Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Blue Website! New Talk!

Exclamation-point worthy news: At long last, my redesigned website is up and running!

(That sentence is your signal to click on over to www.cherylklein.com to see the new layout. I'll give you a second.)



Okay. Hooray! The beautiful, bright new design is by my friend John Noe of the Leaky Cauldron, and incorporates my favorite Tudor Rose emblem (sign of my membership in the sacred siblinghood of English majors) as well as an easy-to-use navigation bar. If you took that opening-page invitation to poke around, you'll know that most of the navbar links don't work yet, the book covers for the slideshow need to be resized, and neither the majority of the talks nor my submission guidelines are up at present. But I'll be adding these things over the next few weeks, so please check back occasionally to see what's new. And my blog, for the record, will continue to reside here at chavelaque.blogspot.com, so please don't change your bookmarks to that other address.

To celebrate the redesigned site, I put up a new talk as well: the "Springing Surprises" speech I wrote but did not deliver in full at the Vermont College Novel Writers' Retreat. That talk made me think a lot about effects in writing . . . the way a writer can use surprises, or spacing, or the pacing even in a particular paragraph, to focus or distract the reader's emotional attention and thereby achieve the writer's emotional aims, the same way a movie director can blow up a truck to make the audience go "Oooh!" I don't know that I have anything more to say about this now than what I say here, but I'm interested in tracking cool techniques/effects for use in a future talk, maybe. . . . Let me know if you see any worthy of note.

14 comments:

  1. The new website is a beaut!

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  2. Congratulations on the wonderful new website design. It looks so crisp and clean. I'll be sure to visit it frequently to check out the updates.

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  3. Congrats on your new website, Cheryl! It seems very neat & well-organized. I love the color added now with the flower and blue border. I'll be checking back to view the updated material. Very nice!

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  4. Clean and gorgeous! And I love the Tudor rose; I had no idea we English majors had a sacred siblinghood or an emblem, but I like it :)

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  5. Great look! Beautiful rose, but I am partial to roses since
    Rose is the name of my MC.

    I also appreciated the explanation of your twitter name (or is that twitting name?).

    I'm a fairly new follower. I want to thank you for posting your talks; the information has been interesting and helpful.

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  6. I just read the Springing Surprises speech. That would have been fantastic to hear live.

    One thought crossed my mind. As the writer who knows everything that's going to happen, I often feel there is no suspense in my story at all. I know all my characters' motivations and ultimate desires, so it just seems so obvious. No critique pleased or suprised me as much as my beta reader saying, "I don't know how you make each chapter so suspenseful." It was so funny to me that she felt that way.

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  7. Cheryl,
    Thank you so much for posting your speech, "Springing Surprises." As a writer and reader, I gain so much from the lessons you share on your website and blog. You are very generous with your insight, experience and knowledge. It is greatly appreciated.

    I am currently rereading the Harry Potter novels to my sons. We have a deal that they are not permitted to see the movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, until they’ve read the books.

    JK Rowling’s books are full of surprises. The one jaw-dropping revelation that caught me completely by surprise was Sirius Black’s true motive and character in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It was so well crafted and made the surprising death of Sirius in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix that much more emotionally devastating for Harry and the reader.

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  8. Looks great. Hey, how come nobody told me about the secret sisterhood Tudor rose thing in English major school?

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  9. While looking at your lovely new site, I found out that we have the same favorite Shakespeare play!
    This is exceptionally exciting for me because most people I talk to have never even heard of it. It's fun to know that you like it too. =]

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  10. Are all parts of the sight up and running? I'm having issues with a couple of the section links.

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  11. The website looks great! The blue is so welcoming! And I didn't know about the Tudor rose thing either, and I'm really glad I found out, since I'm doing a literature major :)

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  12. It's beautiful, but using Google Chrome I can't see some of the hyperlinks on the main page until I hover over them. Can you have the designer correct this to make them stand out like the blue links in the lower paragraph. Beyond that, I think you're golden!

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  13. Links not working on Firefox today--

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  14. Oh dear, I can hardly see anything using Safari on my MAC. Whereas, your old website is very clear and all the links work with Safari.
    -wendie old

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