Overview
Your website is one of the most important tools in marketing your work, whether you've just snagged your first publishing deal, or are self-published, or are a veteran author with many titles, or an ongoing series. Help your readers connect with you and your work with a beautiful, fully-featured site that's easy to update as your career blossoms.
I've been designing and building WordPress websites for almost 20 years. I specialize in individual artists, musicians, writers, small businesses and non-profits. I have a couple MAs in literature (English and Irish) so I'm always happy to talk books! Mostly I want to help make your life easier by taking the stress out of getting you up and running on the web.
I'll work with you to design and build a brand new website, or to give a facelift to a tired, sagging, out-of-date site. Together we’ll decide what’s best for you and your marketing efforts.
We’ll start with some “discovery” to nail down the general look and feel of your site design, determine what kinds of features you’ll need, and gather content (text and images) for each section of the site. We’ll talk about what content you’ll want to update regularly and how to make that as easy as possible for you – no matter what your level of comfort with technology. Your site will have a modern design, built on a super-fast WordPress theme, and customized to your taste. Whenever possible (or useful), I'll advise on marketing strategy, design trends, technical SEO, grammar, or other areas where I have experience and expertise.
All my basic websites include an SEO plugin to help optimize the site for search engines, a (free) security plugin, a range of typography choices, a lifetime license for Kadence Pro and Kadence Blocks Pro, basic ADA accessibility compliance, and mobile responsiveness. They also include a blog setup, mailing list opt-ins, and social media integration if desired. Extended services might include an event calendar, logo design, social media covers/graphics, ecommerce, custom layouts for book series info or character detail, etc.
Other services:
–Design for social media covers, print projects like business cards, bookmarks and postcards
–Email marketing
–Maintenance and care plans to eep your site secure and up-to-date
–Website Hosting and/or hosting consultation
–Website Migration
Services
Non-Fiction
Fiction
Works with
Work experience
Self-employed
I am a highly experienced WordPress designer and developer, so I know the platform inside and out. I can custom build whatever features are required into your site: purchase links, mailing list signups, photo or video galleries, blogs, e-commerce, memberships, event calendars, custom content sections, or other advanced features - all with an eye to ensuring that you or your non-technical staff are able to update much of the content without touching any code.
Projects
Rovane Kidwell
An established romance and fantasy author, Rovane Kidwell wanted a new site to showcase her Daughters of Devon Series. We created a lush, darkly romantic feel for her new site. It showcases her book covers and Rovane's upcoming events.
Charlene Weir, author of the Susan Wren Series
With a series of six mystery novels recently re-issued by Joffee on Kindle and Audible, Charlene needed her old neglected website updated with the new covers and purchasing links. It's a relatively simple site, but it showcases fields of sunflowers from Charlene's beloved Kansas landscape, as well as all of her cozy Susan Wren Mysteries, and one posthumously published thriller.
Danny Carnahan - Musician, Teacher, Writer
Danny is a prolific writer (three mystery novels and hundreds of articles), musician, teacher, and producer. This project was a WordPress overhaul of an ancient website that we'd been patching up for about a decade. WP offered the perfect platform for showcasing Danny's novels, his articles and reviews, and his production credits, with custom displays for each. A super-fun and satisfying project!
Wes "Scoop" Nisker
Scoop Nisker is a 1970's SF Bay Area radio legend who evolved into a Buddhist teacher, monologist, and author of five books, plus a dvd of his live performances. I worked with him to give his crumbling old website a facelift, and later to highlight the launch of a new edition of his best-selling book. We worked together to turn his archived writings into blog posts, to add audio files to his Radio page, and to create a video gallery, so that his live performances could be accessed all in one place. [Sadly, Scoop passed away in July 2023 just as several of his books were being reissued), but we continue to maintain his site to keep his works in circulation.]
Boots & Bowtie
Anne and Mitchell (Mr. Bowtie and Mrs. Boots) are Americans living in the Netherlands. They love good food and they love walking, so they decided to create a blog to help others discover the delights of rambling around the Benelux region of Europe. The ultimate plan is publish a collection of the best hikes as a guide for European walkers, casual and serious.
Jonathan Dimmock, Concert Artist
I've been working with Jonathan for a decade or so, with several iterations of the website. He is an active concert organist and arts administrator, and always has lots of balls in the air. Even though the content of his website ebbs and flows with his various projects, the core content remains clean and secure, reflecting his personality and creativity. Currently, he's got a performance calendar, bios in several languages, discography, audio samples, photo galleries, and a blog. All underpinned by beautiful photographs.
StirFry Seminars & Consulting
Lee Mun Wah and StirFry Seminars, a diversity training company, hired me about 17 years ago to design some flyers and newsletters. A few years later, I re-designed their website, and have been contracting with them ever since as a de-facto webmaster. Lee Mun Wah is a nationally-known teacher, filmmaker, and poet. (We're currently working on his memoir, River of Jade.) The company website includes a course listings and training resources, e-commerce integration, seminar registration, events calendars, monthly news posts and archives, and more. After March 2020, we pivoted to include much more on-line training and events.
Leaping Deer Books
Steve Deering came to me needing a simple website to showcase his forthcoming memoir about his earlier life and adventures in Thailand. He'd worked with a designer on the book cover and logo, so around that we created a one-page site, with lots of room for expansion as needed. Steve is comfortable doing updates to the text, and is working on the technical SEO as well - not bad for a self-professed technophobe!
Sandy Miranda, Cultural Explorer
This was a redesign for Sandy's site to mark the launch of her memoir Tuning In: A Memoir of Transformation Through the Magic of Radio in 2022. The color palette of the book cover informed the colors for the redesigned site. Sandy is a radio personality and teacher as well as an author, so we built in a number of custom sections to highlight past radio shows, her travel photography, and family recipes. I've also worked with Sandy on creating re-usable press release templates and other print material.
Allison has 1 review
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Debby D.
Sep, 2023
