Thursday, November 08, 2007

The Uncensored Version

There are a few things to point out about the new Spinetingler and since this is my own blog this will be the blunt version.

One of the reasons for the delays had to do with a reviewer moving to another city. Not just moving house across town, but one of those big moves. Those reviews still aren’t in, and ultimately, I decided not to wait any longer. There are likely a few authors out there wondering where the reviews of their books are… As always, there are no guarantees anyway, but hopefully I’ll have those reviews for the Winter Issue in January.

Another reason for the delay: the new format. Well, and the reason for the new format. I’ve never been the technological brains behind the operation, but now I’m pretty much flying solo, in life and everything else. I did the best I could to deliver as close to usual as possible (the download files proving to eat days of my life because I just couldn’t get the one file to upload, hence the split to two files), and while there have been a few complaints about the new look of things, nobody’s complained that it isn’t functional, just that it isn’t as flashy as the old site. Sorry. That’s beyond me. I can design, but implementation is a whole other ballpark and I don’t have access to or control over the site domain.

The next few months will involve a lot of careful consideration of the future of the ezine. It comes down to me being able to handle it on my own, and I have to consider how much time that takes from other things. We’re already full for the Winter Issue, which is edited by Jack Getze, and something special is in the works for the Spring/Summer Issue in May.

Frankly, I’m wiped out from this, but now I have to give my head a shake and get on with doing the interviews for the next issue… Once I start feeling like this is all I do and I have no time left for writing, it'll be the beginning of the end for the ezine. I'm not actively trying to recruit a technical volunteer to help, because my experience with all other contributors is that life all too often gets in the way. And I can't be upset when volunteers have other legitimate demands pressing on their time, so they can't review/edit/read. That's part of the deal from the outset, but that means the same thing for a technological support person. And to be blunt, there's enough bloody drama with the divorce already. Part of the reason I was behind was also because of my October deadline on the last manuscript. I feel like my brain was already mush and now someone took blenders to it.

I've also gone about this in stages, hoping any glitches will be caught before hundreds of people start trying to download the files, so if you're a subscriber and wondering why you haven't heard from me yet, that's why. In a few days I'll send out the notices, although obviously if you're here reading this, you can be done reading the new issue by then!

8 comments:

pattinase (abbott) said...

Sandra-If you ever think of some way I can help you, you know where I am.

Sandra Ruttan said...

Thanks Patti. We'll see what happens.

Anonymous said...

Hey Sandra,
Never mind the complaints. I think people just didn't realise you had to do it all on your lonesome! Good job girl. xx
chel

angie said...

It's an enormous undertaking and you've done a damn fine job handling it solo with this issue. And Patti's right. Don't be afraid to ask for help!

Sandra Ruttan said...

Thanks Chel, and thanks for the email.

Angie, thanks, though I find myself wondering if it might not be time to do what we were talking about, or at least begin the long-term plans for that in the future... I can focus on my strengths and let the things that frustrate me fall by the wayside. Right now I'm just playing with ideas.

Stephen Blackmoore said...

What Angie said. This is a Herculean feat.

Speaking of help, I'd suggest checking out www.wordpress.com. It's like Blogger, and just as simple, but with a lot more features and the ability to manage your layout much more powerfully.

You could, for example, have tabs at the top of all your pages to take you to all of your interviews, fiction, reviews, etc. and use the main page as a table of contents.

It's really a content management system, rather than just a blog. I think it might make your Spinetingler life, should you choose to continue it, much easier.

And it's free.

Sandra Ruttan said...

I tried some fiddling with Wordpress, but in reality just didn't have time to learn a whole new system right now. See, you can't custom modify headers in Wordpress from Safari, so it tells me, so I ended up downloading firefox and on it went, to the point where I thought "screw it, I could have done this by now in blogger". And now that I finally got the custom header to work, I'm happy. :)

Mindy Tarquini said...

I think the new issue looks great. As usual, you amaze me with your tenaciousness.