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Resume of
OVERVIEW Proficient in all areas of the publishing industry. Editing skills include impeccable spelling, punctuation and syntax. Extensive experience in typesetting and other aspects of print production. Unusually varied writing experience. Skilled with several word processing, typesetting/desktop publishing, graphics, OCR and other software packages; also learn new programs easily and quickly. Thorough knowledge of AP style. Very reliable and deadline-oriented. Typing speed little short of phenomenal. LINKS TO WRITING SAMPLES Fiction • Humor • Nostalgia • Opinion • Research • Meter & Rhyme • Straight Nonfiction WRITING EXPERIENCE First writing job was on staff at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Concentrated mainly on feature stories for Sunday magazine section. Job involved starting fresh, with a new subject each week (ranging from probable local impact of a civil engineering project in Oklahoma to the fun and frivolity of a local bagpipe club), learning enough about it to create an informative article, and writing up the information in readable, entertaining form to be read with Sunday morning corn flakes. Job also involved editing departments on various topics, such as historical anecdotes and cute sayings by kids. Day-to-day office work involved all aspects of magazine work, from proofreading to dealing with printers. Freelance credits since then are too numerous to list fully. Highlights include weekly restaurant reviews for the Phoenix Business Journal, semi-annual previews of comic book publishing projects, copy for science fiction convention program books, and scripts for relaxation tapes. Technical writing includes complete user guides to two computer operating systems: OASIS (a multi-user, general-purpose system that ran on the old Z-80 chip) and the VariTyper 5810 (a stand-alone typesetting machine). Recent work includes dozens of comic book scripts. (The script entails not just dialog, but also directions to the artist, describing the scene to appear in each panel.) Most of these scripts are about licensed characters, including Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Tiny Toons, Eek! the Cat, and several others. Comic book scripting involves the same degree of originality and attention to story elements as any other form of fiction writing, plus an ability to construct the story visually and use pictures as well as words in telling it. Have also written hundreds of articles, brochures, advertisements, reviews, and every other form of prose. EDITING Recent editing work includes Talk About Stress, by Martin Seidenfeld, Ph.D., a 256-page book tied in to a Web site, www.talkaboutstress.com. The book covers the entire topic of stress — where it comes from, what it does to you, and what to do about it. The job involved heavy copy-editing, with particular attention to consistency of style and point of view, and production of the completed manuscript in the form of camera-ready pages. Another recent project was Graphic Novel Review for Libraries, a periodical aimed at providing a guide for librarians to the burgeoning field of graphic novels. Work involved writing approximately 25-30 reviews per issue, plus incidental material including editorials and indices, editing whatever outside material is to be used, and assembling it all into a 20-page issue of the monthly magazine. Have done many megabytes of electronic editing for Virtual Media Corporation, ProData Inc., Citation Publishing, and Data Conversion Specialists. This work involves taking data from virtually any print, electronic or other source, and converting it into clean, machine-readable form to be included in large databases. Functions include scanning, optical character recognition, word processing, and database management. Necessary skills include the ability to tell at a glance if a sentence is complete and gramatically correct, without taking time to actually read it. Other editing credits are, again, too numerous to list fully. Highlights include: A Prince Valiant Companion (Manuscript Press, 1992), which includes a complete plot summary of the Prince Valiant comic strip from its beginning in 1937 to the retirement of its creator, Hal Foster, in 1980. Editing aspect of the project involved taking a wordy, rambling, sometimes inaccurate manuscript and boiling it down to its informative pith, correcting all errors of fact, and making the prose style lean and readable; plus assembling and preparing several appendices covering various aspects of the Prince Valiant series and Foster's other work. Pirates!: The CD-ROM (PiratePubs, 1998), a compendium of stories, games, movie stills, poetry, artwork, flags, music, and everything else that can be digitized, on the subject of pirates. Hot Tips from Top Comics Creators (Fictioneer Books, 1994), a collection of over 1,000 pieces of advice on the comic book industry, taken from the first ten years of Comics Interview magazine. Chose all quotes, did minor copy editing to fit the new format, compiled them into chapters, wrote the introduction (including capsule biographies of all 262 professionals quoted), chose artwork, and assembled all into a 120-page book, camera-ready. Entire publications departments for several conventions, including major regionals. This involves gathering information from a variety of sources, including dozens of separate convention workers, and compiling it into an attractive, readable guide to the event's displays, program, business functions, etc. Have also edited hundreds of magazines, newspapers, booklets, and every other form of publication. DESIGN AND PRODUCTION All of the print editing jobs mentioned above have included design and production, as well. In each case, the job ended when the client was presented with camera-ready pages. Other design/production credits are, again, too numerous to list fully. One highlight was World Tales, a souvenir book for the 1985 World Fantasy Convention, designed to look exactly like a pulp magazine entitled Weird Tales. The project involved detailed measurements of type, columns, gutters, margins, drop caps, and many other elements; and precisely reproducing all of those measurements in laying out the book. A cover was commissioned in the style of the old pulps, and overlaid with typical blurbs in the format used by the pulp. Even the paper, a rough-surfaced, wheat-colored stock, was chosen for its superficial resemblance to pulp paper. Have also designed/produced hundreds of flyers, brochures, booklets, advertisements, and every other type of document. PUBLICATION WORK IN GENERAL It is often difficult to draw hard lines between writing and editing, and between editing and design/production. Publications worked on in one way or another include Sun Tennis, Arizona Women's Voice, Phoenix Business Journal, Phoenix Resource, Louisiana Weekly Employer, Comics Interview, Scottsdale magazine, Phoenix magazine, Arizona Living, Comics Revue and many others. WEB DESIGN AND EDITING Created and maintain several Web sites, including: Don Markstein's Toonopedia™, a hypertext enclyclopedia of comics and animation. Your Daily Dose Links Page, which features links to hundreds of sites featuring comic strips, puzzles, columns, cartoons, stories, etc., all of which post new content every weekday. Salty Jack's Piratical Books, which sells books about pirates, for all reading levels. MANAGEMENT Owned/managed a typesetting/graphic production service, Etienne's Type Shop, for several years. Handled every aspect of the business — customer relations, dealing with suppliers, advertising, and employee management — as well as handling much of the actual production work itself. Necessary skills included working knowledge of several typesetting systems, extensive knowledge of typography in general, and people skills. Etienne's Type Shop did every possible kind of typesetting, including books, magazines, brochures, ads, flyers, product labels, business cards, letterheads, envelopes, catalogs, coupons, etc. Clients included publishers, printers, graphic designers, salesmen, and advertising agencies. COMPUTER SKILLS Demonstrated proficiency in CP/M, DOS, Windows, WordPerfect, PageMaker, WordStar, Ventura Publisher, CorelDraw, Multimedia ToolBook, Microsoft Word, HTML, TypeReader Pro, FrameMaker, ISYS, and many other programs. Usually have little or no trouble learning new ones. HOBBIES Reading — a wide variety of both fiction and nonfiction. This provides a huge store of miscellaneous general knowledge, always a useful asset for a writer and editor. EDUCATION Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA. RELIABILITY I have written, edited and published a limited-circulation journal on a strict bimonthly schedule for over 30 years, without once missing a mailing deadline. REFERENCES Available upon request. |
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