BIO
So, you're interested in learning more about the man behind the words, are you? Well then pull up a patch of earth, plant your ass down, shut up, and pay attention.
Okay, here's the thing — I never set out to be a writer. I started my career as a literary agent, back in the glorious Wild West days of the Internet when anybody could call him- or herself a literary agent and that made it so. God, I miss those days.
Anyhow, I had a few clients, and I tried my best to get their books sold to publishing houses. But frankly, a half-blind box turtle would have done a better job than I did. One thing I discovered, though, in perusing manuscripts was that I had an eye for catching typos. So I thought to myself, "How can I use this newly discovered ability to make a quick buck?"
As it turned out — and most proofreaders have discovered this in their careers — there is no quick buck to be made in the editorial world. But there were slow bucks. So after studying the proofreaders' marks in a book titled Proof It! (great name), I got my first job as a proofreader at a book production company in Danbury, Connecticut. Oh man, that was a brutal, unforgiving place. Even Dickens would have been like, "Dude, let me get you in with me. Seriously."
Assorted events brought me back to Massachusetts, where I started prostituting my editorial skills to the highest bidder, and that's how I wound up falling into the toxic river known as advertising. Yes, copywriters were creating copy to convince you to buy shit you didn't need, and I was making sure that copy was clean. If I wasn't directly responsible for the evil, I was at least complicit in it.
I bounced around for a long while, assignment to assignment, agency to agency, and then somewhere along the line, someone thought, "Well, if he can spell, surely he can write!" (This was the mentality I was dealing with — they narrowed down all of my skills as a copy editor to "he can spell.") So I wrote some stuff, and then I wrote some more stuff, and then suddenly I was a copywriter. It's just that easy, kids.
The first time I started writing fun stuff for my own amusement with any sort of regularity was when I created the now sadly defunct Television Woodshed. That's when I discovered how much time and effort were involved in writing a simple TV recap, and I thought, "Shit, I'll never be able to write a book." And I firmly believed that, right up until the moment that I started writing books.
These days I write them in the quiet comfort of my home on Boston's North Shore, which I share with my wife Teresa, and our cat, Ruby Dynamite. Is that everything? No, not by a long shot. But I need to save stuff for my blog, so I'll wrap up here.
If you'd like to reach out and chat about things — I'm always up for a lively discussion of the Buffalo Bills, Star Trek, The Honeymooners, or anything having to do with Simon Pegg — drop me a line at stephenlomer@gmail.com. Please allow 5-7 business days for a reply.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.
Okay, here's the thing — I never set out to be a writer. I started my career as a literary agent, back in the glorious Wild West days of the Internet when anybody could call him- or herself a literary agent and that made it so. God, I miss those days.
Anyhow, I had a few clients, and I tried my best to get their books sold to publishing houses. But frankly, a half-blind box turtle would have done a better job than I did. One thing I discovered, though, in perusing manuscripts was that I had an eye for catching typos. So I thought to myself, "How can I use this newly discovered ability to make a quick buck?"
As it turned out — and most proofreaders have discovered this in their careers — there is no quick buck to be made in the editorial world. But there were slow bucks. So after studying the proofreaders' marks in a book titled Proof It! (great name), I got my first job as a proofreader at a book production company in Danbury, Connecticut. Oh man, that was a brutal, unforgiving place. Even Dickens would have been like, "Dude, let me get you in with me. Seriously."
Assorted events brought me back to Massachusetts, where I started prostituting my editorial skills to the highest bidder, and that's how I wound up falling into the toxic river known as advertising. Yes, copywriters were creating copy to convince you to buy shit you didn't need, and I was making sure that copy was clean. If I wasn't directly responsible for the evil, I was at least complicit in it.
I bounced around for a long while, assignment to assignment, agency to agency, and then somewhere along the line, someone thought, "Well, if he can spell, surely he can write!" (This was the mentality I was dealing with — they narrowed down all of my skills as a copy editor to "he can spell.") So I wrote some stuff, and then I wrote some more stuff, and then suddenly I was a copywriter. It's just that easy, kids.
The first time I started writing fun stuff for my own amusement with any sort of regularity was when I created the now sadly defunct Television Woodshed. That's when I discovered how much time and effort were involved in writing a simple TV recap, and I thought, "Shit, I'll never be able to write a book." And I firmly believed that, right up until the moment that I started writing books.
These days I write them in the quiet comfort of my home on Boston's North Shore, which I share with my wife Teresa, and our cat, Ruby Dynamite. Is that everything? No, not by a long shot. But I need to save stuff for my blog, so I'll wrap up here.
If you'd like to reach out and chat about things — I'm always up for a lively discussion of the Buffalo Bills, Star Trek, The Honeymooners, or anything having to do with Simon Pegg — drop me a line at stephenlomer@gmail.com. Please allow 5-7 business days for a reply.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.