Whitley Hodges, Novelist Interview Name of your website?Whitley Hodges, Novelist Your name? Whitley Hodges Your Location (city, etc) Columbia Personal Site of Whitley Hodges, Novelist This is the personal site of Whitley Hodges, an author who writes about ancient Sumerian mythology, urban fantasy, science fiction for adult readers, golf humor, and ancient Pre-Columbian Celtic sites in North America. He is also starting a political satire series of works.~~ What inspired you to launch your own website? I use free websites and directories because of a limited budget. Such sites are very useful during start-ups of publishing and other businesses. When did you launch your first website, and what was it? I launched my personal site in 1998, and it was about my first science fiction novel, The Skies of Phexeria. How did you decide on a name for your website? simple, it's my name. What makes your website different from other, similar offerings? It's not really different. What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?) I hope to eventually be able to afford a very nice website. How does your investment of time and money balance against your success? Thus far, my investment of time greatly outweighs my success as to selling my books. If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site? I would produce my own motion pictures of my novels and screenplays. If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand? I'm a rather disciplined person. I would probably be able to keep up, but I would eventually seek additional administrative help so I could continue writing. What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with? I have had to learn HTML and other webpage methods. Just learning how to use Word and Adobe PDF, and Photoshop have been rather time consuming. What has been your biggest challenge? Getting my son and daughter through university. What method has been most successful for promoting your website? Frankly, of all the methods I have used thus far, none of them have produced very well. What I need is to link my websites to other modes of advertising. How has running your website differed from your expectations? No. I'm quite used to working them now. How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity? Since the late 1990's and I will continue running the site for my career and the ownership of my works by my children. Are there other benefits from such websites? Yes. My family members now have a place they can go to when they want to see the posting of my latest works. And, they can refer their friends to the sites to show them what their father is up to.... What is your website address? Whitley Hodges, Novelist | 
