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Back from hiatus with lots of new stuff!

Back from hiatus with lots of new stuff!

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I’m back, and I must say, it feels great. While there’s still a lot of drama in my life, I no longer feel like letting that keep me from updating my websites. I’m feeling very motivated and very excited about the world of hanfic, even if we are in a bit of a lull right now. As you can see, I’ve given the site a total facelift. I had said I wouldn’t debut this layout until July, but I was just too excited to keep it bottled up much longer.

So what’s new around here? Well, obviously the layout. Here are few more things you might notice around the site…

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Small update and some news

Small update and some news

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I made a teensy update to the directory today, with a mix of about twenty old and new sites. But that’s not the main reason I’m posting this blog. I actually wanted to let you guys know about two upcoming events in the hanfic world.

First, is the new round of The Spark Inside, hosted by Brittney. I had hoped to feature it on the spotlights this year, but it didn’t work out that way. But that’s alright; I can still tell you guys about it. This year participants get to submit a bunch of different prompts that will get shuffled up and assigned to everyone. Sounds challenging, but fun! I’ve already signed up and you should too — you’ve got about two weeks to do so before the writing period starts.

Second, is the new round of Thieves and Liars. Again, this round (the first in a year) brings some changes, but I think they will all ultimately improve the experience for everyone. Some rules have been lifted (friends only stories are now allowed), while others are being enforced more harshly (no multiple votes and the vote form must be filled out completely). Nat has graciously stepped in to help with the vote counting so you can be sure that everything will be accurate and fair. Since things will be a bit different this time around, I’ve already put the site up even though it doesn’t start for a month. Plenty of time to pick out your favorite stories — and for some new stories to appear too!

So there you are. Lots of stuff to do this spring. I think we’re all getting out of our collective winter funk and I couldn’t be more excited for all the good things that will bring.

February updates

February updates

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Well, you might have noticed all my tweets lately about how I’ve been changing the site’s layout. I’m finally done with it — I hope. I keep finding little things to tweak, but mostly I’m really happy with how this layout looks and I plan to keep it (with or without any more little changes) for the rest of the year.

As for other updates, I’ve got the monthly spotlights up on time this month. The featured author is Nat, who has contributed some awesome articles to the site and helped with my still-not-posted “Intro to Hanfic” page. Website of the month is Becca’s Hanfic Calendar and story of the month is SNAFU by Ali, which I think you’ll find to be very helpful and very unique, respectfully. I think you guys will be very pleased with this month’s spotlights.

That’s basically all I have in the works right now, but I did want to remind you guys that I will be starting up the third round of Thieves and Liars next month. The plan is to launch the nominations in mid-March, but I don’t have the schedule set in stone yet. As soon as I do, I will post about it here as well as tweet about it so that you guys can be as ready for the new round as I am.

Until then, I hope you guys enjoy these little updates to the site.

Happy new year!

Happy new year!

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A new year has begun. This year marks a full decade that I’ve been in some way participating in the Hanson fandom online. I stepped into the fandom in the fall of 2000, and began making my own websites and writing my own fan fiction in early 2001 with the brand new computer I received for Christmas.

Oh, how times have changed.

This year is already shaping up to be a big one, with lots of challenges and other fun stuff to keep people busy writing and reading. Here’s a portion of my resolutions/to do list for the coming year just to give you guys an idea of what I’m working on.

-get better at putting up my monthly spotlights on time
-finish all challenges I enter
-finish writing and post all of Cesura and Love and Other Socially Acceptable Emotions
-try to update all of my WIPs at least once a month
-begin posting Skin and Bone, Gravity and What Didn’t Happen
-only do a second round of Boomerang if I can find some co-mods to help
-make a new layout for this site and keep it for the rest of the year
-find a new and better way to conduct the voting forms for Thieves and Liars and run a spring round of it
-post more entries to this blog to keep you guys interested in what’s going on in my little hanfic world
-try to find some new hostees for the site (hint hint, visitors!)

Those are just a few of the things I have on my plate right now. I know more stories and ideas will come to me as the year goes on. How will I find the time to do it all? I don’t know. But if ten years of dedication to this band means anything, then I know I’m going to keep on trucking.

What’s this? A post in the middle of the day?

What’s this? A post in the middle of the day?

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You’ve read the subject correctly. For once I am updating the site in the middle of the day, rather than the middle of the night. You see, I’ve been doing anything I can to avoid working on my NaNo novel because it’s just so obvious I’m not going to win now.

What does this mean for all of you? It means a brand new look for the directory and a few little changes to how it’s viewed. You’ll notice that instead of using random symbols, I now have little pixels to label the sites for content and language. I really liked the blinkies I added to the “NEW” sites, so I decided to hunt down a few more little pixels I could use.

The most labor intensive part of that was labeling all of the non-English language sites. Each is labeled, to the best of my knowledge, with it a flag for its country of origin. The problem with this, of course, is that I couldn’t always be certain so I had to make an educated plus. Plus, some countries use multiple languages and some sites have multiple countries of origin. But I’ve done my best. You’ll notice that other countries which use English primarily — Great Britain, Canada, Australia, etc — have not been labeled. That was a choice I made to save myself work and because I felt it was really unnecessary.

But all of this work made me realize that I haven’t had a hit tracker on the site since I switched it over to WordPress. I wanted to get some statistics on where my visitors were coming from, so I decided to add one of those with this update. Until I have some information from that, you can view this list below to see where all of the non-English language sites in the directory are from.

Brazil — 40
Chile — 4
Costa Rica — 1
Czech Republic — 1
France — 1
Germany — 1
Mexico — 6
Peru — 1
Poland — 1
Spain — 2

Of course, these are just the sites that use a foreign language. I know of other Brazilian sites and sites from various European countries that are primarily in English. I will be double checking for those and labeling some of them, but for now, the directory updates are finished.

Isn’t it fascinating, though, to see all the places where hanfic authors come from?

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