Apologies For My Recent Radio Silence!

There are a number of reasons for my recent silence here on “Ramblings of an Author”, and I can only apologize for not having been able to give advanced notice.

Part of the reason is that over the holiday season I was very distracted by a couple of exciting projects.

More recently, it’s because I’m stepping into a new role for this year’s Brain to Books Cyber Convention & Book Expo.

Reason #1 – My New Author Website

Back on December 21st I announced that I was setting up a new author website, and http://timothybatesonauthor.com.

This has turned out to be a much bigger project than I anticipated at first.

1. I had to decide on the appearance of the site, and I had way too many ideas at first.
2. Then I needed to check into the available WordPress templates, and decided I didn’t want to spent to much on getting one custom made for me. Instead I chose to spend many hours building my own – And I’m very pleased with the initial results.
3. Creating the basic pages for the site has taken some time, because it’s partly a migration from here, and my old Weebly site, and partly a major update of information and format.
4. I had (and still have) some interesting challenges with the formatting and indexing of the blog pages. This part of the site is still very much a work in progress.

Please feel free to check out the site, and leave me any notes, feedback, criticisms, navigation problems, etc. in the comments below.

For the short term I’ll be blogging on both sites, with slightly different content going out on the new site. Once I have that site settled in, and all the bugs worked out, I’ll be moving there exclusively.

Here’s the bonus homework. Visit the new site, and make sure you check out a blog post. Scroll to the bottom, and subscribe for email notification of new posts.

Visit The New Site

Visit The Blog

Reason #2 – Brain To Book Cyber Convention & Book Expo 2019

(Please note, the image is from the 2018 event, so the dates are wrong).

This year’s Brain to Books Cyber Convention and Book Expo will be running from April 12th through April 14th 2019, and I have agreed to take on a more active role than ever before.

Previously I’ve been a participating author, and then the Genre Manager for the Fantasy events. This in itself has been a lot of work, because it means coordinating blog tours, competitions, giveaways, live discussion panels, and a host of authors.

Well, this year, I’ve done something really crazy, and agreed to take on an overhaul of the event site, and much of the setup work for the event. But, I won’t be alone, because we always have a great team of volunteers t get everything running.

About B2BCyCon

Author Registration

Reason #3 – “Metal Earth” Model Kits

My wife and I have become hooked on the model kits from “Metal Earth”. Sandi loves to buy me the kits, and I keep making them.

They’re a fun challenge, with several levels of difficulty and size.

My wife brought me the Colosseum and the Parthenon for Christmas, and then we added another seven kits about a week ago.

I recently reviewed four of the Doctor Who themed kits, over on my new site. There is also a breakdown of how I found the assembly of the “Cyberman Head” kit (shown completed above).

Visit “Metal Earth”

“Dr Who” Break Down

Reason #4 – Creative Overload

Between all these projects, I’ve been so busy creating things that I actually ran out of material to post here.

But don’t despair, I have started working on a line-up of articles and posts for my new site, and I still have some guest posts to come on here.

Going Forward…

I’m going to allow the existing posts I have scheduled for other authors go out as planned through February.

After that I’m going to be moving all new posts to http://timothybatesonauthor.com, so please be sure to subscribe for updates. Over the coming weeks, I’ll post more reminders of what’s happening, and when.