Writing Experience
As a freelance writer and editor, during the past four decades I have worked on a wide range of successful projects:
Articles and Reviews
I have written more than 600 articles and book reviews — in particular:
- Most of my 466 articles have been published in print magazines.
- So far I have reviewed 107 technical books, almost all of them related to software and web development.
- I also ghostwrote 57 book reviews for the world's top print-on-demand publisher (now owned by Amazon.com), under the name of a New York Times best-selling author. The books included memoirs, political critiques, photographic journals, children's books, poetry collections, philosophical studies, self-help books, and numerous types of novels.
Marketing Copy
A book's "marketing copy" consists of book descriptions of several lengths, as well as the author's bio. This text appears on the book's cover and in publicity materials.
- For a print-on-demand publisher, I wrote marketing copy for 176 works, including novels, cookbooks, science fiction stories, political critiques, self-help books, historical romances, philosophical manuscripts, personal memoirs, poetry collections, business management guides, parenting books, picture books, murder mysteries, dictionaries and phrase books, and children's books.
- I wrote and edited large amounts of marketing copy for advertisements, product catalogs, and web pages for a variety of business clients.
News Releases
I have written more than 100 news releases (often referred to as "press releases") — in particular:
- I wrote 33 online news releases (primarily for my website clients), published by 148 news websites, including AltaVista, Excite, Google News, NBC, Overture, PRWeb, Technorati, and Yahoo! News.
- For a print-on-demand publisher, I wrote 70 print news releases announcing the publication of a wide range of books, including novels, cookbooks, science fiction stories, self-help books, historical romances, philosophical manuscripts, poetry collections, children's books, and autobiographies.
Books
- As an outsource editor for a print-on-demand publisher, I edited 75 books, totaling 8,116 pages of text. The manuscripts included novels, political commentary, rural histories, poetry collections, war biographies, illustrated children's books, self-help notebooks, social analyses, gaming strategy guides, and science-fiction novels.
- I also rewrote four children's books for that publisher ("content editing").
- I have performed extensive editing of three additional books, on social analysis, native American Indians, and a creative writing masterclass.
Poems
- I have written hundreds of poems, including a multi-page epic poem, with several published online and in print magazines.
- As a member of six poetry groups and writing workshops at various times, I have done public reading and discussion of my poems.
- One of my haiku was featured on a wedding website (), another haiku published on the dedication page of a scholarly book (), a limerick won Kate's Caring Gifts Environmental Poetry Contest (), and three haiku published on the website of O'Reilly Media for their 25th anniversary ().
- Two of my poems were read at funeral services.
- I have edited numerous poems by other authors, one of which won a national award.
Other
- I have written all of my own speeches, for various technical presentations, for a wedding (delivered ), and a commencement ceremony at a school, as well as several speeches for other speakers, delivered at funerals and school commencement ceremonies.
- I wrote a movie screenplay, 2000 Tears, registered with the Writers Guild of America.
- I have written successful letters of recommendation for professional colleagues and an Honors English instructor.
- I have done "spec ready" formatting of 18 manuscripts (books and screenplays), totaling over 3,500 pages of text.
- I created business and software system documents for various clients ().
- For various academic courses, I wrote literary, philosophic, and technical essays and papers, comprising over 750 pages. One paper was practically a doctoral dissertation, and the professor/advisor declared it to be "publishable".
- I contributed numerous articles, music reviews, and letters to editors published in newspapers.
- I have had over two dozen letters to editors published in several technical magazines ( to ).
- I did a full edit of the Jargon File, an enormous document that serves as the primary glossary for computer hackers worldwide, and has been scrutinized by many dedicated volunteer editors and read by countless bright, sharp-eyed, and critical readers. Nonetheless, I was able to find no fewer than 100 errors in it.
Editorship
I have served as the editor of two publications:
- Pristine Planet Newsletter, an environmental newsletter published monthly ( to )
- INTERFACE, an interdisciplinary technical journal published biannually
Technical Reviews
I have performed pre-publication technical reviewing of several books on the web technology Drupal:
- Drupal's Building Blocks: Quickly Building Web Sites with CCK, Views, and Panels (uncredited)
- Drupal User's Guide: Building and Administering a Successful Drupal-Powered Web Site
- A Programmer's Guide to Drupal
- Drupal 7 Media
- Responsive Theming for Drupal
