The picture above should probably read, “Build your author platform they said, it’ll be fun they said.”

Many of you out there in the digital ether know I’ve been sporadically posting on this blog for uhh… er…

Hmm.

…somewhere close to 6 years now (or more). 6 years worth of posts ranging from short stories and rants to diary entries and helpful articles. Well as of now, that blog is GONE.

G-O-N-E.

At first I was devastated as how would anyone know I’d moved? Would I end up in everyone’s spam filter now? But first, a life lesson from yours truly.

Remember when I said I was doing some courses for writing with the Australian Writer’s Centre?

Well, despite it being Christmas, I decided to load up the course and do at least module one. It was quite interesting, and one of the biggest takeaways for me was that I should check out some other author websites to see what works and what doesn’t!

JK Rowling’s site is mind blowing and absolutely my favourite. Too bad I am poor and cannot actually make something like that. I looked up some other faves (George R. R. Martin, Alison Tait and Brandon Sanderson just to name a few) and found some looked dated or too cluttered while others (Go Al!) were very clear and to the point. There is one top author whose website is absolutely awful and cannot be unseen, but I leave that for you!

Back to the lesson! I decided that many of these people had different handles for EVERYTHING across social media. What a farce! I put my foot down and chose thetjedwards as my universal handle and website. As I went wild changing usernames and handles, I rushed to my blog to do as the bloggers do and blog about it only to be greeted by the least welcoming message that stopped my heart for a few moments.

Now, you can imagine my confusion. I hadn’t changed anything in WordPress (or so I thought) so when this message slapped me in the face, I stared blankly at it.

What-the-actual-fellowship-of-the-ring?! *Note, I did not say fellowship of the ring*

I got onto their help pages where community members are prompt in helping you out, and in receiving wrath. A lovely lady told me in the shortest terms possible that once you delete your blog, it’s gone. Needless to say that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I down voted her and wrote a scathing reply only to be told that she doesn’t work for them, she is just telling me what she knows.

After a few minutes of hyperventilating, I calmed down enough to retrace my chaotic, author platform building steps, and in doing so I came across Gravitar. Gravitar is apparently WordPress and vice versa, so in changing my user name, I changed my blog. In changing my blog, that deleted my old blog. No verification required. No password since I was already logged in. Nothing. I must have missed a tick box, or so I was told.

If I could have burst into flames then, I would have.

Luckily my whole blog had moved seamlessly across and I’d lost nothing but any link to my former blog from others with no option to forward it across. Yay. But I was more livid with the fact that I could delete my blog simply by missing a box and don’t get me started on the fact the website is still there and it could be activated if they so desired.

Ah well, learn from me friends! Do not make that same mistake! Find the tick box that leaves your old blog alive so you can forward them ahead!

All that said, hopefully you’ll all follow this blog and this time next year I’ll have an agent. My website is coming along slowly but surely (Oh god, what happened to HTML? How do I even PHP?) but now that everything has the same theme, hopefully I will spread my social wings and fly!

Anyway, how is your holiday season going? Hopefully well, and if not hopefully at least your writing is! Let me know in the comments below if you made it across!