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Building a Citadel in Cyberspace


When every day you receive an email from a different website developer offering to design a new site for you, complete with razzle-dazzle graphics and up-to-the-minute Search Engine Optmization (SEO), well, then you know it's time to act. Time to build a new home in Cyberspace. How hard can it be, right? What you don't expect are these existential questions. What IS a website, anyway? If you're an author, is it just an engine to sell, sell, sell your books? For some, maybe. But for most, I think it's a heckuva lot more than that. I remember back in the day, when the Internet was in its infancy, how after publishing a book a writer-friend discovered a review online . . . a nasty, negative piece of work. Search her name and that review was the only thing you would find. Was she upset? I drew one obvious conclusion: I needed a website to defend against the hostiles. Trust me, they are out there, now in far greater numbers than ever before. A redoubt, then. A bastion, a fortress, a castle. And while you're building this castle, and going beyond the utilitarian, why not try to create something beautiful? Maybe think of it as a citadel -- as a glorious citadel that commands and defends a city. Too much? Am I getting carried away? Of course, I've heard the nay-sayers. A website? they say. Why bother? A website is so yesterday. Well, maybe for some. But not for writers it's not. Not for those who have stories to tell. And so after poking around, investigating author sites, I decided to call in the pros at AuthorBytes. What you see above is a wireframe -- part of a siteplan, if you will. What else can I tell you? A citadel is nothing without a populace -- not just to defend but to celebrate. So, yes, helping to populate this site will keep me out of trouble for the next while.
Ken McGoogan
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1 comment:

Unknown said...

Great so far! Cheers, Trish

Before turning mainly to books about arctic exploration and Canadian history, Ken McGoogan worked for two decades as a journalist at major dailies in Toronto, Calgary, and Montreal. He teaches creative nonfiction writing through the University of Toronto and in the MFA program at King’s College in Halifax. Ken served as chair of the Public Lending Right Commission, has written recently for Canada’s History, Canadian Geographic, and Maclean’s, and sails with Adventure Canada as a resource historian. Based in Toronto, he has given talks and presentations across Canada, from Dawson City to Dartmouth, and in places as different as Edinburgh, Melbourne, and Hobart.