Lary Crews

Talented. Mature. Reliable. Internet-savvy.

No time for false humility: Lary Crews was born with the talent to write. He has proved his reliability by meeting more than 2,000 deadlines. Everything Crews has ever written was published.[Crews says, "Otherwise, what's the point?"]
Crews has pursued a full-time freelance writing career since 1998, writing more than 1,000 magazine articles and columns as well as four published books.

Two of his books – historical mystery novels Kill Cue and Extreme-Close-Up, published in 2000, have sold in excess of 1,500,000 copies and are currently available from Amazon.com.

Unlike Danielle Steel, Nicholas Sparks and thousands of other writers, Lary Crews has been writing professionally on the Internet since 1990. He’s not just a good writer; He’s a good web content writer.

Seeking a skilled editor, proofreader or Internet researcher? Lary Crews is your guy. In addition to his expertise as a content writer, Crews can:

• Edit and improve anyone’s writing before it’s published.
• Research anything and provide concise summaries of what he finds.
• Proofread any kind of writing. Crews was trained in three style guides (AP, Chicago and APA).
• Correct spelling. Crews has an eye for it. He even corrects billboards along the road.
• Engage in nearly any sort of web project.

Crews began blogging in 1990 but the folks on Compuserve and Prodigy didn’t call it that back then. Looking for an experienced blogger/content writer? You’ve found him.

Before blogging became popular, digital communities were mostly commercial online services such as GEnie, CompuServe, Prodigy and America Online. Beginning in 1990, Lary Crews worked as a writing expert for both Compuserve and Prodigy.
In 1993, he began a profitable seven-year relationship with America Online, where he taught two classes a week, year-round and blogged extensively. He used one of the first online blogging services (from Pyra Labs) in late 1999, creating the Hollywood HQ blog. Since then, Crews has created a dozen blogs – including Aardvark, Comedy Squared, Rational Thought, UU InfoNet and Serendipity DooDah, and his current award-winning blogs, To LIVE and ACT in LA and Background Acting.

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Lary’s Resume

10/2005 – 10/2008 Writer/Researcher/Proofreader
i4cp Inc Seattle WA (Salary: $35k) Telecommuter

Lary with Kenny Moore

As a career-long telecommuter, Lary Crews is, by temperament, a self-sufficient, self-motivated worker. With the team at Seattle think tank i4cp, Crews teleworked in a fast-paced business situation with daily deadlines. With his excellent writing skills and a natural gift for proofreading and grammar, Crews became the writer/editor of six critical HR issues and worked with marketing, sales and IT to supply i4CP’s member firms (typically Fortune 500 companies) with superlative encapsulated research on HR best practices in their business sectors. The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) is the world’s largest private network of corporations focused on improving workforce productivity. Crews also participated in annual conventions held by the company.

Although Crews was the resident authority on Flexible Work Arrangements such as telecommuting, job sharing and flextime, he also managed the Mental Health in the Workplace, Substance Abuse, Health Promotion and Wellness and Work Ethic and Attitudes knowledge centers. Daily, he read collected research, analyzing and choosing articles that would most benefit members. Crews would then recapitulate the article in two paragraphs with proper APA citation and – after editing and proofing – would place it online. The research staff created the “continuous update” summaries weekly, covering issues in all of 60+ Knowledge Centers. In addition, Crews wrote three published Highlight Reports – Benefit Trends, Retirement Benefits and Flexible Work Arrangements. These special reports were published both online and in paper editions.

10/1998-10/2005 Freelance Writer/Editor/Proofreader
Los Angeles CA (Income: Ave $47K) Telecommuter

Lary Crews pursued a full-time freelance writing, editing and proofreading career for 7 years, writing more than 1,000 magazine articles/columns, mostly for business magazines.

Noted for his ability to pick up the technical argot of clients quickly and effectively, Crews wrote radio, television and magazine ad copy for a half-dozen local advertising agencies. Crews also did freelance proofreading of both fiction and nonfiction books.

In addition, Crews wrote four published books and appeared on local television more than two dozen times promoting them. Two of his books –Kill Cue and Extreme-Close-Up – are available from Amazon.com. Before he began his writing and editing career, Crews was a respected broadcast journalist for CBS Radio News in Tampa Bay, covering everything from politics to zoology. He holds a BA in Journalism/English and a Master’s Degree in Content Editing.

8/1992-12/2001 Writing Teacher/Proofreader
America Online Vienna VA (Salary: $35K) Telecommuter

Via AOL’s Online Campus, Lary Crews taught more than 4,000 students how to write their first novel, meeting with them in a virtual classroom twice a week. “We AOL teachers paved the way for future E-learning classes with our use of interactive chat scripts to teach classes,” Crews explains. “We used organized chat rooms, monitored message boards and extensive Email newsletters to teach our students. Lary’s Writing the Novel course was honored with a full page spread in the 3rd Edition of The Official America Online Tour Guide, published in trade paperback editions. Former America Online producer Paul Hyland, interviewed in July 2008, recalls:

“Lary was one of the most popular teachers in what was a very early offering in the online classes’ space on AOL. He managed to work within what was one of the earliest online course-ware offerings, patched together from our standard community technology, and was consistently praised by the folks running the program, and even managed to be noticed by the earliest chroniclers of the adventure that was AOL.”

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Lary’s Photography

Lary Crews has been taking photographs ever since his days as a U.S. Navy photojournalist manning a Koni-Omega Rapid during the Vietnam War.

He worked his way through college as a photographer at Honeymoon Haven in the Pocono Mountains and his pictures were published in Popular Photography three times.

When digital photography emerged commercially in 1995, Lary was among the first to buy a Sony Cyber-Shot Digital Still Camera. Twelve years later, he is still using a Sony Cyber-Shot (the latest model, natch) and his photos are being published all over the web. Here are a few examples:

MORE PHOTOS BY LARY CREWS