Doesn’t that sound like one of those Wheel of Fortune before and after puzzles?

The new sarazarr.com is now more or less fully functional. There still seems to be an image quality problem when you look at the book covers in Explorer, and in the sidebar they should be three across, not two plus one (also only happening in Explorer as far as we can tell). Investigating. In Chrome, Firefox, and Safari it seems fine. So, here are five new things about the site:

1. If you click on the book covers in the side bar, or go to the books page and click from there, there’s a little background on each book in terms of the process of writing or coming up with the idea.

2. Every book now includes an order link to indiebound. Here’s the deal with that: just because I support independent book stores does not mean I think chains are evil. I really don’t. B&N has been very supportive of my books, for example, and some of our local B&Ns have amazing staff. (Hi, Angie!) But, I think if people want to get my book from Amazon or B&N or wherever else, they’ll just do it and don’t need any help from me with a link to show them how. On the other hand, they may not realize there’s a great neighborhood store nearby or that indie stores also have a lovely site where you can find a lot of information all in one place.

3. I’ve added a F.A.Q. page. If there’s some question I seem to have missed, let me know! It can grow and grow and grow as big as we want it!

4. There is also now an On Writing page, with some of my thoughts on writing. Only some. I feel like I might be constantly changing this page, because my experiences and conclusions based on those experiences are always changing.

5. My bio is now far less abbreviated, and there is other handy stuff such as the next three events automatically feeding from Google calendar into the sidebar, as well as automatically feeding onto the appearances page. I know some of you will miss the Rand-O-Sara. I’m sorry. Change is hard, but necessary.

5a. Comments are revolutionized! You can now get email notification of new comments, and the comments are “nested” (aka threaded). Hooray! If you typically read this blog on LiveJournal, never mind, but for sarazarr.com readers, hopefully this changes your life for the better.

Many many thanks and cheers to my designer/friend Chris for all his hard work. And now, enjoy your safe, sane 4th of July weekend!