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When did you start your site?
1995
Marital Status?
Married
Occupation - What kind of work do you do?
Freelancer writer, novelist and professional fundraiser
Hobbies - What do you like to do, besides keep this site?
gardening, reading, photography, writing, fishing
Location - Where are you from? Where are you now?
Why did you start writing your Web site?
As a place to profile and archive my articles with the hope of generating more free lance business. Paritally to showcase my writing and paritally just for the fun of having a site.
Why do you write a site about you?
Give family and friends a place to keep up with personal news and to have a place to archive my published written materials.
Do you communicate with readers of your site?
Anyone who writes gets a response.
How much email feedback to you receive from your site? Is it mainly positive or negative?
In five years probably less than 100 emails, most positive and most about something I have written. The most frequent are in reaction to my syndicated Internet column. The archives are on the site.
Have you met any new friends because of the site?
Several, mostly by email, but some even in the flesh.
Has your motivation changed over time?
How has it changed your life?
Not much. I am certainly not an anonymous person anymore. It's pretty hard to stay private when you choose to put much of your life on the web.
Do your friends and family know you keep this site/read it? If so have you had any really negative experiences as a result? If not why?
Friends and family use the site to keep up with changes in my life. There have been no really negative experiences as a result of being so public, except for the amount of spam I receive.
How has your Web site benefited you? Your friends? Or total strangers?
Stangers have used the site for research, especially the column archives. Some have become friends. To my friends, it's just another way to find out what I'm doing now.
If you had to do it over again from the beginning, what would you change?
I went through a process of adding every new technology and all the bells and whistles. Took me a while to realize that I wasn't keeping a site for that reason. I could have saved a lot time by skipping that part of my cyberlife.
What are your favorite things on your site?
Favorite things include:
My archive of Op Ed pieces
My archive of the Internet columns
And, of course, all the good reviews that came out on my novel
When looking at other people's Web sites what do you look for as a viewer?
Material that lets me get to know the author, photographs of the author and of the author's life. It's like viewing another person while you are a little inside them.
What is "one word" that would describe your site?
Diverse
Because of your site do you consider yourself a Web celebrity, an exhibitionist, a public figure, a writer, an innovator, or something different?
I was a writer before I had a site. Now I guess I am a writer who is also an exhibitionist.
How do you tackle the mechanics of Web design and how do you deal with your frustrations when you can't do what you envision.
Some look at a web site as an art form, but to me it is a method of communication. There is always an alterantive way to communicate. If one vision cannot be made reality, I find another.
Why do you think people are interested in you and what you have to say?
Because, like most people, I am an interesting person with a particular point of view. But unlike many people, I have the skills to express those aspects of me. People like that.
What compels you to design beautiful pages and to write from the heart (beyond just the usual question of "why write a Web site")?
I don't design beautiful pages, I design functional ones. I want to communicate with as many people as possible, so I try to make it easy. I write from the heart, I hope, because that's what I want to read in others.