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I'm very proud of my Dr Midas website as I put it together myself through trial and error with overwritten templates and copy and pasted designs. However I know it is really basic compared to some author websites out there. So I've enrolled on a web design course starting in September where I will learn all about Dreamweaver and HTML coding and hopefully from there I can go on to Flash animation. I've been looking for some ideas and found some great author websites on a link at bloomsbury.com. I'd love to have some cool icons like on Celia Rees' Pirates! or simple animations like the burning flames on Powder Monkey. But if I could steal any website it would be those belonging to Justin Richards - www.justinrichards.co.uk - for (museum-set) The Death Collector and The Chaos Code where you can scroll over a desk and artefacts and uncover bits of information. My website is also limited to ten buttons/ pages so it would be great to expand from that and get away from lots of scrolling. I wonder if I'll need another domain name? I would ideally like to be able to add lots of the information I have gathered for my second Dr Midas book. I have lots of photographs ready to use too of Peruvian animals and artefacts including owl monkeys, llamas and the Peruvian mummy I saw at Bolton Museum. Speaking of which I've also set my Sky+ machine for a documentary on the History Channel tonight. It's all about the conquistadors and how they conquered the Incas. I'll be making lots of notes especially about the clothing in case there's anything I need to clarify when I re-edit my book. Don't forget you can tell me about your blogs and websites - just tack the information onto a comment.

STATUS: TGIF! I concluded a negotiation today which always feels good. The author is, of course, thrilled.

What’s playing on the iPod right now? AIN’T NOBODY BUT ME by Supertramp

This isn’t a publishing rant per se but it’s rather indirectly related. On Monday, the office lobby floor was retiled. In order to do that, the workers moved our mailbox center.

Let’s just say it was resting sideways on the stairs when I came in on Tuesday morning. I thought it a little odd but I certainly wasn’t able to move it so there it stayed. Well, Tuesday afternoon, the mail person comes to deliver the mail (and with MLK in there, more than the usual stack). He was in a huff because he had to come to each office instead of putting mail in the box like normal. Just to clarify, my office building isn’t large. On the second floor, there are only 8 suites—several of which are currently empty and awaiting new tenants. I understand that it was an inconvenience and outside of what a mail person would normally have to do to deliver the mail but it wasn't a big deal either and probably took all of 8 minutes to do.

But I guess it was because since then, I haven’t received another piece of mail all week—even though the mailbox center was put back.

Now, I know we do everything electronically here but seriously, not a day goes by where we don’t get a piece of mail. And we are expecting royalty statements and checks.

We had to call today and find out why mail hasn’t been delivered. I guess I’ll have to tell my clients that it was circumstances beyond my control on why their monies are late!