My little Website (Amnesiac Memoirs) was begun with the notion of it being simply an online chapbook for my own stuff. However (and things in my life seem to always go this way), it is quickly blossoming into a wider scope. It is finding some use as a marketing venue for other authors and for their books. The site has only been up for about 12 days and already we have two books; Awaken the Warrior, by Philip Paul Sacco, and “Tuffy's” Heros, by Joe “Tuffy” Tofuri. Sacco is not (yet) an AD member (just a personal friend). The marketing venue side of this little site will become important starting in March when the Spring issue of Art With Words (AWW) is published, because my column in that issue will be featuring AD, several very popular MSN poetry sites, and (of course) my own site. Considering the wide distribution of AWW, we will see an influx of browsers (hopefully some book-buyers as well).

Apparently MSN tech development is upgrading their services (probably getting set for the new Windows release) and this has been causing interruptions in some of the critical MSN Group services (like invitations, new joins, etc.). Kimmy Van Kooten tried for several days to join the Art With Words manuscript submission site, but was unable to do so (frustrating). I finally had to tinker with the system and get her joined. Such fun.

Those who would like to set up their own Website (one that is really easy to set up) should look at Freewebs.com. Their free version is great (it does have ads) with easily added pages which may be arranged in any order you like, pictures from your own computer, musical backgrounding for your individual pages, page linking within the site or to other Websites, and very large amounts of free storage and bandwidth. And their free stuff includes Guestbooks, Counters, etc. I opted to go ad-free for a very small yearly fee. Freewebs also has lots of premium services for those who may need them (I do not, yet). There are pages and pages of optional templates (some of them are super professional - rivaling the appearance of eBay) for your Freewebs site. I chose a very informal template which looks like the pages of an open book. That suits me and I really appreciate the ease of navigation within my site. Freewebs.com, as a host, is a refreshing change from some of the host servers I have used.

Ha! My hotel (I am a night auditor) is way too quiet at night, so I bring up Amnesiac Memoirs on the Lobby computer, click on the Debra J Harmes-Kurth page, and let her background music (MIDI version of “Country Roads”) add some mellow ambience to my night.

Amnesiac Memoirs:    
http://www.freewebs.com/tedglines/debrajharmeskurth.htm

I think the most important thing about Freewebs.com is the simplicity of their Site Manager set-up. Within 30 minutes of signing up, I had completed set-up on my site and had already added a few pages. Compare that to the Site Manager situation hosted by StartLogic where I have a professional site -- and where I was forced to hire a Webmaster to set up the site, because of the technical expertise required. What a difference!