Friends and Countrymen,

For more than a decade now I've been telling stories about offbeat personalities, faraway places, weird science, and the occasional criminal. You know: Usual fare for the incurably curious.

Over that time, I've managed to define a great body—of work, anyway. But articles and books are scattered across the internet in various forms of design, readability, and freedom. I searched for someone or something that could provide a solution to that problem, but came up empty.

So I became the someone and FIRSTHAND became the something. After selecting some favorite articles and book chapters, I used a tool called Creatavist to remaster them into a living breathing compilation. Woven into the collection are extras like postscripts, videos, maps, and photos taken while on assignment to places like China, Egypt, Holland, the South Pacific, and... Illinois.

I'm distributing FIRSTHAND myself as part of an experiment in Digital Age collected works. I want to find out if there might be a better way for writers to, ur, take control of their bodies.

Purchase a copy of FIRSTHAND and let me know what you think. (It's also available on Amazon and soon enough on other e-readers.) Then tell a friend, a fellow writer, and even your Mom. Meanwhile, I'll occasionally blast out an update with news and new material. Stick around. It'll be fun.

Onward,
David