When I decided to write books for a living, I really had no idea all the non-writing related activities that would entail. Learn about marketing? Sure. Send out a bi-monthly newsletter? Why not. Build a relationships with my readers? Yay!

But to make all of that possible, I needed one key thing. A website. I spoke to lots of my writer friends about it and their advice boiled down to two key points. Having a website built by a professional is hugely expensive. And it would also leave me dependent on the whims of my future web-master or -mistress. So I decided… long sigh… to build it myself.

At slightly over twelve months since making that decision, the page is mostly built and I’m writing this post. Take from that what you will.

So, long story short, if speed had been my goal then building this site myself would have been the wrong decision. But I knew it would take me a while to wrap my head around all the various moving parts of website building and I planned for that. And in going about it this way: I learned a lot, I ended up with a site I actually like, and if I ever decide I want to change it, the power is in my hands. That last part is worth a lot to me.

So for those of you who want to know: the theme I use for this website is Divi by Elegant Designs. The online tutorial I learned to use the theme from was created by Darrel Wilson. I thoroughly recommend both. The quantity of sweat, blood, and tears could have been much higher!