And we’re back…finally

I’m hoping people have been wondering where I disappeared to, and trust me, it was not my intent to be gone for so long. My husband, Jesse, and I just bought our first house and when we went to transfer our internet services over from the apartment to the new house, and then things went screwy. First, AT&T cancels (rather than transfers) our previous service two days earlier than what we asked for. Then when they activated our new service, they give us a dynamic IP instead of the static IP needed for hosting web sites. An entire week goes by while we try and get someone competent at AT&T customer service to tell us what is going on. That’s when we find out our initial order was never placed on their end and that whoever told us we could transfer services had no clue what they were talking about. So it was going to take another 2 weeks for them to put a new order through and get us our static IP.

We’ve never really been happy with AT&T, but to our knowledge, they were the only ones offering static IPs to residential homes in our area for a semi-reasonable price. Then, we found out that there was another company, Cyberonic, who offers service for our new home. This was exciting news. We’ve been customers of Cyberonic before and we were really happy with their tech support. Jesse was on the phone with them pretty much as soon as the AT&T tech guy left our house to see what it would take to get us hooked up. He was on the phone for less than 20 minutes and had everything done without a single transfer, disconnect, or clueless person on the other end of the line.

Needless to say, we leaving AT&T behind and are waiting for Cyberonic to take over the line. However, this whole mess has made us try something new. We’re no longer hosting LE out of our home and have started using GO Pedro’s hosting services. One of the brighter points is I get to use the new WP 2.5, which is going to take some getting used to. A big thank you to gopedro.net for hosting our site!

While we were down, I started redesigning the site, so it may look weird for a little bit, but my artist, Jordan (aka Mr Yojimbo), is working on it with me and we’ll get it looking spiffy soon.

I’ve still been reading and posting news, so you should see a whole bunch of new articles on your feeds. However, I’ll make it easy for you and give you a run down of what’s been going on in the black hole that has been the non-internet time…

1. Review: Doppelganger by M. Brennan
2. I posted the latest Escapist Newsletter (Vol. 2 Issue 6). I found a ton of stuff for this month’s issue, so make sure you check it out. I started compiling this earlier in the month and adding bits to it as I found them, so it’s bigger than normal.
3. Review: Undead and Unworthy by MJ Davidson
4. Review: Dies the Fire by SM Stirling – A new reviewer to the site. My husband likes to read as well and he tends to write a few reviews for his own site, so I finally talked him into writing his reviews for me. He doesn’t read as often or as fast as I do, so his reviews will be sporadic, but he’ll give Literary Escapism something a bit more male since his tastes in books don’t exactly mesh with mine.
5. Weekly Geeks #10 was all about magazines and I spotlight a couple of horror magazines that I’ve found recently.
6. New Site Design – Since LE wasn’t live, I decided now was the time to do some more tweaking. I wanted to give the site a more bookish-paranormal feel, so I talked with a friend and we came up with a new logo and color scheme. It may not be completely active yet, but it’s getting there.
7. Writers Supporting Literacy – huge massive author signing in San Francisco
8. Harris O’Malley and the YA genre – I like this artist’s illustration, but it started me thinking about the whole young adult genre.

And here is some news I found today…

Ann Aguirre is going to be at Dallas’ in NYC on July 22nd at 7:30. Here’s the address: Dallas BBQ (Times Square), 241 West 42 Street, located between 7th and 8th Avenues. She’s inviting “authors, readers, aspiring authors, pretty much anyone who wants to show up and eat BBQ and drink margaritas with us” and she has also said she’ll sign any copies of books that are brought with them.

Interviews:

• Here’s an interview with Stephanie Kuehnert, author of I Want to be Your Joey Ramone, by Jeri Smith-Ready. Jeri read her novel and gave it a rave review.
• MTV caught up with Michael Welch, who plays Mike Newton in Twilight.
• Dakota Cassidy, author of The Accidental Werewolf and Accidentally Dead, by Amberkatze
• Linda Wilson, author of 50 Ways to Hex Your Lover, by Bitten by Books
• Harry Dresden (via Jim Butcher), of the Dresden Files series, by Jackie Kessler
• Camille (via Yasmine Galenorn), of the D’Artigo Sisters series, by Jackie Kessler