Terescia’s thoughts and such on writing romantic fiction for publication.

As authors, our number one goal with a blog is usually to get readers to notice us, our books, and our writings. It’s important to remember though that not everyone who stumbles upon our sites is going to be friendly.

I read this post this morning, and it brought home to me how careful you need to be when it comes to blogs and websites for authors. Authors, more than most, need their websites and blogs to reflect them and their books in a way that pulls readers into their worlds.

There’s an article I wrote about having a “professionally personal website” that I never got around to posting, but I’m going to quote it here.

“…be careful about giving out too much personal information. Talk about your family if you want, but keep it brief, avoid mentioning full names (in fact, consider pseudonyms for your children), and don’t talk about personal subjects that might make your visitors uncomfortable. Sure, you hope your readers want to know a little about you, but you’d do well to remember that some readers will be put off by too much personal information. And not to belabor the point, but don’t talk about personal subjects such as marital difficulties.”

Although I wasn’t talking about issues of safety and privacy, nor about blogging, in this article, these same principles apply. If you put out too much of your personal business on the web, you could be asking for trouble.

Blog safety is important for authors.

Tips to keep us safe on the web

Use a post office box or your publisher’s address when you give out your address on your website or blog. Readers like to write to authors on occasion. We want to be safe, but we don’t want to make it impossible for readers to contact us.

Ignore comments that seem threatening or strange. Delete the comment, block the user or email address, and move on.

Plan ahead for the worst. If someone figured out where you live, do you have measures in place (like a security system or neighborhood watch program) that would alert you to someone stalking around your home?

I know it seems vague and unlikely, but cyber stalkers exist. Darren Rowse can attest to that fact and does, “‘Stalker’ is such a harsh word and one not to be used lightly but in December of last year I realized that I had one.“

I’ve received several emails lately from publishers (specifically epublishers) wanting to have their publisher sites listed on my website for writers (HEA). Many of these publishers have only one or two books in their catalogs so far. I have no way to know if they’re going to be around past next week, so I generally say no to these link requests.

But it leaves me wondering if I should pass this information on to interested writers. New markets are always of note, but what level of responsibility do I have if I spread information about a publisher and that publisher turns out to be a scam (or someone who just didn’t understand how to run a publishing business)?

I hesitate to put the information out there, even knowing that it’s not my fault if the publisher turns out to be a here-today-gone-tomorrow publisher.

Any thoughts?

I’ve tried to put myself into the frame of mind of a reader today, and visit multiple blog sites for ideas. But the only thing I truly got from the experience was a knowledge that as a reader, I would be very disappointed with my blog.

Regular updates are important, and I have some mighty bad posting habits. I’m an erratic blogger at best, and an unreliable blogger at worst.

So, since I never did get around to making myself any new year’s resolutions–of any kind–today is as good a day as any to decide to up the ante on my blogging.

My 2006 New Year’s Resolutions:

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I’ve officially moved my blog from Blogger to WordPress, although the link is the same (http://www.teresciaharvey.com/blog).

The move was quick, but I haven’t yet had time to work on my template, so the new blog pages look pretty generic at the moment. We’ll see if I have time over the next few days to get it in order and put up something a little more in keeping with the look of my website. As plain as it is, I love the simplicity of my website. Black and white, with few distractions. And then there’s HEA, which I love just as much, even though it’s not as simple a look.

At any rate, it might take me a while to get it finished, since I’ve begun building a new home as of today…with my husband’s help, of course. :-)