My pal Rich Handley at Hasslein Publishing has a big favor to ask. He publishes a great bunch of books on shows and movies like Planet of the Apes, Back To The Future, James Bond, Red Dwarf and lots of others. He's asked for a no-cost favor, so I'm posting it here, mostly verbatim.

"Paul and I at Hasslein Publishing are trying to qualify for one of 12 small-business grants from Chase in order to build up Hasslein into something bigger than it currently is. We need 250 votes within an eight-day period to qualify, so please vote before June 30!

"Each grant is for a whopping $250,000. It's a huge long-shot, as I'm sure a lot of people are submitting their companies to this program, but if we were to win one of the grants, we'd have a ton of money to do amazing things with our company, which would be a good thing.

"I can't stress enough how useful such a grant would be to us. So here's what we're requesting: Can each of you take about three minutes to vote for us, and then urge people you know to do the same? We have only a week left, so time is of the essence. And if you have more than one Facebook account in your house, it would be doubly helpful if each of you voted. 😊 It would be a huge boost if we can pull this off, and would pretty much change everything for our company.

"Here are the details, for those of you who have Facebook."

And here's how you can vote for us:

1) Visit Chase's site.

2) Scroll down and click "LOG IN & SUPPORT" to log into the site via your Facebook account. Yeah, that's right, you need a Facebook account.

3) After logging in, scroll down and type "Hasslein Publishing" in the "Business Name" box, and then click on "Search." (Note: Not "Hasslein Books" -- it has to be "Hasslein Publishing" or it won't work.) If it doesn't come up, just type in "Hasslein" and that should find it for you.

4) Once the search results come up, scroll down, see our company listed, and click on the "Vote" button.

5) Er... there is no #5. It's so easy, it only takes four quick steps.

And that's it. A few clicks and you get to help out a friend of mine. Rich and his publishing partner and his bag of freelancers have a bunch of great books coming later this year and in 2013 and I need to see them come out because I have new bookshelves and they're kinda empty.

You can read more about Rich here.

[Artwork: The James Bond Lexicon, coming soon from Hasslein Publishing]