What I did on my day off

[rolanni]

As threatened, I worked with my spiffy new layout program, which was remarkably soothing.  I’ve also made a start on a Carousel Tides website.  It’s not by any means done yet; I want to add a cast of characters, and some sample chapters and a post about why I wrote this book — to, yanno, defuse those folks who will ask Why On Earth I wasted my time writing urban fantasy.

If you have a couple moments, do you mind going over and taking a look at the place?  Let me know what you think, and what you might find useful in such a site.

Thanks — and I hope everyone had as relaxing a day as I did.

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[redpimpernel.livejournal.com]

I agree with others remarks in that I like what I see, overall (although I'm not seeing hakuen's jaggies. Could that be browser dependent?The color palate is harmonious, (excepting, as mentioned, the red in the header), the layout is clean. I can't wait to read about the characters and a bit more about the plot. From reading the advanced praise I'm wondering if this is a collection of stories, one for each magical realm? I'm sure that question, at least, will be answered as content grows. What the calendar is for? Are intending to mirror this blog over there, too?

Finally, that is the scariest looking horse I have seen. I don't think I'd ride a carousel with him on it. Yikes!

Here's what it looks like on my browser (safari on a Mac):

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not getting the jagged edges, either.

Collections of stories usually own up on the cover to being a collection of stories, since readers get cranky when they buy what they think is a novel and it turns out to be something else. That said, there are six worlds involved in the story, in which our own, The Changing Land, is the last and least.

The calendar came with, and can either be banished, if it proves useless, or kept, in case people want to track when new content comes live.

I'm not at the moment thinking of the Carousel Tides site as a blog, but as a series of static pages. This obviously could change, if people want to talk about what they're reading -- a blog is easy to generate, now that I know how to think about it :)

[sb-moof.livejournal.com]

I don't see the jaggies either on FF 3.6 for Mac. I like the site, but right now, it looks like a blog. If you are not thinking of it as a blog, some visitors may experience a disconnect. It looks like you may have a top navigation bar, but it's hard to tell with only one item in it. Having a page with your complete works with links as appropriate would be a good addition. Get as much cross pollination as possible to keep the cats in kibble. :-) Since I'm on a laptop, the one quarter of the cover art is "below the fold". Moving it up the page would allow it to be seen without scrolling.

Not sure if you are concerned about display on mobile devices, but I brought the site up on my iPhone. Most of it looks fine, but there are some anomalous vertical lines in the display. One starts below the "b" in the About tab and goes straight down the page to below the RSS icon. But the RSS icon is layered above the line. The other one is indented about the same amount on the right hand side going through the "main content white box". The calendar is layered above this line, but if it weren't the line would pass immediately to the left of the Saturday S.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Not sure if you are concerned about display on mobile devices,

The idea that someone would Seriously Browse the web on a mobile phone is alien to me. Also, since I don't have a mobile phone that will browse the web, I can't see the problem. Which I wouldn't have any idea how to fix, anyway. So, I'm afraid mobile users are on their own here.

I will do some cross-pollination -- later. First, the stuff about the book. And since I'm doing this around other stuff, the site will build slowly, I fear.