First chapters

[playpitspark]

I have been struggling to put together a website that contains the first chapters of some of my novels. It looks like something of an ego trip, and for that I apologise. Also, my son tells me that I need to make a few changes to it (already! I only put it up 12 hours ago). I would welcome comments on how to improve it. You are the readers, you are the experts...

[Blackhorse47]

I'd suggest making the width of the windows a percentage rather than a fixed number of pixels so that it fits to page. As it is I have to scroll from right to left to read every line and to be honest that's too much of a hassle to read any more than a few lines.

[playpitspark]

Thanks, Blackhorse. I screwed up. It is fine on my large monitor but not on my laptop. I thought my website program sorted that for me, but clearly it hasn't. I shall fix it.

[playpitspark]

Thanks again, Blackhorse. I worked on it at the weekend and it is better, it is readable on laptops. My site builder won't handle percentages, but the site seems okay for now.

[Blackhorse47]

Yeah. It appears on one page on my non-widescreen monitor too and generally flows. The thing I've found with websites is that frames feel like a great idea but they just never work the way they're supposed to and are a pain. Things really go wrong, or at least they did for me, when people start arriving through links to individual pages rather than the home page and then the frames go awry.

Anyhow, I didn't see it mentioned but are these wips or published works? They read nicely.

[playpitspark]

Thanks for the compliment! None are published. Playpits Park, Keewatin and Third Valkyrie are finished works but I can't get agents interested. Krakos and Black Pines are wips (both are novels I wrote about ten years ago and recently decided they needed to be rewritten). Trouble is, simply rewriting stuff isn't that satisfying, so I have started another novel.

[playpitspark]

I have changed things. It was suggested to me that rather than first chapters I should have extracts on my website, so that's what I have done. My blog will get you there.