Okay, so I finally had–well, took the the time to make some updates and changes to the website. The following are the changes made:

• I updated the About Me page. It now contains some actual information so you have some notion of who I am. It also has a picture and some cleaned up links to my social media profiles on X, Substack, Insta, and Goodreads.
• On the template, showing in the bottom left corner are icons that link to my X, Insta, and Goodreads. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a Substack icon available for WP sites right now. (I’ll be sure to add it if that changes.) Because these icons/links are baked into the template, they will show up wherever you on the site–posts, pages, etc.
• I added a new page (rather than a new post) to provide some details on The Aos Si’s Gift. This new page has a picture of the dust jacket for the (upcoming) hardcover. (Note, I’m still waiting on the evaluation copy for the hardcover.) It also contains some of the purchase links, a blurb, and the cover copy. You can visit that page here.
• A sort of details section under the main pages list. For now, this only includes an expandable menu for Published Work which contains a link to a dedicated page for The Aos Si’s Gift. When I complete the next book and have it ready for release, I will be updating the list to include that book as well. Eventually, I intend to also have it sorted by series, but we’ll see what happens.

In addition, I plan to make the following changes on other pages:

• On the Links page, I will be adding expandable menus similar to what I’ve done with the major template. These will be as follows:
  • Socials: will link to X, Goodreads, Instagram, and my main profile on Substack
  • Web Publicatons: will link to Screaming Into the Void on Substack
  • Purchase Links: will be sorted into sub-menus by series and/or book and will be dedicated only to purchase links, but will not link to the book page here. All of these will, of course, be external links. I will try to keep these links as up-to-date as possible, and to the extent that I’m aware of where it’s available.

That’s pretty much it…what I’ve done, and what I plan to do in the near future. I know this is a little bit of a lesson learned, because I’m sure some people may have watched some of these changes happening live. The next time, I’ll pick an exceptionally low traffic time/day and make sure that the changes all get pushed out at that time. I don’t know whether I’ll need a “down for maintenance” message for that or not, but we’ll see.

Either way, all of this is an effort to clean up my website, make it look at least a bit more professional, and begin the process of figuring out my Brand (c)(tm)(R)–something I apparently have to have, I guess. In all seriousness, this is all about just building a somewhat professional appearance, especially for my website. I’ll be settling everything else over time, as I’m getting a handle for things. I’m pretty sure that color schemes, images used, and all sorts of other things will contribute. So, I’ll be working on that over time as well.

Off of the professional appearances for the website train, I’m also working on a long-running project of mine: complete divestment from Windows and other Microsoft products. I have become increasingly dissatisfied with Windows as an operating system, Office as a software platform, and (in fact) Microsoft as an entity. The last straw has been their decision to force an upgrade from Windows 10 to 11–something I cannot presently financially afford–beginning October of this year. That has combined with them deciding to foist such features as Copilot and Recall without permission or the ability to permanently disable or remove said features. These aren’t things I asked for, and nor are they things that I wanted.

I have already been running a dual boot with Linux Mint since about 2020 on my desktop and ported my laptop from Win11 to Mint as soon as I purchased it. So, it’s not too much of a jump. I’ve found software (OnlyOffice) which seems to contain all of the features and functions which I already needed (or wanted) in office-related software. I’m currently running a test to see how it goes. If this works out well–including PDF exportation–then I will be making more permanent changes.

By way of update, I am working on the first draft of the second book of the Wolf of Vespin series which began with The Aos Si’s Gift. I am working on doing some cleanup and touch-up of the first four chapters (which are currently sitting at a combined 17.5k words). This week has been slow going for a variety of reasons, but I should be able to pick up the pace in the near future.

That’s the long and short of what’s going on and where things are headed. I’ll try to keep these running updates going on at least weekly, as well as spinning some of my efforts on Substack back up to expected capacity. In the meantime, I need to take a break (like a physical one hour break). So, good night, and God bless.