About ten years ago, when my first book was published, I went to a Youth Worker Convention in Kansas City. Part of the reason I went was to meet my new editor from my publishing house. I was so excited. The night before, while staying at my folks’ house, M and I decided I needed business cards so I looked more professional. But we had no idea what to put on them.
A website! we decided.
But what should it be called? ChristinaHergenrader.com? Too hard to spell. TeenChrstianRealBooks.com? Too confusing. What about Christinasbooks.com? That also seemed confusing and hard to spell, but it was late and I had my big editor meeting in the morning, so we went with it.
Over the next ten years, I’ve second-guessed the decision to name my website christinasbooks hundreds of times. My email address that I use for EVERYTHING is this website, and, yes, it’s SO confusing. Every time the Gap wants to email me my receipt or a mom wants to get together for a playdate, I spell the whole thing, knowing there’s about a thirty percent chance they’ll get the confusing (and grammatically incorrect) email address right. A PSA here: If you’ve emailed me and I haven’t responded it’s because of my confusing email address.
So, you’re probably thinking, why not just change my address to something easy, some gmail thing? Because authors are supposed to have websites, and I thought any day now I would actually get around to coding a website that used that ancient name, christinasbooks. Or my talented IT-consultant husband would get around to it.
Eleven years and I haven’t learned HTML and he hasn’t had an extra two hundred hours or so to spend in front of the computer when he could be outside playing catch with his boys or reading books to his girls.
My author friends all had super-fancy professional web-designers, but they were expensive. And lots of authors had horror stories about unresponsive web designers who were both snarky and elusive. Not to mention, the whole idea of a website about me, me me creeped me out.
But then, this summer, a few different readers (unsuccesfully) tried to get a hold of me. That made me realize that if I could keep a blog about myself, it was time for an author website about my books.
But who to hire? I asked some young web-designer types at our church, and they told me “it’s really hard to find someone who does that,” and I realized I was probably asking the wrong people because just about every person and every business in the world has a website.
Then I contacted a friend, who put me in touch with her friend, Brad, who was willing to build a website for me.
Y’all. Building a website can be really fun. Brad was never snarky or elusive or lazy or condescending or any of those things other authors had said about their web designers. He was excited about my website. Not only that, but he was really good at everything that he did. Super talented in a way that’s just inspiriting. Never once did he say, “REALLY with all the changes and updates?”
I’m so happy to finally announce that at last I have a beautiful website that I love…
…even if my email address is still awkward and confusing.