New website, same me
Out with the old, in with the slightly-less-old...
Hi, I’m Amber Eve — author of smalltown romantic comedies, and my long-running blog, Forever Amber. If you’d like to know more about me, start here. If you’d like to hear more from me, meanwhile, hit the button below…
First of all, I want to thank everyone who offered support on my last post: you’re all awesome, and if I possibly could, I would reach through the screen and give you all a huge, incredibly awkward hug, which would make all of us feel a bit uncomfortable, really, so don’t worry, I won’t. But thank you.
Anyway, after last week’s freak out, in which I decided to just quit writing altogether, I picked myself up, dusted myself down, cleaned my house from top to bottom (because that’s the only way I can clear my head enough to get things done), and spent the start of this week re-branding my website, the finished version of which you can see here.
This is something I’ve wanted to do for absolutely ages now, but it was always such a low priority that I just never seemed to get around to it — by which I mean I needed Terry to change the theme over and do some other techy bits for me, but he couldn’t see the point in spending time fixing up a blog that barely earns any money these days, so he steadfastly refused.
The whole thing with the Amazon boycott, though, got us thinking about the importance of diversifying our income a bit more, and not relying totally on the ‘Zon to sell books. So, on Monday, Terry finally agreed to switch over the template for me, and I spent a pleasant couple of days (I’m not being sarcastic, by the way — I actually really enjoy messing around with websites…) getting it to look and run how I want it; or as close as I can manage without being a web designer, anyway.
(Also, the homepage photos are just placeholders for now, because I realised while I was doing this that I don’t have any recent photos of myself that I don’t hate, so I’ve had to use older ones for now instead. I suspect this probably makes me a catfish, though, so I’ll have to get on that and take some new ones just as soon as the giant swollen eyelid I woke up with earlier this week has gone back to being just a normal-sized eyelid again..)
free ebook
Right now, the site has been sort of rebranded as my ‘author’ website, rather than as a straightforward blog. The blog is still there, of course, and will continue to live on the site, and be updated as often as I have time for it, but, going forward, the idea is to make the site a kind of ‘hub’ for my writing, and also to sell books from it, via an online store, which Terry will hopefully be setting up at some point in the next few weeks. Exciting!
Doing this actually got me feeling a bit emotional, if I’m honest — especially when I was looking through some of the posts in the archive: which goes all the way back to 2006, meaning the site will be 20 years old next year. I mean, TWENTY YEARS. I’ve been blogging about my life for almost TWENTY YEARS, people! And while I’m sure my site is not even close to being unique in having existed for that long, I’d be surprised if there were a lot of blogs — especially personal ones — which document almost 20 years of someone’s life the way mine does, so I couldn’t help feeling a little bit proud to have kept it going this long — and also just a little bit melancholy as I scrolled back through the archive and remembered the ‘good old days’ when I got to blog full-time, and made a pretty decent living out of it, too.
BUT. Of course, nothing stays the same forever, and, in somewhat related news, I’m relieved to be able to tell you that this week, in between editing another Scottish historical romance for a client, Terry and I have been making some good progress on the plot for book number 9, which I’m hoping to start work on very soon. I mean, I’ve bought a notebook with the title of it on the cover and everything — I think this is the closest thing I have to an author ‘ritual’, although, tbf, in my case it’s more of a shopping ritual than anything else — so I guess I have to do it now, don’t I?
In other news, this week you can get ebook versions of The Accidental Impostor and The Accidental Actress for free by clicking on the titles, so that’s your weekend reading sorted … and, as for me, it’s time for me to dive back into the world of fearsome Highland lairds and the women who love them, and go finish editing this book.
Until next week, folks,
If you prefer, you can also buy me a coffee…
P.S. Here are some other books you might like…
Booked for Murder // The Forgotten Summer // Crossed by Death // Mad About the Musician
Amber, I have been reading your blog for YEARS- more than 10 I believe. (Long before Max came along.) I came because of your fashion posts and stayed because I love your writing. In your last post, where you spoke about the Amazon boycott (which I was unaware of). I went on there and purchased two of your ebooks for my kindle app. I also subscribed to your substack. Hope my tiny contribution gives you a smile, as you've often done for me.
Coming around "after the battle", as we say in French, and no idea what the issue was with Amazon, but your new website is SUPERB! Congratulations to Terry and yourself!
You are indeed one of the only bloggers I used to follow still in activity, and I appreciate that, the slow pace of the blogs works better for me.
I do hope your new shop will be successful 😊