itsallaboutme.com

1. merging onto the information superhighway in an ’87 toyota tercel

This seems like a question that a savvy young-ish person with a blog and no less than five online profiles shouldn’t have to ask, but…how do you get a website? (This is not rhetorical: I’m hoping that you—savvy young-ish Bread and Bread readers—will tell me.)

I mean, like, I know I have to buy a domain name and stuff, but who should I buy it from? And does that same entity host it on their server? Which hosts (is that even the right word?) are cheap but won’t bombard visitors with ads promising a free dinner at Chili’s if they can identify a celebrity senior portrait that is clearly Tom Hanks?

I’ve resisted building a site because I’m lazy and a late adopter, but it looks like the internet is here to stay. And the first step in being a Real Live Professional Writer is having a Real Live Professional website, right?

Okay, arguably the first step is “writing some stuff.” But I’ve toiled at step one long enough to reward my self with a little egocentric url, right?

Unfortunately, http://www.cherylklein.com/ is already taken by Cheryl Klein, the children’s book editor who is the bane of my Google news alerts. Cheryl Klein is making waves in the publishing world, appearing on panels right and left. Confusingly, the first words you see on her site are “Talking Books.” I wanted to be the Cheryl Klein who talked books, dammit! But that’s what I get for being a late adopter.

2. call me cheryle

Which leads me to another thing I thought I’d never do, which is wedge a middle initial into my writer name. It always seemed pretentious, and removed from the actual world. Like, do H. Ross Perot’s friends say, “Hey, H. Ross, want to go to Raging Waters this weekend?” (hey, I don’t know what he does in his spare time).

Sometimes the middle name/initial thing makes obvious sense. Jamie writes as Jamie Asae FitzGerald because her middle name alludes to her Japanese heritage, the knowledge of which adds a layer of meaning to some of her poems. And if you have a really common name, like Mary Smith, I can understand why you’d want to be Mary J. Smith or Mary Jezebel Smith or whatever.

But Cheryl Klein isn’t so common that it demands a middle initial, and my middle name is Elizabeth, which signals nothing more than my mom’s obsession with English royalty. (She was alluding to Elizabeth I—I’m all Cate Blanchett, not so much Helen Mirren.) Except now I guess it’s just common enough to make going by it slightly impractical.

So…what?

• Cheryleklein.com (which just looks like one of the many weird ways people spell my name at Starbucks)

• Cheryl_e_klein.com (unwieldy)

• Cherylklein.net (kind of second-tier—you never hear about the “dot-net boom”)

• Cherylklein.org (I do have a certain nonprofit-ness about me)

• Cherylkleinwrites.com (ugh, hacky…and what if I decide to give up writing and just post pictures of my cats?)

Man, now I know what straight girls go through when they get married. But at least I don’t have to shell out for a wedding dress.