Deborah Woehr

I was looking for a new theme for The Writers Buzz when I happened to stumble upon this one. At first glance, I thought I was looking at a bunch of flames. Then I took a closer look and saw the skull and then the people in the background and inside the flames. Every time I look at this picture, I see something different. More to the point, it fits the stories that I’ve been writing about all this time, and that’s what I liked about it.

I tried to visit the theme author’s site and found this stupid global warming site with a Kubric theme, of all things. What a disappointment! I was hoping to find more horror-related themes to recommend.

I’ve added a new link category as well as a very interesting blog on the subject of horror writing and writers. Guy Adams, the author of The Dark Room, is a published author and Senior Editor of Humdrumming Publishers. For those of you who are interested in this genre (thinking of you, Ben and Fred), it’s definitely worth a look.

Aaron Brazell has written a great post called 10 Things You Should Know About WordPress 2.1, which explains the bells and whistles of the latest release of WordPress. I think everyone should read this article, along with Lorelle’s Fear Not WordPress 2.1 and WordPress Plugins before they upgrade.

I’m glad to see that they’ve made improvements on the Rich Text Editor (which I’ve long since turned off since the 2.0 upgrade) and the Image Uploader. They’ve also implemented a WordPress-to-WordPress import feature that will allow you to combine two or more WP blogs. That caught my eye and made me think of my On Book Design blog, which I haven’t touched since June. I thought about importing those posts onto this blog, since I have touched on book designing when I published through Lulu.

But I’ve decided against it because users have complained about their blog rolls getting screwed up. Until I read more about that and how to fix it, I’m not going to update this blog just yet.

Over the past several weeks, my “contact me “form has been attacked by spammers. As I was writing yesterday, my email notifier kept bonging at me whenever these bots would send me their crap. I finally got sick of it and looked on the WordPress Plugin site, where I found the plugin below. It requires users to answer a simple question before hitting Send. That should take care of these intrusions, I hope.

WordPress Contact Form with Spam Protection

This is an excerpt of an interview of me, given by Laura Spencer, who writes for Associated Content. I’ve given interviews of other writers for The Buzz in the past, but this was the first time I’ve ever been interviewed.

Deborah Woehr’s popular blog, The Writers Buzz, highlights the work of new authors by posting excerpts and reviews of their books. Deborah also has a blog under her own name at www.deborahwoehr.com where she comments on the writing industry and on her writing experience. She also blogs professionally for Syntagma Media.

When she makes observations about writing and about books, Deborah knows what she’s talking about. Deborah is an editor, a writer, and (of course) a blogger. She recently created the 2006 Writer’s Blog Anthology, and has several other books are currently in progress.

The reviews and excerpts on Deborah’s The Writers Buzz cover a wide variety of genres. From fiction to nonfiction, from Young Adult to Horror, from Romance to Politics - this blog reviews them all. In the interview that follows, Deborah shares a few of her favorite titles.

Deborah Woehr’s blogging skills have already landed her a spot on the C-List at Blogebrity and The Writers Buzz has the potential to become even more popular as booklovers and writers explore them as a way to discover and discuss favorite new books.

Recently, I caught up with Deborah and she kindly agreed to the following interview. I think you’ll find that she’s got some interesting things to say about blogging, publishing, and where the writing industry is going.

Read more at: Deborah Woehr of the Writers Buzz

I found “Blooks” Are in Bloom while researching for information to answer a question for an interview. Yes, I’m being profiled. More on that later.

Big-name publishers such as Putnam and Little, Brown & Co. have begun releasing books based on blogs. “I am now more open to blogs than I would have been [before],” says Judy Clain, executive editor at Little, Brown. And a dozen new businesses have sprung up with the intent of helping scribes turn their blogs into books. Blogbasedbooks.com, specializing in blooks, has set up shop on the Net.

I checked out their website and found one blook about the stewardess who got fired for posting “inappropriate” pictures of herself in uniform on her blog. That doesn’t interest me in the slightest, but the Reality TV crowd will surely love it.

I’d be more apt to buy one of the Iraqi soldier blooks or the Julie & Julia blook (a blogger’s experience with cooking Julia Child recipes). It’s comforting to know that sensationalists aren’t the only ones who are attracting publishers.

I’ll be watching this trend over the next year to see if it “takes off” with the public eye. If it does, then we may be witness to a new publishing revolution.

How many of you have written a blook or are writing one right now? If you’re not, would you consider this option?

I’m not sure when this latest version is coming out or what features it’s going to bring, but the new 2.05 version has just been released, which contains more security patches. I just updated this blog and The Writers Buzz due to my newfound paranoia of hackers (i.e., the demise of the Murder and Mayhem wikki). You might want to do the same.

Thanks to Internet Explorer 7, the Wucoco theme I had on this blog no longer works. I’ve tacked this theme up so you could read my Lulu series. According to my husband’s PC, this theme works. But if it doesn’t on your computer, please let me know.

Update: As you can see, I’ve switched back to the Wucoco theme and tacked a note in my sidebar to let IE users know what the problem is. It works fine in every other browser except IE7, which is new and obviously buggy.

FSB Associates is holding its first annual bookfair to help promote authors online. They specialize helping new authors spread the word about their books. This bookfair, scheduled to run from October 3-5, is the latest in their publicity efforts.

I’ve been working with them for the past year to review the books they’ve promoted. Because of them, I’ve been introduced to books that I may never have read and enjoyed.
These people are great at what they do.

To see what they’ll be doing, click here.

I hope to see you there!

I’m writing this post for those of you who don’t yet have a domain for your blogs and are thinking about getting one. You’ll find several webhosts out there who lure customers in with a free domain. I acquired the majority of my domains this way, thinking that I would save money by not having to pay a monthly fee for GoDaddy in addition to webhosting fees.

Although I have saved money over the long run, they did charge me for the domain after one year. I paid around $70 for The Writers Buzz. These hosts don’t announce this charge in big bold letters, so I thought I’d make you aware of this.

Because of the transfer fiasco with Writers Blog Alliance, I would not recommend signing up for a hosting package with a free domain. Instead, I would register through GoDaddy or some other domain registrar service. That way, I can transfer it wherever I want without huge hassles and delays.