Since I launched this site, this has been my author picture:

It’s from eBay Live 2008 and has it’s merits but it was time to update it for a few reasons. Firstly, 2008 was SEVEN years ago and I look too young in that picture to have any authority on anything (which is sort of funny since I’d been selling online for over a decade at that point). Part of the issue is the My Little Pony shirt but I still wear those so… there we are.

Secondly, it’s not the most professional photo. It was just one my husband and I took while we were goofing around and, when I first used it, I always figured it would just be a temporary thing until I got a chance to make a better headshot. I have a lovely headshot that I use for fiction writing but I didn’t want to use the same exact pic on both blogs (I have enough brand confusion as it is with the dual identity) so that old pic stayed up all this time.

Also, you can’t actually really make out what I look like and it made for confusion at in person meet-ups. On social media, I look just like myself. Here? Well, you needed to squint and you still didn’t get a great view.

So I’ve just replaced that photo with this:

Astute readers will notice it’s actually an avatar version of my fiction writing headshot as seen here. I thought redoing it as an avatar would make it just different enough to distinguish between the two sites (and, also, the world of e-commerce is weirdly avatar obsessed so it seemed to fit). It also makes it easier for me to include it on my business cards to help people make the connection between the name and the person. It also actually looks like me right now which is a plus.

I’m still hoping I’ll eventually get around to getting a real proper e-commerce headshot like my writing one but, for now, I think this one works.

I shared this image on social media and several people wanted to know where I got it done and I’m happy to share that info. This was just a little $5 gig on Fiverr and I used seller Rinartdy17. If you’ve never used Fiverr before, here’s a voucher for a free $5 gig which would mean you could get your own avatar done up exactly like this for free.