Friday, October 11, 2013

Tiki-Toki and Timelines

A while back I published an interactive timeline that I created using Tiki-Toki, an absolutely brilliant online timeline creator. My struggle in the beginning was to figure out what to post on the timeline without spoiling the books in my series for those who haven't read them yet. I wanted to give the fans something unique to dive into, but not make it so in depth with plot information that I ruin things for new readers. So, I slapped together a basic chronology of events I felt could fill a small timeline and left things alone.

Lately, with me taking a harder look at the facets of my writing business, I've realized I've been throwing away a really great resource that can be used to draw new readers into my series as well as satisfy the sense of discovery most of my fans have. The timeline that Tiki-Toki allows you to create enables you to import images, write small stories according to what you want in the timeline entries, and even link to outside content - such as purchase links for my books, or character profiles on my own website. You can even put in audio and video files, neither of which I've had the time to mess with though.

Seeing how this has been a neglected resource for me, I've spent the last couple of days updating the timeline with some new images and background, and tweaking some of the settings here and there. And over the next couple of weeks, I will be writing out new entries and polishing up the ones that are already in there. I'm even going to be connecting the timeline to VRKA - once VRKA is live and functional on my website.

I still have a ton of additions and updates to do to the timeline, but for now you can browse what I have and explore the world of my Black Earth and Expired Reality series.



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