Fiction Friday: September Progress Report and a Sneak Peek

I was hoping to show off my brand new author website today, but it’s not quite ready for prime-time. It’s getting closer, though!

It’s been over 4 months since I made my down payment to Spark Creative Partners (formerly Bemis Promotions). When I went to write my blog post last month, I realized that, aside from the occasional “we’re working on it and we think you’re going to be thrilled,” I hadn’t heard from them.

So I emailed them and said, “When?” The next day they sent me a link to the draft site that’s currently running on their test server. And they were right–I was thrilled.

A closer look revealed that the site still needed a lot of work, but I loved the concept. Here’s a sneak preview of my header:

On the working site, there’s very cool animation around the apple and the snake, but more than that, I think the header perfectly captures the darkly whimsical nature of my Touched by a Demon paranormal romance series. I plan to release the first one, The Demon Always Wins, next September.

I popped the link off to Jilly and to another writer friend, Nicole Amsler, for their input. Both had some suggestions around making the site look and behave more consistently, but they loved the overall concept at much as I did.

My background is in software development. so I know the best way to ensure software operates according to your expectations is to write a test plan that lists each feature and indicates whether it functions to spec. Here is a page from my test plan:

No.	Page	Object	Test Case	Result
1	Home	Latest Book box	Home page layout displays boxes at bottom of screen without scrolling	Change requested
2	Home	Upper Nav Bar	Menu items take user to appropriate page	Success
3	Home	Welcome box	Text is easily read	Failure
4	Home	Latest Book	Displays cover, title, series and release date	Failure
5	Home	Newsletter box	Box captures all necessary information	Change requested
6	Home	Latest news box	Display heading and link to latest news	Success

There’s another column I titled “Notes” that explains, for changes and failures, how I want it to work or what it’s doing wrong. I’ve been popping out to the site since I sent the test plan over, watching the objects start to line up to my expectations.

Once the site functions to specification on my Windows 10 desktop, I’ll need to re-executed the plan on my Android phone, my Windows 8 Surface, and my Android tablet. I’ll also need to find friends to execute it on a Mac and an iPhone and verify that it works correctly in those environments.

Then, and only then, will I fork over the rest of the money.

I hope to be able to show off the rest of the site next month. One takeaway from this exercise has been: Leave LOTS of extra time in your project plan for things that are out of your control: website work, editing and cover design.

Any thoughts on websites (mine, yours, others) you’d like to share?