I met with a friend who is a web designer on Monday and will meet with him again tomorrow morning.  Monday’s meeting was to discuss the situation with Google and what I’m wanting to do plus lay out a basic plan.  The rest of the time we were playing catch up since we hadn’t seen each other in a few months.  Tomorrow we’ll get the basics of the new web site set up.  At this point I think I’m going to run with four blogs as part of the new site.  One will continue the fantasy and heroic adventure along with a good deal of pulp and one will focus on science fiction.  I’ll have a new one that will be noir and detective fiction, since it really doesn’t fit on either of the two current blogs.  I’ll also run a fourth that will be Texas and Southwest history.  I had a column at Jason Waltz’s Home of Heroics that ran under the title Dispatches From the Lone Star Front.  I’ve done one or two since that venue folded, but they really don’t fit here all that well.  I suspect a blog with a pure historical focus would be successful once it found its audience.  I suspect the overlap of that audience with the audience of Adventures Fantastic would be rather small.  If nothing else, I could reach a new group of readers.

What the new site won’t have for a couple of weeks, at least, is a store for original fiction.  I want to get a new computer before I start to produce files that can be read on an ereader.  The machine I’m writing this on  is over a decade old.  My son will start middle school in the fall, and my wife is pushing for a new computer he can use.  It might be a few weeks before that purchase is made.  I want to research what would be the best machine for our needs, and I don’t want to rush.  I’ve got a jury summons for Monday, so if I get selected that will slow everything down.

I’m in the middle of reading all the short fiction nominees for the Hugos.  There’s a week left to vote, so I probably won’t read all the novels by the deadline, not that I would try anyway.  I’ve got some other novels I’m needing to get to soon.  I’ll post my thoughts on those as I get them done.  I’ve finished the short stories, so that post will go up by Saturday at the latest.  Then the novellettes.  The novellas are a bit longer, but I think I can get them done.  We’ll see.

So that’s how things stand at the moment.  I’ll let you know when the new site goes live.