Making a guest appearance

Yes, I know I haven't updated for weeks.  While my writing persona spends her days wearing impractical shoes and reclining on a chaise longue, dictating the latest page-turner to a dapper and handsome secretary clad in an immaculate tweed suit, the rest of me has to deal with day-to-day crises.  Suffice it to say that several hit at once, resulting in no time or inclination to use a computer.

Anyway, this is just a quick update before I return to the World of Worry.  The lovely Jane Wenham-Jones was kind enough to invite me to contribute to the Guest Room of her Wannabe A Writer? website.  You can read my bit here.

Portrait of the author

When I was getting ready to publish Looking for Buttons (yes, she's going on about that again), one of the many gems of wisdom from the fabulous indie author Lexi Revellian was that I needed an author page on Amazon.  With a photo.

Ah.

I don't do photos.  Not in a diva-ish, sunglasses on, hand-over-the-lens sort of manner.  More in an oh-sorry-did-I-just-break-your-camera-by-looking-at-it? way.  A few (okay, more than a few) years back, I had vague hopes that eventually I might mature into Eleanor Bron-esque elegance.  All I've managed is brontosaurus.

But in this image-conscious world the look is all, and I can't possibly go on blogging facelessly.  I'm not going to do all the work for you, though.  I'll give you a thumbnail sketch and your imagination can fill in the rest.  This is what I look like:

The secret love child of Nana Mouskouri and Harry Palmer.

Picture imperfect

If you want to be a writer that anyone's heard of these days, you need a blog.  It helps if you post things on it occasionally.  But.

But.  But.  But.  But.  But.

But what do you do about the design?

Right, I thought.  Time to make the blog look a little more inviting, a little more like a shop window for the book (it's called Looking For Buttons, by the way - if you hadn't realised that, this blog is not doing its job).  So I fiddled about with templates and settings and tweaked and generally made a complete hash of the whole thing.  Obviously I'm going to have another go at some point, although not today as typing time is limited by the after-effects of falling down stairs last night (sober, uncoordinated feet, mildly embarrassing, very painful).  I'm just wondering whether looking at other people's blogs counts as inspiration or plagiarism?

It was so much easier when I used to make books by hand.  Perhaps that's it.  Excuse me, I'm off to copy out all 120 000 words of Looking For Buttons and illustrate it in felt-tip pen.