Eric Lizotte

Did a little looking around…and I discovered a newer theme that I thought better fit the site. I know I’ve neglected the site for a while. I have been doing some writing, though, here and there–at least, I haven’t completely slacked off. But, it’s true, I haven’t put as much time into my writing as I would have liked. Not for months. Hoping to change that. Can’t get a novel published at some point if you don’t write one–more like if you don’t write at all.

Anyway. The theme I stumbled across the other night on the WordPress website is called Graphene. And, so far, I have to say I’ve been pretty impressed by it. Over the years I’ve probably test driven, I’m going to estimate, somewhere between a quadrillion or quintillion themes. Yes, I have spent hours upon hours before searching through WordPress theme sites. Seems like I’ve never been able to find anything that I’ve been completely satisfied with. That was until yesterday.

I know, I know, I sound like some infomercial spokesman, but believe me…Graphene is something to behold, especially after having gone through as many subpar themes as I have. Glad this one isn’t–subpar. Just for fun, I installed it yesterday–because, I didn’t have anything else better to do–and started to customize it, trying to get a similar look to what I already had. And, for the most part, it was fairly smooth sailing. Only a few times did I get frustrated. Luckily, Graphene is fairly intuitive to use. Believe it or not, in about an hour or so, I had the site looking how I wanted it.

Now, all I have to do is start back on the site’s content!

Okay, obviously, I still haven’t finished the site–and it’s not just because I’ve got other things going on or that I’m lazy. (It’s a little of that, maybe. Sure I’ll admit that.) But, it’s mainly because I don’t have a huge amount of content ready to post. In fact, I’m just now working on the 1st chapter of Crier’s Case, for example. Hope to have that done soon, so I’ll at least have some writing samples to post. Same goes for the other stories. Ironically, though, I have a bunch of content for Cannons and Courage–not so much on everything else.

If anything, the point of this site is to give viewers of it a representation of my work. And it’s about time I realize that. All that needs to be on here are samples, right? Right. I don’t need to finish everything I’m currently working on in order to finish the site! Ugh… Silly me.

But, that’s one thing about being a writer: We demand perfection from ourselves. Why? Because, we always want to look our best…just in case. Almost like the gigging, serious musician, we’re hoping that a “someone” might see (or in their case hear) our work and like it. Then, it’s the big times from there, right?

With my writing lately it has been slow going. That little thing called life, yep, has been getting in the way. Damn thing won’t leave me alone. However, even with life bothering my creative well spring, I did manage to lay the groundwork for a new story concept I’ve had stewing in the back of my mind for a while now.

I feel that with everything else I’ve been writing–my historical fiction in particular–I’ve been neglecting what I started out with when I first started writing: Fantasy/science fiction. That’s why I wanted to get back to it in some form. And that’s where Element Eon comes into play.

Like many of my earliest forays into science-fiction, it feels and reads more like fantasy. But, make no mistake, it truly is science-fiction, and I think that’ll show through pretty quick to the reader when he or she gets past the first chapter. I’ve wrestled with this, too, because I had one thought where I could place a prologue at the beginning–God bless prologues–that shows an obvious sci-fi world. Then, the reader would know instantly what they’re getting into.

Yet, I kind of like that high-fantasy opening. It’s like watching an episode of Doctor Who–as if the Doctor and his TARDIS had landed smack dab in the middle of, well, Middle Earth. Anyway. I’ll post more about Element Eon as I continue my progress in writing it. Heck, I still need to finish the “current projects” section.

I hate to admit it, but I haven’t done much with the site in the last week and a half. After I got the design semi-complete (or complete, depends on how you want to look at it), I kind of stopped with everything else. The main reason for this: what I have planned for the site (mainly, the part on what I’m writing) is involved, and will probably take me a while anyway. Plus, with work and everything else going on right now, I haven’t had as much time as I thought to devote to getting this site finished.

Also, I’ve been working on getting FromtheCookpot updated. That’s coming along okay.

Hope to get some content up here soon…

Out of all the new features in WordPress 3.1, I think I like the “screen shake” the most–that is when you type the wrong password into the login and the entire screen shakes from the side to side. The first time I saw that I think I laughed until I almost hurt something. Uh-uh. Try again. Right. Anyhow.

I couldn’t leave the site design alone. The meta information box–the big gray block that had been beneath each post–just never felt right to me. So, I had to do something with it. And, at least, that, I’m now completely happy with. I think it turned out great just using horizontal rules–easy, but effective.

The side menu is still a work in progress, but I think it does look better with the header closer to the list and the 3D effect on the roll overs. Now, I’ll have to figure out a way of incorporating the headers into the menus. That I think would look 100% better. Also, the footer I think still needs some work. And, as for the content (the real purpose of this site), I’m, of course, still working on that as well.

Speaking of that, the Times New Roman for the content…yep, easier to read in my opinion versus the Arial.

Trying to get some content added to the site.

Maybe I’m being too perfect, but I want to make sure I do the pages right. I guess I’m just really trying to get an overall idea of what I want–what the layout should be. Also, I’ve been working on getting the From the Cookpot site up to snuff. It needs a lot of work, though–new WP version, new template, etc. I hope to have something done with it soon. *crosses fingers and toes*

I’ve made some slight modifications to the site–mainly, I’ve cleaned up the “meta” box where post informatin is shown. Now, the only issue there is, do I change the headline area to something a little more creative as well? Bah. I guess that can wait until later; content is probably more important at the moment. Same goes for the sidebar. With everything else looking so spiffy, it looks kind of dull, now, doesn’t it? But, again, that’ll have to wait.

Right now I’m working on getting the “Current Projects” area done. I think there I’m going to go with a main page with sub-pages underneath for each story I’m currently focused on. Yep, that’s the plan, anyway.

Okay, the site is almost finished.  And the funny thing is, I almost destroyed it!

When I was working on it last night, after having decided to move all the files over to the eric-lizotte.com domain, I had then decided to delete everything off of emlizotte.com. Thing is though: I deleted the files off eric-lizotte.com instead of emlizotte.com! But, it was a good thing I hadn’t made too many changes to the files on the new domain, because I was able to get the files off the old one–still, I had basically undone an hour of work by not paying attention to what I was doing… Go figure.

I guess next time I’ll be more careful.