My 12-year-old nephew Max made an astute observation last summer.* “Aunt Erin,” he said, “you and Uncle Keith are very 20th century.” I’m paraphrasing a bit because, in addition to be being stuck in the 1900s, I also have a dreadful memory.
But he was so right. Texting? Tweeting? Facebooking? They don’t interest me much. Instead, hand me a Jane Austen novel and settle me into a comfy chair with decent lighting and I’m good to go.
So considering my 20th century, even 19th century, preferences, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that when I needed to domain-map my website to my blog, I immediately thought of an actual, fold-out map. I saw the streets, complete with cobblestones and rolling hills, winding their way from my old website to its new home.
It took only a few minutes for my mind to drift from fold-out maps to maps in fiction. My favorite literary cartography has to be the Sherlock Holmes Atlas, found in Great Cases of Sherlock Holmes, my preferred rainy day reading. Illustrated by Julian Wolff, Editor Emeritus of the Baker Street Irregulars, the maps expand “outward from his quarters at 221b Baker Street to the entire earth…” Does it get much better than that?
All this to say that I’ve merged my website with my blog… Word Crushes has become Erin Fanning: Author & Researcher. The blogging portion of the site will remain essentially the same—short stories for teens along with an increased emphasis on other writing chatter and the occasional essay—but now I can update my own information along with my blog. It just made sense to do it all at the same time.
That is, if this 19th / 20th century person can concentrate on domain-mapping and not end up in a cozy chair reading Sherlock Holmes and following his adventures through mapping of a very different kind.
*Certainly not the first time Max has made wise, older-than-his-years comments. His observations, which I occasionally jot down in my journal, deserve a blog of their own.
Erin Fanning 