I am a writer and comic book editor from the San Francisco Bay Area. I have an MFA in Creative writing and a Bachelor's degree in English literature. I drink tea, read novels in the bathtub, commune with cats, and listen to The Smiths almost constantly.
My fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, The Colorado Review and Put the Book Back on the Shelf: A Belle and Sebastian Anthology (done in collaboration with Brian Belew).
After publishing one article at HowtoDoThings.com, I decided that it was not in my best interest after re-thinking the site's copyright policy. I encourage other writers to give this issue some thought. When you publish an article here, you no longer own its copyright. Your writing is owned by HowtoDoThings.com's parent company, and they may use it however they wish. They can republish it, change it, and even make money from it besides the shared revenue ad clicks money, and they will not have to pay you anything. This is a work-for-hire situation, and professional writers should be paid upfront for work-for-hire. This is not the case here. The editors of this site will tell you that the company needs to own the copyright of your writing (which becomes theirs when you publish it here) to legally enforce copyright, but I work in publishing and I know there are other ways. Their reasoning is disingenuous, and when I brought up the subject on the discussion board, the thread was deleted. There are other sites that allow you to share your knowledge and writing without taking your ownership of your work, such as Squidoo.com and Suite101.com. I encourage writers to check out sites that respect creative rights and to pass the word on.
