Buh bye.
So you may have noticed some changes around here…
After four years of branding my “Kid-Free Living” web site, I’ve decided to trash that whole persona. Great, huh? Time well spent.
Why? Well, four things…
1. Exhaustion/Confusion.
Kid-Free Living was only ever meant as a funny name for the blog. Instead, I found myself constantly trying to explain it. No, I don’t “hate kids.” No, I don’t hate people who have kids. No, you don’t have to be childless to read my stuff. The site isn’t even about not having kids. It’s just a humor site. No, really.
A site that needs a paragraph explanation for its title is just desperately in need of a new title.
2. Missed opportunities.
I can only guess how many people didn’t come to my site because they saw the title and the URL and, as parents, assumed I’d have nothing of interest to share.
3. Assholes
About every three months I’ll get some nasty comment on the blog about what a terrible person I am for not having kids. I should die in hell, blah blah blah. I stopped taking nasty comments to heart a long time ago, but jeeze. If just not having kids makes some people that crazy angry, I can only imagine how many reasonable people I inadvertently turned off before they had a chance to give me a chance. (See #2.) I know I don’t have to apologize for my life choices, but like politics and religion, maybe some things are just best not mentioned in mixed company, particularly if you don’t want people to pigeon hole you with their own opinions and experiences.
4. Upcoming Books and Related Projects (the most exciting!)
I have some books that I’d like to spotlight here on my relatively high ranking site.
1. A humor collection that you’ll hear more about very soon that has nothing to do with “Kid-Free Living.” The project is in conjunction with some amazing comedy writers, who might not want their work associated with a site that appears to be about “Kid-Free Living” whether it is actually about being kid-free or not.
Not that anyone complained; but if I was in a book that ended up on a site called “Dogs Suck” I’d be kind of bummed.
2. I also have a contemporary fantasy novel being shopped at the moment, which may come out this year or next, but again, doesn’t fit Kid-Free.
3. I also have a humor novel that should be done this summer. That does have something to do with the site (in that it is a fiction loosely based on my courtship with Mike and he is half responsible for our kidlessness) but… If “Bridget Jones” was actually called “Kids Suck” it would have been a lot less popular, don’t you think?
So, I spent weeks trying to come up with a new brand for the site. I’d finally settled on WineSnort, which I thought implied laughter and was cool, and then I realized: Why spend a bunch of time rebranding another made-up phrase? Was I going to offend people who didn’t like wine and now spend my time explaining that my site isn’t all about wine?
I was in a quandary. What was the one thing that best represents me?
Then it hit me:
ME!
So viola! AmyVansant.com. It’s exactly the same site as it was when it was Kid-Free, but now 65% less off-putting! (or more, perhaps.)
It helps that the girl who had @amyvansant on Twitter inexplicably changed it to AmyVansant4, allowing me to grab @AmyVansant, which I should have done a long time ago, but I’m an idiot. Now I just have to wait for the /AmyVansant on Facebook who married into the name to get divorced. If anyone knows her, if you could seduce her or her husband, that would be cool. Thanks.
