and energy to blog on a regular basis, that time and energy would probably be better spent on my writing and publishing blog, where it’s a little more crucial to get some traffic flowing.

So, that’s on my mind. What say you, readers? If there’s anyone who would really miss it if I stopped blogging here regularly, now’s your time to speak up.

Catching Up and Looking Forward

As you might have guessed, April turned into a pretty hectic month. In order to keep up with things (and to keep my sanity), I had to put the blog on the back burner for a while.

But it’s a new month, and I’m turning over a new leaf; although, so far, the freelance editing & publishing biz is continuing to bring in a steady flow of work (incidentally, I’ve still got openings for May), which, while it’s something to be grateful for, it’s not leaving me a lot of room for non-paying projects.

Unfortunately, I had not only back-burnered both this blog and my nascent writing and publishing blog, but also any real attempt at trying to make any progress on my current novel. That simply cannot stand. I’ve got to make the novel a priority again, but in order to do so, something’s got to give, which is why, though I fully intend to start blogging consistently again, it’s going to be at a slower pace. So while I’m in the throes of drafting my novel, I’ll be aiming to post here at least once a week, as well as once a week at the other blog, although if work stays busy it may turn out to be twice a month over there.

And what about that novel? I’m talking about Ghost of a Chance, the sequel to Restless Spirits that I’ve already been writing off and on for the last six months or so. That might sound like it should be close to done, but I’m sorry to tell you otherwise. The short version is that I tried to pants it (seeing as how i pantsed Restless Spirits and that turned out just fine, albeit it’s also the only book I’ve ever successfully written without an outline) and it totally went off the rails. So I’ve had to go back to the drawing board and start over from the beginning with an outline.

Trouble is, finding time to sit and think about the story as a whole and break it down into a working outline has been harder than finding time to sit down and just write. I’ve got act one sorted out and pieced together, but there’s still a lot more to go.

It’s growing. #outlining #amwriting #RestlessSpirits2

A photo posted by Jean Bauhaus (@jmbauhaus) on May 1, 2015 at 12:56pm PDT

I think another part of the problem is that there’s a murder mystery aspect to this one that keeps psyching me out. I’m not really big into the mystery genre, so I’m kind of afraid of botching it. It’s the B plot, but it’s integral to the main plot, so I can’t scrap it. I guess I’ll just have to muscle through and hope it doesn’t suck.

At any rate, this is setting my publishing schedule way, way behind. The first attempted draft isn’t a total loss, though. I should be able to salvage quite a few of those scenes, so that’s good news.

Besides getting my writing and blogging back on track, my other goals for the month of May include making more time for fun. These last few weeks I’ve been so bogged down with stuff I have to do or need to do that there hasn’t been nearly enough of doing stuff I simply want to do, which hasn’t made life very enjoyable. So I’m trying to work in more breaks just to play or doodle or daydream and just enjoy life. To that end, I’m also planning (read: hoping to be able) to take a long weekend around Memorial Day. It would be super-awesome if we could fit in a camping trip that weekend, but that’s not looking likely; still, if I have anything to say about it, that weekend is going to be devoted to fun and relaxation and to not even one iota of productivity.

I was also going to talk about the stuff I’ve been into during my scant amounts of free time lately, but this is already getting pretty long, so I’ll save that for next week’s post.

In the mean time, what about you guys? What have I missed? What are your plans for the merry month of May? Tell me all about it in the comments!