I’ve been working hard to update my website and other media to reflect what it is that I do now. One of the things that I did was create a motto.

“Make a Great Impression Every Time!”

I have been getting a lot of good responses about it. I think I’ll keep it.

I’m going to KillerCon! What is KillerCon, you might ask. It is a (very small) writer’s convention in Las Vegas on August 26-29, hosted by Wrath James White (I am not making that up), a very nice guy who traded me tickets for the event for a video advertisement. It will be my first conference in the self-publishing industry, and my first conference since about 1995 (a Star Trek convention in San Jose, CA).

I have been planning on going for almost 2 weeks. I can only make it for Thursday and Friday of the event, but if I play my cards right (pun intended), I should be able to make the most of it.

My goal is to generate business for GOS Multimedia for my recently added Self-Publishing Services. I figure if there ever was a target-rich environment, this will be it. Of course, writers are notoriously poor, but I think that I can stir up enough talk about what I do that I’m bound to get a couple of customers from it.

I made a flyer (along with new business cards) for the event. I decided to offer a 10% discount for anyone who mentions KillerCon (whether they went to it or not… shhh! Don’t tell anyone!). Here it is:

It should be interesting to see what kind of a response I get.

Here’s to hoping.

Here is the video ad I made for KillerCon.

I think I finally figured out what my business is about.

I’ve had my “doors” open since January, 2010. When I first conceived GOS Multimedia, I thought I was in the business of providing book videos and websites to customers. I was in the product industry, and once someone bought one of my products, getting return business was challenging at best. (I have one regular customer, whom I respect and cherish, but one repeat customer isn’t enough to keep the money flowing in.)

It turns out that I’m not in the product industry at all. I’m in the service industry. What is the service, you ask?

Mission Statement: “GOS Multimedia is in the business of providing self-publishers with the services they need to create books that are indistinguishable from those of large publishing houses.”

I’m putting together the expertise that is needed to provide those services, which I am necessarily tight-lipped about, because I want to keep my services proprietary for as long as possible.

If you want to know what I do, hire me!

http://www.gosmultimedia.com

Update (8/15/10): I’ve decided to come out of my shell and actually say what it is that I do. I’m now offering Self-Publishing services that include:

• Editing
• Layout
• Cover Art
• Promotion

This is in addition to my usual web development and videos. The way I see it, anyone who is self-publishing could use at least some of those services, and many authors could use all of them. I’ve already identified some competition, but the market seems so broad right now that I’m not worried about being put out of business.

I think this is going to be fun.

I think I’m in love with Smashwords. For those of you who don’t know what Smashwords is, it is a simple website where you can publish nearly anything to just about any e-reader platform there is. And unlike Amazon Digital Text Platform, you can publish your works for free, or for any price you like. There are no weird restrictions.

I have been helping my friend Harry Shannon get his books up on Smashwords for the last week or so. He’s a published author with real, honest-to-God publishable books. On a whim, he decided to publish the story he and I co-wrote (Jailbreak) to Smashwords. It was published before in two other books, and now it’s published at Smashwords. We set it to free (it’s only 8 pages long, for heaven’s sake), hoping that it will give Harry fans (and ME fans) a taste for the writing.

This, of course, makes me want to publish my other works there. I think I’m going to put up two or three of my favorites and see what kind of ratings they get. I don’t really have any fantasies of selling them to publishers, so what could it hurt?

The only requirement for publication is a cover. Good thing I have Photoshop.

Off to publish…

I thought this was interesting. Thanks to Mari Adkins for the suggestion.

Here’s a book video I made for Gleefully Macabre Tales by Jeff Strand

I’ve been working on a super-secret writing project for the last three months, and it is finally finished. Perhaps ‘super-secret’ isn’t the right term.  ’Not-foolish-enough-to-blog-about-it-in-detail’ is probably a better way of phrasing it.

Nevertheless, the check came in, and I cashed it, and I used the money to pay some bills, so according to Stephen King, that makes me a writer.

The client is reading it over the next two weeks while he’s out of the country, so I will have to wait to hear what he thinks. If I did my job–which I believe I did–and the client likes it–which I think he will–and the gods are smiling on me–who can say–then the client may be inclined to throw some more work my way. If I did a really good job, then I might actually get public credit for my work.  Wouldn’t that be something?

I should know more by about July 12 or thereabouts.  Keep your fingers crossed.

P.S. The actual Stephen King quote is, “if you wrote a piece and someone published it and the check didn’t bounce and you used it to pay the electricity bill, you’re a writer.”

My wife and I were working on an editing project a few days ago, and at one point we noticed that there was an ellipsis that only had two dots (..).  One of us said, “Gee, I guess it’s a reluctant ellipsis.”

And I thought, “Wow!  What a great name for a boat.”

The Reluctant Ellipsis.

Perhaps when I become rich beyond my wildest dreams from writing *chuckle* I’ll buy a boat and name it the Reluctant Ellipsis.  Until then, it may just show up in one of my stories.

(For those of you who don’t remember, The Downeaster ‘Alexa’ is a Billy Joel song from about 1989 about a fishing boat captain who can’t make a living from fishing any more.  Very poignant.)

In Space Available, my current writing project, one of my plot points is that faster than light travel is possible, but very difficult.  In 2097, the graviton and the Higgs boson have been unified into the Higgs-graviton, and we now understand gravity, mass, and the nature of the structure of space.

Space itself is the most rigid substance in the universe, and it takes something the size of a planet to bend it enough to be detectable in the electromagnetic spectrum.  But in the HG spectrum, the gravitational effects of a straight pin can be detected.  And because we can now detect the “stress field,” or the rigidity of space, it is possible to build devices that are capable of bending the stress field in useful ways.

David Gerrold (who friended me on Facebook!!) wrote in Yesterday’s Children that while it is not possible to move matter faster than the speed of light, it is possible to create pocket universes by bending the stress field completely around an object like a ship.  Then, if you manipulate the pocket universe in such a way that there is an unequal force on the pocket universe in relationship to our universe, you can get the pocket universe to move at very high rates of speed–faster than the speed of light, in fact.

They say amateur writers plagiarize, and professional writers steal.  It is my intention to steal David’s general concept and use it as one of the core plot points in Space Available.  Consider this your official notice, David!