The online community

I didn't know anyone at Virginia Tech. I haven't lost anyone close to me. But by virtue of being a part of the online community, I'm affected by it more than I would otherwise have been.

I'm sure by now most people have heard that Jamie Bishop, the son of author Mike Bishop, was among those killed in the shootings. I have no connection to the family but people in publishing, people's whose blogs I read, etc. do and as such I feel it a little more deeply, having a name and an identity to go along with the news headlines.

I've heard friends I've never met in real life, people who live hundreds of miles from me, talk about having close friends or family they couldn't get in touch with in the minutes or hours after the shooting started. People on message boards and livejournal who I've never met, maybe never spoken to, talk about their reactions and their friends and family and I feel far more connected to it than I otherwise would.

Does anyone else feel a stronger connection to events just by being part of this online community we all share, through blogs and LJ and message boards?

FYI

Just an FYI for anyone interested, my Web site now includes summaries and excerpts from both my current works. And I've officially run out of things to put on it so if anyone has any suggestions/things they'd like to see, either drop me a line or comment :)

Woohoo!

My domain is working now. The OfficeLive instructions neglected to mention a couple steps. *mutters*

Anyway, HeatherJanes.com is officially open for business!

That is all.

We get to kill people

Quick post.

There's something very cool about being a murder mystery writer. Murder mystery writers are the only people who can say "I would kill for... X" and can actually do it. (There have definitely been times I would have happily found a way to work in the death of a main character if I could just have a slice of Boston Cream Cheesecake.)

We're also the only people who can take out our frustrations by killing people and not, you know, get life without parole for it.

Also, if anyone's tried to access my site, I've changed the host and the domain and host are still trying to communicate with each other (or whatever the technical language is) so the site comes up cannot be displayed. Hopefully it will be back online soon, should be sometime over the weekend.

You know you're a writer when

... you spend a disproportionate amount of time at work editing technical memos for passive voice.

*head hits desk ... hard*

Also:

... you interrupt your own internal thought processes to rephrase things that are never going to leave your head

... you read signs and think to yourself 'now I would have said it this way

... you get excited to have access to all the deals on Publishers Marketplace because you finally caved and bought a membership despite being four months from the query stage

I'm sure there are more if I think hard enough but I need my brainpower for writing so I don't want to hurt myself.

And this has nothing to do with writing whatsoever but WHY is House not on this week?? Stupid American Idol (I know, I know. Blasphemy. But the show just doesn't do it for me.)

Top 10 Publishers in the US of A

Michael S. Hyatt, President & CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, posted graphs showing the Top 10 Trade Publishers and Top 10 Christian Publishers in the US. See here if you're interested (come on, you know you are!)

Domain

When I joined myspace yesterday, I couldn't make my page myspace.com/heatherjanes because someone else already had it, so I put my middle initial in instead and that's what I ended up with. But that got me thinking about the possibility that someone could take my name as a domain name. When I (note the optimism of not using 'If') finally get published, I plan to use just my first and last names, not my middle initial (blame Miss Snark for that), so I want my eventual author Web site to be just my first and last names.

Ooookay, the point of that diatribe is to say that I bought a domain name. HeatherJanes.com is now my domain, not that I have a real Web site for it. It currently redirects here, though I might redirect it to my bravehost site, which has a link to the blog anyway.

Does anyone know of good hosting programs? I don't know HTML beyond simplistic tags.

Also, does anyone have suggestions for what types of stuff I could put on my Web site when, eventually, I put a real one together (meaning, not a free bravehost site), and before I have, y'know, actual books to advertise on it?

Randomness

I finally joined MySpace, so you can go see my pretty page here. Essentially, I've found another way to waste time and distract myself from my writing ;) Willpower. I need willpower!

I picked up Laura Durham's (one of the Cozy Chicks) book Better Off Wed and a couple books by Joan Lowery Nixon. Now I have to find the time to read them. Along with Stephen King's On Writing and the other writing books my aunt gave me for Christmas that I haven't read yet. And the Clancy and Ludlum books I bought last summer and haven't read yet.

I've also added several more agent and author blogs to my links here. I haven't updated my site yet, mostly because I haven't gotten around to it.

What I really need to do is disconnect myself from the Net for awhile... I'm way too big a procrastinator.

Of names and Google

Ever since I started this blog, I've googled myself, I admit. I choose to ignore the fact that no one knows my name enough that they'd actually want to google me though eventually, like when I start querying, someone might actually look me up. I've read, I think on Miss Snark's blog, people talking about their concerns over what comes up when their name is googled. I'm not concerned; I figure agents are smart enough to realize that the Web is full of all sorts of wild and crazy things -- and, y'know, people.

I'm not concerned; I'm just amused.

If I google my name, in quotes, this blog is the 7th result and my user profile on blogger is the 8th. The amusing part is the 10th result, which is apparently a porn story. It would seem that some writer managed to give my exact first and last name to a character in a porn story they wrote. Heh. Like I said, amusing.

But that brings me to another, only slightly related topic. When I name characters I go to great lengths to avoid using names of people I know. Or, if I use the first names of people I know (I mean, come on, there are some names that it's just damn hard to avoid using), then I try to make them minor characters. Does anyone else ever wonder if they've given their characters names of real people?

I should google some of my characters, see what pops up.

Y'know, if I ever googled myself and came up with a book that had my name for a character, I might read it. So long as it wasn't porn. That would freak me out.

In case anyone's ACTUALLY interested...

I've started a dumb little web site here, just to say I have one. It's quite boring and very free, and I have next to know web design ability, which is why it's quite boring and free.

Anyway, there it is.