I’m Andrew. Nice to meetcha.

I’m guessing you’re here because you’re curious who the heck I am. Well, this is the right place.
Everyone needs a home on the Web — this is mine. It’s a place for people who want to know Andrew who? Welcome!

Me, personally

I was born in Queens, New York City, but I’ve moved around a lot — Connecticut, New Jersey, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia.… These days I’m liv­ing in an old (olde?) farm­house on a chunk of acreage in a small town in Upstate New York.

I make my liv­ing as a writer, edi­tor, web­site builder, and gen­er­al mes­sag­ing handyman.

I love sci­ence and his­to­ry, and I spend way too much time div­ing down odd rab­bit holes and mum­bling to myself.

Other stuff I like

Fountain pens, good key­boards, thun­der­storms, Diet Dr Pepper, small inns in dark forests, Duluth Trading, Ball jars, sriracha sauce, Terry Pratchett books, radio.garden, back­packs, MMORPGs, Darn Tough socks.

Want to know more? ➭ Click here for way (way) too much info.

Me, professionally

Warning: This sec­tion will prob­a­bly come across as a bit … brag­gy. Sorry about that. But on the off chance some­one’s look­ing for a free­lancer with my par­tic­u­lar set of skills, I want­ed to put them here instead of a click away.

My thing is the pre­sen­ta­tion of infor­ma­tion: mak­ing any top­ic clear, inter­est­ing, and some­times fun — because that’s how you get peo­ple to pay atten­tion and under­stand it.

I’ve got more than 25 years’ expe­ri­ence in com­mu­ni­ca­tions and mar­ket­ing: from cre­at­ing mag­a­zines and devel­op­ing Web sites to writ­ing arti­cles, being social, craft­ing press releas­es, and cre­at­ing mar­ket­ing material.

(Some of) the jobs

  • Staff edi­tor for PC Magazine (mid ’90s)
  • Editor and colum­nist for Internet World mag­a­zine (late ’90s, when the Net was new)
  • Radio and TV talk­ing head about the Internet for a whole lot­ta shows — the big ones being “Good Morning America,” “Today,” and “60 Minutes.”
  • Editor for B2B mag­a­zines on insur­ance and technology
  • USA Today colum­nist
  • Business and tech­nol­o­gy reporter for the Roanoke (Va.) Times
  • Communications/editorial direc­tor for the Virginia Association of Realtors, the Georgia Pharmacy Association, and the Alliance for Pharmacy Compounding

And my work’s appeared in National Underwriter, CNET, the Blue Ridge Business Journal the Columbus Dispatch, Kiplinger’s, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and Smart Money magazine.

Accumulated skills

When you work for small com­pa­nies, you have to learn how to wear lots of hats.

  • Writing and edit­ing, natch (Chicago/AP styles; Chicago is better)
  • HTML/CSS (and a lit­tle PHP and JavaScript) coding
  • WordPress until my eyes pop out
  • Non-lin­ear video edit­ing (more fun than it sounds!)
  • Photoshop (mak­ing stuff and edit­ing photos)
  • Design with InDesign (skill lev­el 5 – 6/10; aka “good enough”)