Richard Stooker Writing Services

Richard Stooker

Since this is my home page and not a sales page selling a specific form of writing service, I'll indulge myself and first just tell my story without trying to emphasize benefits to you, a prospective client.

I started out as a kid who loved to read. I enjoyed stories, and also discovering facts about the world through nonfiction books. When I was in the third grade, I won a contest at my local library. I was the kid who read the most books during the summer. I won a free Disney book about nature.

I was fortunate enough to grew up in Alton, Illinois -- on the Mississippi River a little north of St Louis MO. Although at the time I had no idea that there was anything special about it. Still, it retained enough of traditional small town life that I can still understand identify with that. Even into the 1970s, if you looked at a typical downtown business street, lifting your eyes slightly to avoid seeing the models of the cars, the buildings looked much as they must have in the 1930s.

Alton is rich in history

Later, when I came to read horror novels set in small towns, most of them seemed very one-dimensional to me. They had only one past exciting event, and the novel would revolve around that.

Just across the river from a slave state (Missouri), Alton was both a point on the Underground Railroad and a place where mobs twice threw Elijah Lovejoy's printing press in the Mississippi for publishing abolitionist editorials in his newspaper (the third mob threw Lovejoy in the river, and his grave is marked now marked by a monument).

(Lovejoy is still remembered and honored at Colby College in Maine. My nephew just graduated from there, so they didn't hold it against him that his grandmother lives in the town that killed their hero.)

When I was a child, there was one particular house on Ninth Street hill that for some reason always spooked me. Years later, a picture of this house was published in LIFE MAGAZINE -- it was the birthplace of James Earl Ray, the convicted killer of Dr. Martin Luther King.

But my friends the Wegeners who lived across the street were more than "spooked" by James Earl -- their grandmother and grandfather were tied up by him late one night when he robbed their grocery story on Ninth an Alby.

John Light, who later became the Chief of Police, was then the patrolman who chased Ray all the way down Alby Street to the new Beltline before finally catching him.

That's make a great movie scene, because Alby Street is full of great hills. Set on land that rises up from the Mississippi, Alton has some of the steepest hills outside of San Francisco.

Oh, yes -- Alton was also one of the sites of the series of debates on slavery by Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.

During the Civil War, Alton had a prison for captured Confederate soldiers, many of whom died during a small pox epidemic. Now it's the site of the farthest north Confederate monument.

Ray Bradbury (another small town Illinois boy who grew up to write horror) -- eat your heart out!

Alton is now called by FATE MAGAZINE the "most haunted small town in America."

All of which is just to explain that in horror fiction the only small town that rings true to me is the one in Stephen King's IT. I could be wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Alton inspired or at least influenced IT.

(Stephen King does know of Alton and has been there. I can't say more, except to point out that my mother has lived in Alton almost all her long life and so knows many people who also know people . . .)

At any rate, around the age of nine I was so moved by the thrill of reading good stories that I decided I wanted to do it too. So I began writing a novel that imitated my favorite author of the time -- Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I never finished that novel, but by the age of 16 I discovered science fiction magazines and started submitted stories to them. I also discovered the world of science fiction fandom, and began submitting stories to them -- plus articles, reviews, letters etc.

When I went off to college to the University of Missouri at Columbia Missouri, I met the many great fans there. I eventually went with them to conventions. Later, I went to meetings of the fan club here in St Louis and to many early Archons and Name that Cons.

I wound up selling two stories to Ted White who was then editing AMAZING and FANTASTIC. Then a story to THE TWILIGHT ZONE MAGAZINE.

Along the way I learned I could write just about anything -- I published articles, reviews, was a stringer for the SIUE ALESTLE, and so on.

Along the way, meeting and talking to many writers and reading about their economic condition in fanzines and in The Science Fiction Writers Association (SFWA), I figured out that few were making any real money at it. And most of them were long time authors still collecting royalties on novels first published decades ago.

I saw and learned of careers that flourished briefly and then quickly died, like comets.

The payment rates of the magazines were ridiculous. Considering inflation, they paid less than the pulp magazines of the 1930s. And there were only a few of them left. Nobody could live off them anymore.

That left novels. But unless you were amazing beginner who hit it out of the park right away (Stephen King and Anne Rice), you were paid peanuts and not promoted. You had to struggle to get enough people to buy your first novel so that the publisher would want to buy your second.

I was living on minimum wage jobs -- and getting tired of it. I wanted more, and soon realized from the rejection slips my novels were receiving that they weren't going to help me soon. So I eventually took a "real" job with the government.

I continued to write in my spare time, though I wasted a lot of time on books that I see now never had a potential.

In the early 1990s I wrote a horror novel named VIRGIN BLOOD that is a terrific novel, but I couldn't get an agent to look at it in that economic environment. I haven't forgotten it, though, and someday not too long from now will revive it.

In my early years I was an anti-commercial hippie. I was never artsy-fartsy -- I enjoyed and wanted to write popular fiction -- but I didn't want to compromise on it. And I didn't want to write nonfiction, which at that time meant sending off dozens of query letters before getting an editor who liked your idea and, except for the slicks, those magazines also paid peanuts.

People suggested I write ads and commercials, but I totally rejected that idea. Besides, in those days almost all copywriters wrote for ad agencies, and they wouldn't have hired me, probably, without a marketing degree.

After VIRGIN BLOOD I decided to devote my time to getting rich, so then I could write what I want. I discovered how to lose money in MLM, then on the Internet, and discovered direct response copywriting . . .

. . . and now I see that the Internet has revolutionized the writing field.

Writing services I can provide to you:

The 7 Reasons I Can Help You -- My Experience and Accomplishments:

1. Fiction writing

How This Benefits You*

In my writing for you, you get qualities I developed as a fiction writing:

a. Compelling storytelling

b. Ability to evoke emotion

c. Ability to evoke identification with people

d. Detailed, sensory descriptions

e. Ability to write in a conversational style when and where appropriate -- including sales letters.

Stories are often effective to use in sales letters (the most effective sales letter in history is a story). Also, marketing customer case studies are in effect stories of how a product or service has benefited a customer.

2. I've worked in the trenches as a telemarketer, door to door cable TV salesperson and representative for a nutritional company.

How This Benefits You*

You get my understanding that the primary purpose of writing for your business is to sell your product or service. This may be done directly through a sales letter or marketing collateral. It may be done indirectly through providing educational or entertaining content. But I keep in my mind your customer and readers, and the action you want them to take.

(Many copywriters with fiction writing ambitions retain a anti-sales bias.)

3. I worked for many years in public contact positions. I've had to explain complex issues to a wide variety of people, mostly low income, and of many races, nationalities, native languages, cultures and physical and mental challenges.

How This Benefits You*

You get writing that I've adapted so that it's clear to your particular market and demographic. I keep the reader in mind.

4. I've studied copywriting. I'm a graduate of American Writers and Artists (AWAI) Accelerated Copywriting course and am currently an AWAI Masters student. I attended a Persuasion in Print seminar. And I've studied directly with John Carlton and Harlan Kilstein. Plus, I was one of Jay White's Autoresponder Apprentices

I understand the difference between features (My experience and accomplishments) and benefits (How this benefits you).

I've written sales letters for Clickbank ebooks that all produce sales:

Income Investing Secrets

Secrets of Changing to a Computer Career

How This Benefits You*

You get sales letters for your products that make the sale.

5. I enjoy research using both "old-fashioned" paperbound books and the Internet. When I began writing my ebooks, I knew next to nothing about these subjects. My computer careers site has close to 750 articles on various technical computer subjects. I had to research them all. The owner of a site dedicated to XML told me that my article on XML for beginners was better than his.

How This Benefits You*

You get well and quickly researched articles and ebooks on any agreed upon subject.

6. I've studied Internet marketing and search engine optimization for years. I know about the latest advances in writing web content for SEO -- Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).

Other SEO writers are still using Keyword Density Analysis (KDA). The trouble is, Google is hip to this and has more advanced technology. LSI works WITH Google -- giving it the kind of content it likes and rewards and will continue to like no matter how it changes its ranking algorithms.

How This Benefits You*

You can get web content geared toward pleasing Google.

If your current SEO consultant is relying on on-page Keyword Density Analysis and obtaining links to your site without properly structuring your site, they're behind the times.

7. High quality. I know how to write concise English with good grammar and spelling -- and when to break rules of grammar in the interest of better communication (not ignorance!). Such as using non-sentence phrases for emphasis. Like this.

I published articles and reviews in my local newspaper at a young age. When I wrote for my university newspaper, one man I interviewed wanted to shake my hand after it was published. He said, "I've been interviewed many times by your reporters (he was very active on campus in the Student Union and other organizations). And you're the first one who didn't misquote me."

I am a Platinum rated author for Ezine Articles.

How This Benefits You*

You get articles and other content that is accurate and well-written, so it will give a good impression of your business.

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