Introducing The Hungry Writer – and wrapping the week

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have noticed that this week’s wrap-up is coming to you from a different website. I’m phasing And Anyways out and am in the process of transferring some of the content across to here.

Why have I done this?

I originally created the author page midway through last year with the aim of showcasing my books and a focus on building my author profile – with a view to, of course, selling more books. There’s no point creating a product if no one knows about it.

And Anyways started life in 2012 as an overflow blog for everything I wanted to write about that didn’t fit on my astro site. With very few exceptions my astrology readers didn’t want to know about my travels, my life, or my writing. They just wanted the astro. Given that there’s a lot of them – almost 400,000 visitors in 2016, that’s what I give them. But I still wanted to write about my life – my travel, my experiences, the things that inspire my fiction. And anyways was created.

Yet, as I’ve begun publishing fiction the site address – a nod to a phrase I use constantly – has proven to be problematic. This came to a head a couple of months ago when there was a lot of confusion about what my site address actually was for the RWA program.

It’s become clear that I have 2 personas:

Jo Tracey who writes DIY astrology and
Joanne Tracey who writes fiction

My site statistics tell me:

There is negligible crossover from the Jo Tracey Astrology to either joannetracey.com or andanyways.com. Even when I’ve specifically linked in a post or a newsletter.
There is a little traffic from anyanyways.com to the astro site
There’s a lot of traffic from andanyways.com to joannetracey.com – and vice versa.

This tells me that the rambles of the hungry writer (my tagline for and anyways.com) and the books created by the hungry writer – based on those rambles – belong together.

It hasn’t sat well with me to have these posts on a different site from the books they inspired. Baby, It’s You and Big Girls Don’t Cry are both set partially in Bali. Baby, It’s You, Big Girls Don’t Cry, and I Want You Back are set mostly in Melbourne – as will be the catchily titled Book After I Want You Back and Book After The Book After I Want You Back. Wish You Were Here is split between The Cotswolds in England and Queenstown, New Zealand.

In splitting the sites I’ve compromised both my traffic and my reach – and made life harder for myself from a content creation viewpoint. Yes, I’m a travel and lifestyle blogger, but primarily I’m an author.

To cut a long and increasingly boring story short, this site, The Hungry Writer, will be where you’ll find all my posts. I’ve purchased the domain the hungrywriter.com.au and will be pointing it in this direction over the next week or so.

I still have some tweaking to do and widgets to set up, but I hope you can find your way around here ok.

For my and anyways readers, there will usually be one writing post a week going up here – probably on a Wednesday. For my author page readers, you’ll be seeing more travel and lifestyle posts. I’d really love it if we can all get along.

And for my astro readers? Jo Tracey Astrology is remaining unchanged. You’ll find it where it always is – here. I’m also keeping my Sunshine Coast blog separated for now too. If you’re interested in places to go, see and eat at on the Sunshine Coast, you’ll find them here.

Ok, without further ado, let’s do a quick wrap of the week. Other than redesigning my website, what else went down?

What I struggled with…

Time zone changes. Where I live – in Queensland – we didn’t go to daylight saving. This wouldn’t be that much of an issue if it weren’t for the fact that mine (and my husband’s) work is based entirely back to Sydney. I’ve kept my work laptop configured to Sydney time, but even so, it’s seriously doing my head in.

What frustrated me…

My astro website was down for what amounted to 2 whole days. This was due to an outage of the server that it’s hosted on. Beyond annoying.

What I didn’t see…

Sunrise. We had a couple of days of rain here this week – we really needed it – but mostly I didn’t see the sunrise because it’s now peeking its head above the horizon at about 5.20am – and getting a minute earlier each day.

What thrilled me…

Seeing the purple flowers appear on the jacaranda tree in the verge. There’s also a papaya tree, but that’s another story.

What I learnt…

The name of this plant – also in the verge. Thanks to my instagram followers, I now know that it’s an Ixora.

Where we lunched…

In our unrelenting search to find the perfect place to have a beer on a sunny afternoon – I know, it’s a challenge most sensible people would shy away from – we tried out Guru Life. I loved the spicy corn fritters, the pineapple wallpaper on the counter, the leafy courtyard, the mis-matched furniture and the duck pond.