Pen & Sword, Ltd....

[Marvin Lawson]

Hi,

I've noticed some comments about the decks that I make, and the company name, etc.....

Let me try to explain about Pen & Sword, Ltd....

This is what could happen when two people who know nothing about business (together) try to start one......

Pen & Sword, Ltd. started back around 1990. It was the dawn of desktop computers, I was a Martial Arts Instructor, and my partner was a Calligrapher....... What we wanted to do was to make a small booklet for those who had "lost" their LWB's.... something useful.... My partner (who knew about publishing, getting things printed, etc....) got himself into a near fatal auto accident at midnight, ended up in a comma for three months, and then lost his own custody to the medical / legal system in the U.S. (It went to his parents...) I didn't know anything about running a publishing business, etc....

I went through trying to learn how to market, (read shop to shop "cold" selling!) for the things that we had ready to sell....... then I got myself hurt on the job, and diabetes....... Then I found this quirky program on the internet....... named Orphalese Tarot. Many of the decks that are on the deck exchange came from those days..... us finding them, re-sizing them, sometimes "rebuilding" them, replacing cards that were missing, etc...

Then Dominatrix started talking about some of us making decks "sorta" like he did, and each develop our own style(s).... (Trust me, he has a wonderful style all his own...)

Well, I tried it.... Now I'm going back and re-doing many of my earlier decks, to make them look "nicer".......

Well, why can't you find my site on the web? So far, I've been through five programmers, and none have delivered a web site....... Two walked out half way through after taking money for the job!!! I now have a new partner, making three of us all trying to sell different things, without the means to do so.......

There are a number of decks that I have waiting to go to the printers, some greeting card ideas, a button business, and I'm getting my original partner to start working on a version of the Medieval Style Illuminated Manuscripts.....

I am sorry for the delays, but as soon as I can find another programmer, I'll start working on getting decks to you physically......

So far there is the Hedge Witchery Deck, just for Orphalese Community members...
The Firefly Tarot / Decks, along with all the others......

I just finished a new one: Renaissance Royality that I'll upload soon....

Take Care,

Marvin

[Programmer]

Hi Marvin,

I am sympathetic to your dilemma. Have you tried vworker.com (it used to be called Rent-a-Coder)? It is basically a site where you can request people do programming/web design/graphics jobs and then you get bids from people (many of them in Asia) who think they can do it. You choose the ** or the one you think is most convincing. There is a point system like the one on Ebay so you know if you are dealing with someone with a lot of previous votes of satisfaction or just a few. Not all the feedback about it is good but quite a few people seem to find it does the trick. I only used it once (for some graphics work on a different project) and I was pretty happy about the result.

Cheers
Richard