Julia Barrett's World

Don’t you wonder about people who do the above? I have a neutered male German shepherd. He may be neutered, but he still considers himself Mr. Testosterone and he’s not about to ignore a female dog in heat. Yesterday was the second time in a month I’ve run into an idiot…I mean, who else but an idiot walks a dog in heat at a dog park where uncut males run free…and my dog gets yelled at for doing what comes naturally - humping the female. What would you do? I mean, what if you were a paranormal wolf shifter? Hmmm? It’s just not right.

Many thanks to Larissa for posting my interview yesterday. She surprised me with the questions a few weeks ago and I wasn’t even certain when it would be up. She’s a sweetheart who just moved from Israel back to her home country of Brazil. I sent her a copy of Captured for review because my heroine, Mari, is Jewish. After all, how many romance stories out there feature Jewish heroines?

So, on to Dirty Sexy Books. Rebecca has come up with a couple great posts about the things authors do wrong with their/our websites. In a polite kind of way, she pretty much issued a challenge to us to improve our sites. Here’s a link to her latest post on the subject and you can check the archives for her first:

http://www.dirtysexybooks.com/Dirty_Sexy_Books/Home/Entries/2010/4/8_The_Ten_Biggest_Mistakes_Authors_Make_on_Their_Websites…_And_Counting….html

My response. In my view, there are two main reasons why authors struggle to maintain a website -

1. Age. Most romance authors are over thirty and those who are tech savvy are few and far between. You find the occasional author who not only knows how to use all sorts of techy-type thingies, but is even willing to assist other authors who are tech-hopeless or technophobes. All of which means we have to either hire someone and pay beaucoup bucks, or we have to know someone who will help us for free or maybe for a gratuity, or…we have to take a class. Google sites aren’t so bad to figure out. Wordpress is idiosyncratic and gives me fits at times. I happen to be a bit of a technophobe. Once something is set up for me or explained to me, I’m competent, but not genius. I think I do pretty well for someone who wasn’t born with a keyboard beneath my fingertips. I learned along with my kids - but they learned a ba-zillion times faster. You know…softer brains soak up the info like a sponge. On the other hand, having grown up hearing several languages spoken, I soak up languages like a sponge - yay! I do something better than my kids!

2. Time. As I told my friend, fellow author Mia Watts yesterday, time is of the veriest essence. There just ain’t enough of it. We have books to write, edits to complete, deadlines to meet, virtual tours to hit, interviews, promos, contests, conferences to attend…there are only so many hours in the day and in my case, I refuse to be a slave to my computer - though some days it seems as if I am. I still hike, bike, work out on my elliptical, shop, cook, clean my house, do my laundry, hang with my kids and sex up my husband. Plus I have to throw in taking a shower, getting a hair cut, going to S.F. Giants games, helping out my parents and my sisters…you know…all the little stuff everybody does every day. Oh, and the biggie? Most of us work a day job too and a lot of authors are single parents.

So, something’s gotta give. Usually that’s sleep and/or the website. I think a lot of us go without sleep in order to meet all the demands on our time. Do you struggle with a daily post and website maintenance? Do you hire someone or plug along on your own? Your thoughts?

LOL! julia

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I’m featured over at Larissa’s place this morning: http://www.larissaslife.com/

Stop by! You can win a book! love, julia

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There is no place as iconic as Disneyland. I swear. It’s more American than apple pie. For a kid, it’s the ultimate in ultimate. I love Disneyland and I got to ride my fill of Indiana Jones, Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, The Haunted House, Pirates of the Caribbean and Peter Pan - which may be the most beautiful ride in the park.

But I have to wonder if Walt is rolling over in his grave. Tomorrow Land needs, uh, futuristic-type updating? Maybe a major makeover? The only thing there worth riding or even visiting is Space Mountain. The rest of T.L. is flat out depressing. Critter Country should be bulldozed - it’s where all those extra homeless animatronic characters - the Small World rejects - go to die. It’s just scary. Frontier Land has Thunder Mountain - a great ride, but that’s all. New Orleans Square still has it going on and Fantasy Land continues to be every child’s favorite place in the park.

The weird thing was that we arrived at 8:30 a.m. and we’d achieved all our goals and were heading back to the new Rhode Island-sized parking structure by 3 p.m. That’s another thing - the parking garage they put in to make room for California Adventures. You no longer have the opportunity to experience that heart-pounding anticipation and excitement as you approach Disneyland - even the Matterhorn is mostly obscured by the parking structure - a megalithic monstrosity that winds you around and around and around via a nonsensical, circuitous, maze-like route that I can only assume is designed to thwart potential evil-doers. The tram from the parking garage to the front gate drops you off at the new Disney Downtown where you are greeted by…surprise…gift shops.

But hey…there were no lines. We walked right on all the rides. And the churros are still good. It’s funny - the prices in the park seem reasonable, especially compared to what you pay for food at a baseball game, you know, where we pay at least $5.50 for a bottle of water, $8 for a hot dog, $10 for nachos.

Since the occasion was also a reunion for my husband’s family, as you can imagine, we were very busy and didn’t sleep a whole lot. Got home last night pretty beat and found the poor birdie, who seemed to be doing better when we left, on the bottom of the cage. As of this morning, little Alstie is no longer with us. We’re very sad. I ran out and bought a new companion for our parrot since she’s been quite upset about her poor friend. She immediately took the baby parakeet under her wing and began grooming her. Tibby is remarkably gentle for a parrot - at least with other birds.

Tomorrow - why us authors struggle with our websites - a nice answer to Rebecca’s question over at Dirty Sexy Books.

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