Self-employed at home for most of her adult life,
Barbara Brabec continues to move in new directions as an author and independent publisher, speaker, and author's
consultant. This site reflects her professional and personal interests, philosophy, and beliefs.
(But it's now in the process of change. See update below.)
Personal Update
April 2021
BECAUSE I PLAN TO BE ACTIVE on the Web for several
more years, I recently decided I needed to completely
update my online presence with a new WordPress site and blog. This site has been in existence since the turn of the century, featuring
both my writing and that of many other professionals. But the pandemic that so
dramatically changed the world has also changed my life, work, goals, and especially my writing
and publishing interests.
Moving to a new site is taking much longer than I anticipated. One reason was
because of the
hundreds of pages of content and related documents on this site. Deciding what
to discard (about half the content) and what to completely rewrite or update and
edit—plus how to structure all that content into new article categories—took months of planning and work before the actual uploading and
formatting of pages to the new site could begin last summer.
And then I was stopped dead in my tracks in the fall when WordPress released the latest 5.5
version, which prevented plugins on many sites all over the world from working properly.
My page-builder plugin stopped working, and it took experts several weeks to figure out how to fix this problem. Several things were tried, but it
wasn't until webmasters realized that the "fix"
was going to require them to change all the themes they had originally designed for
themselves and their clients. The problem was that they had all used a program
that had stopped working (much like programs that work on Windows 7 won't work
on Windows 10).
In mid-October, my webmaster explained that changing the theme of any WordPress site was
extremely complicated and time-consuming, and we didn't find a theme that would
work until last month, and there are still problems in getting it to work
properly. (This
article discusses the problem with WordPress and page builder plugins.)
Meanwhile . . .
I'M DOING WHAT I CAN to load more content now,
and hope to launch the new site in a few months. Much of the content on this site is now badly outdated and will be discarded,
including all articles by other writers and content in the Computertalk and
Crafts Industry departments. But until I'm able to launch the new
site, what you see here will remain intact. Thanks for understanding that I
can't keep this site updated while also building a new website.
The new Barbara Brabec’s World will feature my
business services, books, and best writing about all aspects of LIFE,
which includes the myriad of topics I’ve been writing about all my life. I'm
excited about starting all over again with a beautiful new website, and I'm
looking forward to moving from the publication of my lengthy Brabec Bulletins to
shorter blog posts.
Subscribers to my Brabec Bulletin will be notified when the new site is about to launch.
(Subscribe HERE if you're not already on my
mailing list.)
New "Dog Memoir" Book in Progress
I ONCE SAID THAT "Old writers never die; they just change their subjects." Since
the publication of my first memoir about my life with
a drummer named Harry, I've been most interested in writing in direct response to the call of my heart.
And that call is what prompted me to document the life and writings of my
amazing mother in my second memoir and biography. It's also what prompted me to
begin the writing of a third memoir about Ginger, the remarkable dog
Harry and I rescued in the deep woods of Missouri in the seventies. This will be
my first work of fiction—a "dog memoir" based on the dog's true and dramatic
life story told from two points of view: Ginger's
and mine.
Because of the time I've had to devote to the new website, it was necessary
to set this book aside until the new site is launced, and I'm upset about this because this book has been living in my heart ever since Ginger found her Golden
Pastures in 1986, and it is unlike any other book I'll ever write. It was
nothing short of a miracle that Harry and I found this abandoned dog after she
had been running wild for six months, and our lives changed overnight after we
rescued her, literally from the jaws of death.
At the beginning, we just planned to
save Ginger, clean her up, and then take her to an animal shelter for adoption, but she
quickly won our hearts and then surprised us with a litter of puppies. Our life with Ginger was an adventure from start to
finish as we taught her to communicate with us and adapt to our unusual
lifestyle as we moved from place to place and traveled the country. After all
these years, she still comes to me in my dreams, always smelling like
fresh-popped corn.
I feel as though both Harry and Ginger are accompanying me as I write this book,
and from the early interest in it that I've had from a few people in my network,
I believe that its publication will be life-changing for me in
ways I can only dream about now.
