Portfolio
I have built and worked on many sites, including
Leon Steelgrave
I am particularly proud of this site. Leon is a cyberpunk author, and I buikt him a site which is dark but not actually black, and uses stock photos that strongly suggest his genre.
Ken bebelle
I like Ken’s site not just because it turned out nice but because it shows that it’s possible to build a nice author website on WordPress.com. That didn’t used to be possible.
Randy Surles
Randy is an editor who had an existing site on WordPress.com. I revamped his site using Gutenberg, and also helped rewrite the content.
Florida Writers Book Expo
The Flordia Writers Association held its first virtual book expo in May 2021, and I built the site.
Jerri Williams
Jerri Williams is a former FBI agent and crime and non-fiction author. I designed a new site for her with a custom home page. I also added a second blog to the site so that her blog posts could remain separate from her podcast.
The Creative Penn
The Creative Penn is a site where authors can learn how to create, publish, and market their first book, and where to go from there.
I provide ongoing maintenance and updates including SSL and plugin replacements due to conflicts, and I add new features on request. Recent changes include tweaks to the site’s AMP pages, a new more efficient search feature, and the addition of a search box in the menu bar.
Andrew Watts
This author site was built in Divi for a self-published author. (There’s a little too much red and black for my taste, but it does work out well.) I updated the site for Andrew, including adding links, tweaking the CSS to improve the site’s flow, and optimizing the site for speed.
Lateral Action
Lateral Action is the site of author, poet, and business coach Mark McGuinness. I helped Mark update a decade old site. First we switched it to HTTPS, and then I identified and replaced outdated plugins, tech that modern web browsers no longer support (Flash video, for example), and page elements that could look better (outdated signup forms).
Mark is also a current support client.
Author Website in a Box
Author Website in a Box solves the headache of setting up a WordPress website. It packs an entire author website into one easy to install package, and includes everything from a pre-built home page to bookshelf and contact pages.
Lisa Lilly
Lisa’s site needed a lot of work, including both updates and a migration to a new hosting company.
I added HTTPS, imported blog posts from Lisa’s old blog, and then moved the site from Godaddy to Bluehost. The site is now faster, costs less to run, and and will have better SEO as a result of the added blog posts.
Wiki / FAQ
Here’s a fun little weekend project.
At one point I looked into building a turnkey website hosting service, and as part of that process I also set up an FAQ where users can find answers.
There are several free FAQ themes for WP, but they all looked awful. So in addition to answering all the questions, I also had to modify the CSS and layout so that the site actually looked nice.
It was a small project, but a fun one because it was such a change of pace.
Dreamwatch
Dreamwatch is an indie press. It had a well established site that needed a refresh.
I created a new front page for the site, and added a second blog. The new home page is designed to bring all three of Dreamwatch’s main activities to your attention, and entices you to find out more.
Waystone Press
Waystone is a newly-launched small press that focuses on fantasy and related non-fiction (studies of historical myths, for example). I designed and built the site using Genesis, found all of the press’s books on Amazon and added them to the site, and completed other important parts of setting up the site.
The New Praetorians
The New Praetorians is a new series from an author named RK Syrus. I was tasked with creating a minimalist low-effort site on WordPress.com that promotes the series and is easy to update.
Tom Fowler Writes
Tom Fowler is a thriller author. I host his websites, and I also recently rebuilt his author site using a one-page template. It’s simple, but I really like it.
Julia Vee
This was a simple rebrand, and it came out rather well. Julia is an established SF author with a new urban fantasy series which was being shopped to publishers. I had to rebrand her site so that it looked less like an SF author’s site and more like the site of an urban fantasy author. I did not have a lot to work with (the series is still unpublished) but I think this project came out well.
Burns & Lea Books
This was a simple website refresh project for a publisher based in Louisville. I was tasked with cleaning up the design without significantly changing it. (I like these smaller refresh jobs. They’re not profitable but it’s nice to be able to leave a site looking better than it before I started.)
Northern Virginia Writers Club
My local writing club’s new website was a fun project which I proposed and carried out pro bono. It has a simple design which we all think looks great.
Mystic Writers
Mystic Writers is a small collective of writers based in Connecticut. Their site was scratch-built, and deliberately kept simple so that you noticed their work rather than the site itself.
Jody Lebel
Jody Lebel is a book narrator and voice-over actor. She wanted a simple single-page site which promoted her services. The site I built (and host) is colorful in an understated way. It tells visitors what they need to know without getting in the way.
Atomic Centaur
Atomic Centaur was going to be a new SF&F fan blog. This blog never got off the ground, but I did take it as far as finishing the site design. I gave the site a theme that practically shouted SF blog, and tweaked the colors to replace the muddy stock colors with a vibrant palette.
NOVA Writing Events
This is an event calendar I designed and launched in early 2020 / late 2019. The site collects all the writing events in the Northern Virginia region, including conferences, workshops, book fairs, etc. The site was built by adapting my Author Website in a Box project to fill a very different purpose.
Allise Hurd
Allise Hurd is a children’s author. In late 2018 I designed a site for her using a simple and clean WordPress theme. I continued to support and host Allise’s site until late 2019. (The site is now defunct.)
Kylie Quillinan
Kylie needed a few small changes made to her website, and I was happy to oblige. I added a new background image, replaced the bookshelf plugin and reuploaded the book listings, and tweaked the header so it blended in better with the body of the site.
This was a small project, but I am pleased with how it came out.
Online Plumbing Advice.com
Mike Quick is a plumber based in Fredericksburg, VA, and he has also written a few books. He has several sites, and one of them (onlineplumbingadvice.com) was a very basic affair based on the twenty eleven WordPress theme (Wayback Machine).
I replaced the theme with a better design, tweaked it to suit his blogging style, and fixed spelling and formatting errors in the content. I also added the usual security and SEO plugins on the backend.
Lucinda Berry
Lucinda came to me with a request: could I please help her figure out how to set up her website’s new theme. This was a complex theme, with a lot of built-in features, but but one thing it did not have was easy to follow instructions. The finished site was simple compared to the demo, but it still looks great.
Her site is no longer active.