Author Spotlight
Amber Argyle
Amber Argyle grew up with three brothers on a cattle ranch in the Rocky Mountains. She spent hours riding horses, roaming the mountains, and playing in her family’s creepy barn. This environment fueled her imagination for writing her debut novel. She currently resides in Utah with her husband and three small children.
Witch Song
Amber Argyle started out with a great debut novel. Senna is a humble champion for witches that learns to overcome the trials placed before her while struggling to come to terms with the tasks placed before her. The pacing is great making it an easy read. I don't care for much romance in my novels, and Amber was able to keep it to acceptable levels for my enjoyment, leaving me more entertained with the action sequences. Amber brings her imagery to life allowing the reader to enjoy the twists to witchcraft the she creates in her novel.
This was refreshing to read after being disappointed with the movie "Season of the Witch". Amber is a credit to the writing community, and made witches seem so powerful yet so average at the same time that you wonder throughout the story how things will turn out for Senna and her fellow witches as she sets out to free them from Espen, the Dark Witch, who has captured all but Senna. I did however feel that some of the action towards the end gave Senna more power than was built up throughout the story. Regardless, I was entertained.
Forum with Social Network Connectivity
I've finally figured out how to create the UtahWriting.com forum so that you can login with your Facebook or Twitter account. By restricting this from the traditional registration, I will be able to better limit spammers without making it so people have to email me for access to the forum. This way you get instant access to the forum and can avoid all the spam that goes with some forums.
Facebook Integration
Over the next few weeks I hope to be able to integrate Facebook into UtahWriting.com. With this addition, I would then be able to add function to the Facebook Like feature for use with authors and books, create a forum, and possible a chat area. My intent is to do away with the ning site. Too many passwords and sites can be frustrating and difficult to manage, so I hope to make this as userfriendly as possible without the addition of another password. Another feature I am thinking of adding, is an online university feature for authors that wish to host web classes. Along this same token, critique groups interested in an online environment might be able to use similar features.
Redesigning UtahWriting.com
Welcome to the first changes to UtahWriting.com. The newest features include several new additions.
- First off is a database to store all the book and author information so that I can more easily maintain the website. While this may not directly affect you as the visitor, it will open up more opportunities to add more authors and more features in the future to better serve the writing community.
- I have also added a RSS tracking system where I will be able to update this website with RSS feeds from authors or aspiring authors that are deemed appropriate - the completed version will soon be available for others.
- Off to the right you'll see the author spotlight. Before I had to manually input this and change it, and there was no history. Now, this will be changed randomly and will be saved so once I put in a review, it will become a permanent part of the random display.
- The conferences also will be easier to maintain and a historical archive has been added to automatically remove the conference from the main screen after the date passes and can then be browsed in the archive section at a later date. This will save me much needed time to work on other issues.
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