Tag: indie publishing

A New Look–and My Fox Fetish Explained

My website has a snazzy new banner created by the talented Kyleigh Castronaro of Free to Be Covers and Designs. She also designed the logo using my little spirit animal, the fox, and two of my favorite colors. If you’re an author, you should really check out her Facebook page here. She has premade book covers at fantabulous prices, and she also does custom work.

SWG-Small-White

Why foxes? Because I love them. Like a genderqueer person (like me), they are sort of a creature between–not quite a dog, not quite a cat. They are their own unique beastie. I’ve loved them since I was small. My first story written in English (previous attempts were penned in scribbles) was about saving a family of foxes from hunters. I’m not quite sure why, but I’ve always been drawn to trickster gods and trickster animals. I suppose it’s because they live by their wits, depending on their brains more than their brawn. They’re also often misunderstood. Two of my favorites, foxes and corvids (ravens, crows, jays), are often seen as nuisances or are associated with evil. No animal is ever evil.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new look!

GDPR and Me

New regulations from the EU are going into effect May 25, 2018. These regulations are designed to protect the privacy of EU citizens on the internet. I wholeheartedly support the spirit of these regulations. I wish the U.S. would do more to protect the privacy of its citizens.

However, trying to make my website and newsletter compliant has been a big headache. I’m not a lawyer nor an IT professional. I’m an indie author. I’m a writer–and I’ve done very little of that lately because I’m so anxious about running afoul of these regulations. I have put up a privacy policy on this website. You can read it here. Apparently, somewhere behind the scenes of my website, WordPress has a database (that is supposedly mine) of the IP addresses and emails of people who comment on my blog posts. I can’t find ANY databases anywhere. Until I can find them and figure out how NOT to collect that information, I’m disabling comments.

I’m still trying to figure this out. I will probably disable the newsletter sign-up thingy until I’m certain it’s GDPR compliant. The main thing about all of this that I find so upsetting is that the big corporations, who probably present more of a threat to people’s privacy (I’m thinking of a big one right now whose CEO’s last name begins with Z) have teams of lawyers and tech gurus at their disposal. I only have me, a bunch of cats, a dog, and a husband whose reaction to all of this was, “You’re a writer. You don’t really need a website and all of that, do you?” (Um…yeah, I do.)  Unlike the big corporations, I do actually care about people’s privacy. I care about my readers. But I don’t know how to navigate any of this.

The more I try to figure all of this out, the more lost I feel. It’s enough to make me wonder if I should just stop everything. I toyed with that idea for a while. Seriously. But being a writer has been my dream since I was very small. I’m not ready to give up on it yet.