about ross

First thing you should know—I'm a polymath. That means I have an insatiable curiosity about everything. It's led me down many lots of different career paths, so learned many different services and skills. In business, it's meant pivoting a lot (chill, I'll get to that), which has made life challenging. Things changed in October 2025—I had reached pivot exhaustion and decided it was time to choose.

Right before Author Nation 2025 in Las Vegas—I finally gave myself permission to downgrade everything on my seemingly never-ending project list so I could focus all my efforts on a single goal: to publish my debut novel within one year.

Writing a novel is ambitious all by itself, but I knew in my bones I could do it. I'd wanted to do it for years... I had simply never given myself the courage to admit it to myself? Life is weird that way.

The next day, I put up an Amazon preorder page, launched a simple Facebook ad to see if I could get any preorders from cold traffic... and 15 preorders later, I knew my answer...

This book was happening.

Because I post a lot of different kinds of stuff across the interwebs, I figure I'd carve out a single virtual bucket to hold it all. Mostly, I write about the craft of writing, the publishing of writing, and the marketing of writing, but related things creep in, like best practices for running a crowdfunding campaign or an ad on Meta. Because this site will be all about my sci fi fiction obsessions, you should start hoarding those dilithium crystals because we are going on an adventure.

it's about the story

The common thread in my life has always been storytelling... acting, filmmaking, photography, marketing, fiction. It's always about crafting a good narrative.

previous pivots

At age 11, I started by acting in TV commercials, but quit all that since I found auditioning was a brutal experience, especially for a young kid. I went on to work as a production designer at W Magazine's European magazine, then laid out ads for the BBC, and waded through the carnage of the dot com bust at a San Francisco ad firm. I tried to break back into the film industry as a screenwriter and director—with modest success—before I took a break to to raise two kids. In 2012, I got back to writing by crowdfunding an anthology of short stories (all dedicated into the public domain). My penultimate chapter led into fine art photography by doing shooting portraits, landscapes, and events, which I still do. For a time, I even experimented with game design.

While all those pivots seemed fruitless, each chapter taught me powerful new skills: how to shoot professional photographs, how to write a newsletter, how to quickly test new product ideas, how to set up an Shopify site, and—my favorite—how to run a successful ad on Facebook and Instagram.

and then... Author Nation

I joined friends at Author Nation and remembered just how much I love writing. My first passion, really, since I was 16.

So I committed to putting out my debut novel in October 2026, which you can preorder on Amazon here. That book—and the universe it is set in—are the main impetus of this web site. Buckle up!

Author Nation taught me that storytelling is simply the adult version of playing in a Kindergarten sandbox. My sandbox only happens to be in epic science fiction—so come and play!

If you want to come into my world, I have three different flavors to suit your palette...

flavor #1: lurkers paradise

The default vanilla option: read almost everything on this site with no membership required. You're here be a wallflower and that's it. Cool! Welcome! You'll find something fun on here, I bet.

flavor #2: membership... but still free

Being a member has some pretty cool benefits:

• Never miss new web site posts (they get sent to your email!)
• You can comment on almost anything.

The membership option is mainly to keep out trolls and spammers. Still, I do love talking to people on the site, so please become a member!

flavor #3: membership double extra awesome

Paid members (at subscription of just $1/month) get the first two options plus:

• view and comment on everything—including all of my posted works in progress!
• automatic subscription to my private monthly newsletter where I deep dive on writing-related topics, offer discounts for upcoming books, freebies, and lots of other stuff. Trust me, you will get way more out of this option than you spend.

hmmm... tell me more about flavor #3

Book Readers will get:

• paid members get access to first drafts to feedback on works in progress
• book reviews—both writing and non-writing books
• sometimes me angrily venting about how online sales is done so poorly that it leaves us all a little worse for wear

Book Writers will learn:

• How to run Meta ads by following my personal case studies (video tutorials)
• How to set up an Amazon Product page (image, title, blurb, etc.)
• My personal protips and hacks on mindset & productivity
• Guidance around working with (or around) A.I. tools
• Inspiration for when you feel like writing is pointless
• Honest case studies on using writing apps like Scrivener, Omm Writer, Vellum, Google Docs, KD Spy, Rocket Publisher, etc.
• How to run a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign without premature death

lastly: you can meet others like you

Lots of people love sci fi. Just being an unpaid member lets you meet people who love lasers and space and robots and ring worlds. Who doesn't want to read about a ring worlds?