Okay, I’ve spent months saying I need to integrate my various websites into one site so I can manage them better. Right now, I’ve got www.helenehmadden.com for the erotica stuff and www.cynicalwoman.blogspot.com as my usual day-to-day blog, which sort of works, accept that it’s giving me a split personality complex (am I a mom? an erotica writer? which one am I today?). Plus it also makes it a real pain in the assets to maintain two blogs and two sites (yes, there was originally a much different site up at this URL, with all sorts of cool flash animation that I found to be a huge pain in the ass to maintain).

To make life easier for myself, I’m building a new site that includes both sides of my life (Only 2 sides? Does that make me only 2 dimensional?).  This is meant to be a website for adults, okay?  Yes, we can talk about family stuff here, but the thing is, this is meant to be a place where parents, especially me, can be an adult and talk about adult things and share my very adult work.  If you have a problem with the idea of a mom being an erotica writer, then please go bury your head in the sand some place else!

For the time being, I’ll continue to make my usual blog posts to the other two websites, while also making them here.  The appearance of this blog will be making changes over the next month or so until I’ve got the final look, but for now, I just want to kick things off by saying, hello world, the blog is here.

Okay, people, I’m looking for opinions. I need to update the website, but I have small problem. I actually have multiple websites – the Cynical Woman blog at www.cynicalwoman.blogspot.com, my erotica website at www.helenehmadden.com, and the blog for The Adventures of Cynical Woman web comic at www.theadventuresofcynicalwoman.blogspot.com (and yes, I know I need to post a new cartoon! I’m working on it). That’s too many websites in my opinion. I can easily fold the web comic into the Cynical Woman blog, but I’m wondering if I should also combine the erotica blog as well, so that I’d only have to worry about one website and not two or three. The erotica blog and the Cynical Woman blog are sort of two different creatures. I don’t know if they’d work well together or not, so I need help deciding. Here are the reasons for and against combining ALL the websites/blogs.

Pros:

• Only one blog to deal with. I can easily write 3-4 blog posts a week… for one blog. Maintaining two blogs takes a lot more time and effort.
• The combined blog would more accurately reflect who I am. I’ve always billed myself as the “stay-at-home mom AND erotica writer,” and people remember that. It’s an accurate, and successful, branding of me as a writer.
• It’ll be easier to find me on the web. Rather than go to a couple of different sites to see what’s going on with me, you’ve got one stop shopping. I can post all my info on free reads, the cartoons, and the usual day-to-day lunacies in one place.
• More content. I’ve been holding back posting certain things here because I need something to post on the erotica blog. However, I don’t usually have a ton of stuff to post on the erotica blog. I do a lot more posting here than there, so the erotica blog looks pretty sparse. I wouldn’t have to worry about a sparse blog if I combined the erotica blog with this one.
• I already own www.cynicalwoman.com (and I would really like to replace the website that’s there with the CW blog, plus other stuff). I can easily redirect www.helenehmadden.com to that URL so that typing in either URL takes you to one spot.

Now the cons:

• Sexually explicit material. I’d like to post some free erotica reads and excerpts. Is this blog really suitable for that? Or do I need to keep it on a separate blog?
• Male nudes. One of the things I’d like to start doing is pin-up art. Male pin-up art (I’m a rabid feminist, remember). That would mean images of full frontal male nudity. Does it belong here, or again does it need it’s own forum in a separate blog?

Hmmm. Looking at my pros vs. my cons, I’m thinking maybe I should just combine the two blogs. When it comes to the explicit stuff, rather than put it right there in the blog, I can post a link to the stories or images in question. Then people can choose to follow the link or not.

Yeah, I think this will work. BUT I’m still interested in other people’s opinions. So give me some feedback! I’m hoping to get started on this in a couple weeks Thanks!

Nothing major.  Blogjet is giving me fits, so I’m trying to see if I can make it behave and post like a good boy.

Last week, someone on the Marketing For Romance Writers Yahoo group asked if there was an efficient way to post the same post to multiple blogs. I’ve been wondering that myself, since I have three blogs and am considering starting up a fourth. I did some digging around in the Blogger help section and came across a list of third party utilities that offered such services. I decided to give Zoundry’s Raven a try. This is the first test post to see if it does what I need it to do.