Author: Deadstar Publishing

Today we want to take some time to say thank you to everyone who has been a loyal fan and friend to us over the last 21 months. We’ve come a long way in that time and we couldn’t have done it without you.

The site that you see now is actually our third complete iteration and that’s what we wanted to talk to you about; its history, and possibly its future too. We started off using a largely templated webs.com site with little room for customisation. Within months we knew that this wasn’t right for us as a long term solution – while it helped us to get started it was far too restrictive so we moved. Our next home was with Wix.com – their drag and drop Flash based interface really allowed us to hone our brand image. We think our website was provided through them from December 2010 to September 2011. If it hadn’t been a Flash website we might have stayed with Wix for longer but with a growing majority of people accessing the web through phones and tablets we needed a solution that everyone could view.

In July 2011 Kevin started working on the current website. A lot of the look and feel was based on the Flash site that Danny and David devised but this time it was entirely hand coded with W3 compliant HMTL and CSS. It took eight drafts to go from concept to being ready to launch – and took nearly six weeks to code while working on other projects. A busy schedule meant the site wasn’t actually launched until late September. We’re afraid we never made a note of the date so that will remain forever a mystery. We know it was before October 7th but not exactly when.

Since then the site has continued to evolve and today we launched version 0.13 – this time we’ve finished off the Resources section, added a link to Leaf Books and at last have a fully functional shop (Okay, we cheated and enabled the shop 11 days ago). It’s March now, we hear you asking, and the latest whole version of the site appeared just over four months ago – why did it take so long to get a shop working? The answer is simple: manpower. Even though we have a team of dedicated and hardworking people editing, marketing, researching and doing lots of other things ending in ‘ing’ we’re still a small team and sometimes we can’t do everything. At least not in the timeframe that we’d like. This is where we thank Stefan, our frequently sleep-deprived web guy, for helping out and offering coding advice at 3am on so many occasions – without him we’d have taken twice as long to get the site as far as it has come.

So, the site works, it looks great and it’s starting to be a useful resource. What’s next?Well, the links section could do with an overhaul and we’re still working on our retailers and bookgroups sections. There are also still a few bugs and glitches (but they’re a lot rarer now than they used to be) to iron out. We’re also looking at ways to improve the effectiveness of this blog. What would you like to see here? Interviews? Commentary on the state of the industry? More of Dr Deadstar (who has been mysteriously quiet for many months now… maybe we should go down to his lab sometime and make sure he’s not up to anything dastardly…)?

That’s it for now. We’ll just finish off by saying that we’re getting really close to 500 fans on Facebook and you really want to be there when it happens.

Just in time for the Cardiff International Comic and Animation Expo 2012 our store revamp has been completed! To welcome you all to it, the first ten people to use the code ‘newstore1’ will get 25% discount on their order.

The new store is live now at: www.deadstarpublishing.co.uk/shop

If you’re reading this (if you’re not reading this… stop it! That kind of thinking makes my head hurt) and you’ve been here before you’ve probably noticed you no longer need to click on a link to get to the blog. That’s because Stefan, our wonderful web support guy has worked his magic and fixed things for us. Thank you Stefan!

There are four events for people to watch out for in coming weeks; firstly, author B. John Shaw Liddle will be signing books at the Wellfield Book Shop (Wellfield Road, Cardiff) on October 15th from 1.30-2.30pm as part of the Made in Roath festival, then the Deadstar team will be at the Mercure Hotel in Bristol on Saturday 22nd exhibiting at BristolCon. Next up we have a launch party on November 2nd for The Pride, one of our new comic book titles. and finally Deadstar Publishing are returning to Leeds ThoughtBubble festival on the 19th and 20th of November.

We’d love to see you there, and more details will be posted on our Facebook page as each event draws nearer.

The keen eyed amongst you might have noticed that our website is not quite the same as it was last week. As part of our consolidation with Leaf Books and our desire to improve the website, we have moved away from the Flash based solution used previously and this… this is the result.

We hope you like it and everything works well for you. If you have any questions, comments or problems, please let us know by leaving a comment.

‘Is this thing on? What do you mean of course it’s on, it’s a blog, you’re typing it? Geoffrey, fetch me the combobulator! We’ll see who’s laughing after that!
So you’ve probably heard I’ve been asked to provide you wannabe experts in the field of experimental-physical-molecular-faux science a simple guide to taking over / destroying the world. So I present to you; Dr Deadstar’s 12 Step Guide to Global Domination.’

Step 1 – Picking the Name

‘You can’t have a good plan without having a good name to go with it, you’ve all heard that the suit makes the man, well a name is like a suit for a plan. After all Dr Huben Von Stikenmos did not become famous overnight by creating the slightly annoying sound generator. No, he made the hypersonic death dispenser and invaded the moon! So names are important and here are some handy tips to help you out when trying to name your schemes.’

-Make it sound grander than it actually is. No one ran in terror from a mild injury ray.
-Make it easy to remember. Dr Finkle was forgotten after creating the ornithopic re-animating resulting in a large explosion machine. If no one can remember what brought about the downfall of humanity it might as well not have happened.
-Use alliteration where possible. The classics never die, we’ve all heard of the doomsday device.
-Finally, make sure the name lets people know vaguely what your plan entails, or what your invention does but keep them guessing too. Suspense adds to the fear and awe of your creation, but if they have no idea what is going on then you will generally be ignored.
‘So there you have it, step one to joining the ranks of the great men and women attempting to change the world. Until next time!’

‘…Geoffrey, how do I turn this off? Pass me that spanner!’