About us

Hey,

I’ve always been fascinated by information. I spent my younger years hanging out in the library (Yes, it did have air conditioning where my house did not, but that’s not the point) The idea of having information readily available was always appealing to me. Books and magazines were the primary source of my reading. I always felt a certain comfort knowing that I could hop over to the library, look in the card catalog or the magazine rack and learn something new.

I could always research some advanced topics for a school project or a book report. Maybe Flowers for Algenon or The Pigman or maybe a report on the seven layers of earth. Yes, this was junior high school. (Yes there was a time in the not too distant past where there was no google, no internet, you had to look things up in books.) so my research usually involved some form of the multi-volume Encyclopedia Britannica.

During my formidable Junior high (now called “middle-school”) and high school years, I was heavily involved in art, creative writing, music. Whether playing guitar in a band, driving my english teachers crazy with my creative writing or painting an oil painting trying to resemble one of the old masters, I knew was destined for some creative role in the future.

So, after graduating high school I went to college and did the most logical thing a would-be artist/musician/author would do…

I majored in accounting and finance !

Wait?? What??

Let me put some perspective on this decision a little. My brain also has a logical side, a side that longed to solve puzzles. So the business school reminded me of a huge puzzle book. I treated every problem like a puzzle and eventually I landed a college degree in accounting, then a masters degree in finance.

I may sound like I’m knocking this path but believe it or not this wasn’t all bad. It helped keep a roof over my head, gas in my car, food in my belly and eventually this path led me to work for the nations largest book store chain. This let me to perform analysis for and sit in meeting with pretty much every publisher that I can imagine. Even though I was a finance guy, I worked closely with buyers who had to go through tons a sample books to see what they were going to purchase. I loved the book store environment and corporate culture, this was unlike any place I’ve worked prior or since, I loved downtown Manhattan (plus I loved my discount card for the actual book stores).

The internet was young, we viewed amazon as the main online competitor (believe it or not Amazon started off as a giant online bookstore)

This is when my mind started racing. What about writing my own book. I spend a lot of time commuting to work on the train, I could write a book and hopefully get published.

Well, the writing went well, I finished my first book in about 4 and half months. I was very happy and proud of this accomplishment. Then it happened, or more accurately didn’t happen. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get published. I couldn’t crack to code of the large publishing houses.

Then it happened, while watching the Blues Brothers one night, it hit me… try to self publish my own book. With the internet, and distribution channels like Amazon, Ebay… etc. it was like the light shined in and from that point forward, I was on a “Mission from God”.

The funny thing is, a lot of other people felt the same way and that’s when the idea for  Firefalls Publishing was born. The goal was to develop a place where we can discuss ways to write, tools to help us write, and of course selling and distributing out material. Get and give opinions about creative projects, dreaded writer’s block. Technical things like ISBN numbers and “should I buy a PC or a Mac” (For the record I’m still on the fence here, I own and use both so I’m more on the team of “what do I have that works”)

So congratulations on finding our little home of the web, I hope you’ll be become a big part of our community. Together we’ll learn, grow and can accomplish anything. Like they say “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts”.

 

So please browse around and enjoy the site. Drop me an email if you have any questions, comments, ideas or just some great stories about writing, publishing or anything.

So come on in and join our community.

Let me be the first to say..Welcome !!!