Those of you who travel here to catch up on things will be pleased to know that I wrapped up MS5- Homecoming a couple of weeks ago and have been tapping away at MS6- Snapback ever since. I’m hoping that this next saga will only be a three book tale, but you never know exactly where the story will take you. I will say that I’m fairly excited about one small aspect. I’ve been wanting to delve into the world of YA stories for a while. Well, since Phoenix really. Originally, I intended for the Monster Squad stories to be young adult, but in my efforts to ‘keep it real’, the language didn’t allow that. Then the story took on a life of its own and if you’ve read them, you know. Things happen. While many may feel that they’re appropriate for young people, my publisher and I both felt it best to engage the adult filters when searching for them.
And yet, I digress. No doubt, if you’ve been here before, you probably noticed a small change when you came here today. Unless you’re on a mobile device. I have no idea what you may or may not see on your phone. BUT, the changes in layout and images that you’re seeing are in preparations for bigger changes that I hope are soon to come.
I was extremely fortunate in my internet travels and ran into a young lady that absolutely blew me away. ‘Why?’ you may ask. I’m so glad you did! When I first saw her, I got chills. She IS Laura Youngblood. I mean, when I saw her picture, it was exactly who I pictured when I wrote that character. We began to talk and the next thing I know, she’s telling me about graphics and splash pages and…she’s web design smart. The graphic you see at the top of the page is a crop from an image she threw together in just a couple of minutes while we were messaging each other on Facebook. I had sent her some images I had from the book covers, t-shirt designs, logos…just different images that were sitting on my hard drive. I’m telling ya, the lady is awesome. I wish I could tell everybody her name, but she hasn’t really given me permission so I’ll keep it to myself for now (Lisa Vasquez and she’s AWESOME at graphics and web design, but you did NOT hear it from me…unless she’s cool with it, then I totally told you to contact her). So if she gives me permission to spread her name around, I’ll let you know how to contact her (at http://thedevilshalo.com/ ).
It’s taking a bit of time because we both have a bunch of irons in the fire but hopefully soon, you’ll see a cleaner and much cooler site with a neat portal or splash page or whatever it was she called it. Stay tuned!
Heath Stallcup Author 