Freelance Writers/Editors/Interviewers,
Web Content Developers,
and Creative/Communications Consultants

Culver Military Academy Woodcraft Camp and Summer Naval School, 1960-1969. (3 stars, bronze tuxis; 7 stars, silver tuxis; 3 stars gold tuxis). Student and counselor.

Other summer jobs included: laborer at the Sugardale ham factory in Canton, Ohio, “foreground” operator for an IBM 360 mainframe at the Canton-based data center of the Timken Company, and sailing master at the Seal Harbor Yacht Club on Mt. Desert Island, Maine.

Princeton University, A.B. in English Literature, 1972. Class Poet, Debate Panel, University Cottage Club. Senior thesis on modern fantasy and science fiction, which required special departmental permission. (Star Wars was still five years in the future. This was really my first “book.”)

FireCrystal Communications, 1975-present.

FireCrystal became a two-person firm after Emily Glossbrenner left IBM to join the team. (Emily is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wilson College.) By enlisting the skills of fellow freelance professionals and drawing on our own sensibilities and experience, we can help you define your communications goals and figure out the best way to accomplish them.

For example, we envision and supervise the creation of Web sites (WorldMetaView), and we use our interviewing skills to draw out a client and deliver precisely the content he or she wants.

We arrange for the printing, indexing, professional publication, and distribution of books. Debt and Delusion by Dr. Peter Warburton was one of Emily's projects, from start to finish. I won't go into all the problems she solved. But I will say that the book is a smashing success, selling about 45 units a month on Amazon, at $75 a copy.

Magazine and trade journal articles, books, brochures, flyers, print and radio ads, hardware and software documentation, press releases, telemarketing scripts, direct mail packages, focus group analysis, and instruction booklets—we’ve done it all, many times over. (In fact, we've written over 60 books with combined sales of over 1,000,000 copies.)

In 1983, I published one of the very first books explaining “the electronic universe” of online computer communications. It introduced the technique of using "tip boxes" outside the in-line text in computer books and sold over 186,000 copies. Many other titles about the online world followed, including several about the Internet that pre-dated the introduction of Mosaic, the common ancestor of both Netscape and IE.

As you might imagine, most of our work these days centers around scripts for Web-based training, DVD-based video presentations, and Web site conception and creation. But we are always open to additional media and opportunities.

If you have a moment to spend, you'll discover that FireCrystal Communications is an extraordinary firm with extraordinary talents and capabilities.

Please contact us at 215-736-1213 or via e-mail.

FireCrystal Communications has participated in the creation of scores of Web sites. At one end of the spectrum, we can act as both account executives and creative directors to interview the principals of a business to clarify what they want their site to accomplish.

We will then contract with a graphic designer and a Webmaster to create one or more prototypes and present them to you for comment and reaction. Once a design document has been approved, we will manage the project to completion and launch. An excellent example of this approach is the WorldMetaView site. The client had a notion of what he wanted—Emily and I turned it into a vision and then into a reality. We can also help promote a site once it has gone "live."

At the opposite end of the spectrum FireCrystal Communications can serve as just copywriters. The navigation may or may not have been previously determined. But what's needed is content for each page, and possibly suggestions for design and illustrations. Once again, we interview the principals and absorb any of their current printed or electronic materials. A good example of this approach is Apco Pools. We interviewed the husband and wife principals for two hours, selected several “before and after”photographs, and turned everything over to netStride, the firm that hired us. Please click here for a links page covering over a dozen of the Web sites we have helped create.

There is also the site we created for our own “seminar-in-a-box, book/CD package,”How to Make your Vacation Property Work for You! We did the copy. netStride did the coding, layout, and design.

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• “Celebrating Roma Bank’s New Hamilton Headquarters, 2005”(Bank president Sen. Peter Inverso and Chairman Maury Perilli on-camera.)

• Mercer County Chamber of Commerce 2005 Awards videos: Maury Perilli, Borden-Perlman Insurance, and Merrill Lynch.

• Mercer County Chamber of Commerce 2006 Awards videos: Lou Natle, Stark & Stark, and Hopewell Valley Community Bank

• Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Hamilton Awards video 2005: Bill Rue and Dr. Feroz Safdar

• Owens-Corning. Anti-trust Compliance at Owens-Corning. Script (one-page sample) for interactive, Web-based training. Click here to view the scene as it was shot. (Windows Media Player—WMV file).
  
  The "Hospitality Suite Hazards" scene stops at a pivotal point, and learners are presented with an interactive quiz. Here are the first three screens.

• Lockheed Martin Space Systems. Annual Security Re-briefing. Winner of a 2003 Silver Telly Award. Please click here to play a brief scene (WMV file).

• J. P. Morgan Chase Global Custody and Corporate Actions Virtual Tour. For internal use and external marketing. Corporate Stewardship Online Training. Script to create a self-paced, Web-based version of the company’s current live training program.

• Thermo-Electron. Code of Business Conduct and Ethics.