Say it like you have a speech impediment and you’ll get the idea.‘Oh goody’ I thought to myself, ‘a nice grown up blog to have a look at, this should be interesting’.
Now, take a seat, maybe get yourself a stiff drink or a hot sugary tea, for what I am about to say may shock you to your very core.
I was wrong.
Standard stuff first, decent template with plenty of writing space, dreadful navigation, and an interesting banner.
The rest, was simply dull. Plentiful and dull.
I may be doing you a great disservice here, but I think all of your imagination and skill is going into your books (and rightly so), because as much as you write in your blog, there is nothing meaty. Nothing.
Maybe the silly tit for tat adventures of minor Canadian politicians counts as interesting to someone but not me I’m afraid.
Another possibility is that you have some fabulous entries hidden away, maybe so, but no one is ever going to find them as your navigation is horrific (hence few links). Only being able to go to the previous and next posts is useless, especially when you have entries back to 2002.
In an attempt to find something, anything that would stop me from rummaging through the press under my sink for something liquid and toxic to end my misery, I stumbled across this where you talk about your novel writing, the process, the challenges. That was interesting.
I don’t really know why you blog other than to have a promotional avenue for your books, which is fair enough, but it leaves the blog hollow, preachy and full of matter-of-uninteresting-fact.
This Mountie gets his meh.
Thanks for the constructive criticism. I'll see what I can do about the navigation. I checked out what Cory Doctorow does at Boing Boing, but he only archives by week.
ReplyDeleteI found the index of archived posts, and that helped, but you're right. The navigation is very user unfriendly. But once I found a way in, and once I skipped over the Canadian political stuff, I discovered I kinda like James. He's thoughtful and he writes well and he's endearingly geeky. There's a peacefulness and formality to his writing that could be tedious, but I enjoyed his erudite and mannered voice.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the Bond reference had me all excited and then I realized there would be no action. No martinis. I assume his books are less boring. Again, I assume.
ReplyDeleteI love the picture of him wearing a Cosby sweater. That alone bumps it up for me.
ReplyDeleteOther than that, you're right, I'm bored.
Even the comments on the meh entry are meh.
ReplyDeleteMeh.
You're more than welcome to contribute something non-meh, WZ.
ReplyDelete# Age: 17
ReplyDelete# Gender: Male
# Astrological Sign: Libra
# Zodiac Year: Horse
# Industry: Student
# Occupation: Bad Mother Fucker
I am having the most delicious vision of force feeding your dirty little mouth a great big fat economy sized bar of soap.
Gap, an even larger bar of reality would suffice in this application.
ReplyDelete