Author: admin

Jonathon Foster, screenwriter, playwright and author tries his hand at a new kind of writing media, the saturated hurdy-gurdy that is the world of internet blogging. His story begins with a book, “The Autobiography of a Narcissist”, which is his first novel. When his attempts at finding an agent and publisher for this work failed, he decided to take the brave leap into “vanity-publishing”, which is perhaps poignant considering the title of his novel.

Despite the negative connotations, self publishing is becoming an increasingly viable and surprisingly affordable means with which an author can produce his or her work. The blog begins towards the end of the writing of the novel, and is released online for purchase shortly thereafter. He tells about about the journey, the rejections and the marketing and the pros and cons of the decision he makes along the way. In March, be blogged about print-on-demand which I found really very interesting. Its obvious (not not at first) that the blog began primarily as a marketing tool for the novel, but at some point took on a much greater meaning. This is most evident as the author writes about his father’s death.

The template is standard blogger, but simple and not confronting. The color scheme is pleasant the the layout more than adequete, although I’d love to rip that blogger header out of the CSS, but thats just one of my pet hates. The author is an author, not a web designer and the good thing about “real” authors and blogs is that they can actually write. I enjoyed reading the blog and I was so enamored with Fosters post about print-on-demand publishing that it prompted a 3-week hiatus from my regular reviews as I dived headfirst into my own witting. for this reason alone I am awarding Foster extra points, his blog actually made me do something. Sure there could be a bias here.. I’m a writer, he’s a writer… but hey, blogging is just a contemporary term for writing. Well done and good luck with book Jonathon.

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I loaded this site into my browser several times before actually sitting down to read it. Each time I thought I would have time to read through the archives, I was interrupted by something else. One thing I kept remembering about “A Woman of Many Parts” was the vivid design. This much usage of oranges and reds can easily become distracting to the actual site, but in this case, the design turned into something that allowed me to remember the site before even reading it. That’s an indubitable sign of a design that works.

As I started from the beginning, I learned that Minerva, the author of the site, did not originally start this weblog to chronicle her bout with breast cancer. And according to the first available entry on this site, “A Woman of Many Parts” is a resurgence of a previous blog the author kept. The comments on this site indicate that a loyal following was definitely glad to see her back in the blogging world.

By reading the archives the start back in June 2005, it is extremely evident that Minerva is a writer. She drizzles her daily entries with original poetry and other entries are chock full of metaphors and similes. While it would be easy for most authors to go overboard when showing off their literary knowledge, this author keeps figures of speech in check and in turn complements her entries very well.

Minerva is a very personal writer. If something is affecting her daily life or if she’s struggling to find the answer to a situation that she’s currently experiencing, she writes about it. The majority of her daily updates stem from relationships she’s working through or how her life has changed so dramatically over the few months before this site started and the entire journey through her archives. Because she writes this way, it makes it very easy for readers to grab a personal connection with this author. This is why she has such a loyal group of readers that appear to be supportive and encouraging in their comments.

Readers see Minerva experiencing many “firsts” in her life and she doesn’t hide anything when relaying it through her writing. She spends her twins’ 10th birthday without them or how she experiences life while not involved in a relationship, for example. Beginning in late-August when Minerva finds a lump in her breast, we experience more frightening firsts with her – chemotherapy and a shaved head.

This is a site where readers will experience, to a much, much lesser degree, the ups and downs that Minerva is going through simply by following along in her regular entries. She doesn’t leave out many details, but doesn’t drone on and on about things readers would find boring or monotonous. In other words, this author has a great handle on writing. It’s no wonder she’s been in the process of writing her first novel.

As I’ve stated, this is a blog that will grab the emotional side of a reader and draw him/her in for the duration of the site. It’s certainly worth visiting and perhaps, for a lot of people, worth bookmarking. NULL

A bright, vibrant layout welcomed me as I loaded this blog in my browser and from the title, I thought it might be a blog containing the daily gripes of some random teenage girl. To my delight, I was wrong. My eyes were completely caught off-guard by the bright enthusiastic colors, which was a welcome sight after seeing so many dreary colors on other blogs.

Upon reading the entries, I found myself getting very focused on what the author wrote. By the time I finished reading, I felt as if I had spoken to an old friend and learned quite a lot about her. I believe Minerva puts a lot of emotion into her writing, which is evident by the posts that I read. It appears as though she intentionally writes the posts as if she’s speaking to a friend, not an unknown reader.

The design of this blog speaks well for itself. The layout is composed of bright colors, which are easy on the eye with a “retro” feel that can be seen in the graphics and background. The great thing about this design is that anything can be posted over it. I mean, Minerva could probably call her readers every name in the book and the reader would still feel like they were complimented when they depart from the blog.

This blog features a “tag board” for easy commenting and cancer resources. The cancer resources serve as a special feature because it’s obviously close to Minerva’s heart as she talks about living with breast cancer in many of her posts. Overall, Minerva has a very “matter-of-fact” writing style, which I enjoyed and I would definitely recommend her blog to anyone. Great read!NULL

For a moment I thought I’d stumbled into Myspace, that notoriously clunky template used by the world dominating social networking site. But no, this was your stock blogger blog but with dozens of little touch ups that make the whole site look kind of busy. Some of it is good-busy, but mostly just cluttered. A website is a package, so design is part of the criteria. Vlad says he is 34 in his profile, but his lifestyle seems much younger. He enjoys sports and “hangin wit da boyz” so maybe the design is actually carefully premeditated to attract the myspace crowd.

Thankfully Jay’s personal posts are pretty well to the point. No lengthy agonizing, or introspection. They are usually about sports or odd things he has heard in the news and deemed worthy to grace his pages and make fairly interesting reading if you are into that thing. I’m not really, but even still the odd post is entertaining enough and he has no immediate problems with grammar or spelling which is always a bonus. His witty side-swipes that punctuate the posts are fun too.

I’m really not familiar with the relevance of sport blogging and how it plays against main stream media but then I’ve never really been into it. I guess its one of those things. Vlad certainly is and shows great enthusiasm for the topic, but he also blogs about a wider array of male-orienteted pursuits. The cluttered template distracted me too much. Jay. Blog. is good for a stopover but lacks the power to absorb you or tempt to return.
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I knew exactly what I was going to get with The Stories You Cannot
Tell. My first thought was that this was going to be a site similar
to cubichell and other places where people come and post stories of
their life. The only difference is that these stories would be the
ones you shouldn’t be re-telling or would be telling in a normal
situation.

When the site first loaded I was greeted with huge text. This could
be due the fact that I am on a mac, and sure enough when I hoped over
to firefox it was a bit better. I was still a bit put off by the huge
font from the mac and decided best to shrink the font down as much as
possible.

The design of the site is a standard 3 column layout with the main
area being in the center. Along the left hand side is a FAQ, then a
bunch of links to other sites most of which will give the owner some
money. The right hand column is a little better with links to all the
posts, most popular and then some other sites the author likes. At
the bottom of the site are even more links for products.

The posts range in topics by various authors. Some are about previous
lovers, others about their kids, and others about work. I shouldn’t
go into detail because these are “The Stories You Cannot Tell” anyone.
Some kept me entertained, but most were not enjoyable at all. I
recently saw the movie Hostel and that movie disturbed me. You had to
sit there and take in what was being presented and that was how I felt
with this site.

While the owner of the site makes every effort to make sure the
stories are the focus of the site, I cannot help but notice how many
different links to 3rd party products there are. Additionally it is
quiet clear that there are several authors and not just the owner who
post to this site, and yet I get a feeling from the owner that he is
taking credit for all of this. Was the site readable? Yes. Will I
go back? Probably not. Should you check it out? Maybe. This site
while having a definite niche, did not impress me the way that it
could.NULL