Well, after days of reading tutorials and watching youtube videos, I FINALLY have a website! (For anyone interested in a similar DIY website job, I’m using Bluehost with a WordPress site built using the Divi Builder template.) Anyway, so here’s my first ever blog post! To be honest, I just want to check the blog section actually works but I might as well do this properly, SO… I’ll dedicate this post to why the image on my homepage looks like a random collection of items you’d find in a jumble sale… but is in fact perfect. (BTW, I love a good jumble sale.)
I spent a long time faffing with different design ideas for this website, and it was becoming ever more hideous and garish (it turns out that design is really not my thing) so in the end I scrapped the other draft templates and went with something simple – something so simple even I couldn’t muck it up. White pages, black text, a few pictures. But then, of course, the risk was designing something so sterile it might as well have been a website selling surgical bandages. I wanted something personal on the front page, and that jumble sale image represents me and my life. Here’s why:
Umbrella – I live in the wettest city in the world. Probably.
Dog – I had two westies when I started writing The Nightjar, often sitting on my lap while I typed. (In total, I’ve been owned by four westies over the years.) Sadly, I lost one during the editing stage for the book, but I did manage to immortalize them both in The Nightjar.
Football – I spend a lot of my spare time up to my ankles in mud, watching my boys play football.
Apple – a link to my day job (yes, I am employed as the wicked witch in Snow White).
Books – predictably, I always have my nose in one.
Typewriter – I didn’t type The Nightjar on one but a typewriter probably would have been more reliable than the laptops I did use. (RIP laptop #1.)
Feather & bird – both link to the book’s plot (top secret).
Plant – also sort of in the book, and an homage to the fact I’ve never managed to keep one alive for more than a fortnight. (The harder I try, the shorter their lifespan, for some reason. I’m not sure House Mielikki would let me join.)
Teacup – because tea is fundamental to my very existence.