Updates to Website and ALDEN RIDGE Exerpt

This evening I've made a few minor graphical updates to the website (and blog), mostly to add more color and a little better visual interest. Note the light blue gradient at the left and right sides of each page, and the new icon new to the title at the very top. One bit of trivia: that icon is currently the only image I've ever made using Adobe Illustrator. I made it several years ago and thought it was good, but I never have worked in Illustrator since. I'm not quite sure why.

Additionally, I've posted a revised version of my excerpt from ALDEN RIDGE. If you've already read it there isn't much point in re-reading it, but of course I always want to have my best work up on the website. Depending on how critical a reader you are, you might not even notice much that's changed, though I assure you that there are quite a few small changes. The revised version fixes a few beat errors, a couple of comma splices, and a number of saidisms. The text is also now significantly less distant from the pov characters, I think. Hopefully Elaine in particular seems more sympathetic in this version, despite her flaws. I've kept the old version online just for the sake of comparison. I don't mind letting people see the mistakes I've made, as long as they also see how I later moved past them.