About Rich

To understand where I’ve come from and where I’m going, it may be helpful to
understand where I have lived for the past two decades. I live down the end of a
dead-end dirt road in Northern Michigan. My house was first built by Odawa
Indians more than a century ago, but it has been home to an aging soldier and
his hometown wife; my globe-trotting father’s fishing and hunting gear; a
commune of carpenters; a journalist bachelor; and, now, it is home to my small
family of three …

The Great Outdoors is just outside my doorstep (although it sometimes manages
to get inside from time to time). Coyotes yip, laugh, and cry most nights from
the woods surrounding our home. Rivers and lakes to kayak, fish, or wade …
deep powder to ski down or snowshoe through … and some of the best hunting and
fishing in the Lower 48 states are just a stone’s throw away.

Like my forefathers, I have felt the pull of both home ground and the world
at large. As an Army-brat, I lived in Japan and Germany and traveled throughout
Europe. As a college student and young adult, you were just as likely to find me
riding a moped along the winding mountain roads of Isola d’Ischia off the coast
of Italy as you were to find me windsurfing Little Traverse Bay.

In 1989 after working in Boston for The Christian Science Monitor, I
came to my ancestral shack to fix it up and make a home. Northern Michigan isn’t
exactly the journalistic center of the universe, so I traveled far and wide to
come up with stories suitable for the wider audience I was interested in. I made
some traction as a freelance writer, earning a place in publications such as Ski,
Snow Country,the Detroit Free-Press, and others.

In 1991, I followed my heart to Seattle, Washington, where my Delightful
Carol was living. We settled into the vibrant, yet wet life of the Northwest for
a few years — with Carol teaching middle school and me working as the Editor of
Pacific Builder & Engineer (a trade magazine for the non-residential
construction industry in five northwestern states).

Under my direction, this century-old publication earned some of its
first-ever awards for photography and graphics. And I nearly doubled the amount
of feature stories it offered — which increased our reprint business by about
200%.

Northern Michigan kept calling me, though, and we drove a big yellow Ryder
truck across the top of the country in 1994 to make our home in the ancestral
shack, which was now greatly improved with running water, electricity, and a
modern kitchen.

Back Up North, I convinced the biggest newspaper in the region — The
Traverse City Record-Eagle — to open up a Northern Bureau, and they hired
me as their first full-time reporter covering Emmet, Charlevoix, Otsego, and
Cheboygan counties. Between 1994 and 1997, I logged
a lot of miles and filed a lot of stories for the Record-Eagle, competing
with 60 Minutes on two major stories and shedding some light on the
Michigan Militia around the time of the bombing of the Federal Building in
Oklahoma City.

Northern Michigan is all about the Outdoors, and it was no coincidence that I
got to write about hunting, fishing, skiing, boating, canoeing, wildlife, and
the environment on a regular basis.

Carol continued her career in education, landing a job in Boyne City teaching
seventh-grade social studies. For a Tidewater Virginia girl, she took to the
North Woods pretty well — strapping on cross-country skis and snowshoes in the
winter and loving our fresh-water beaches in the summer. But we still get to the
Outer Banks of North Carolina about once a year.

After writing other people’s stories, I was compelled to write the story of
my own people — the Bachus family. I turned down a job offer to return to The
Christian Science Monitor as its European Editor to start writing my first
novel, Into No Man’s Land. You can read some of it by clicking on the
“Novel” button on these web pages.

Writing this book was a long journey, and I picked up a hammer to work as a
carpenter for a time, earned a Master’s degree and teaching certificate from the
University of Michigan, and taught English at a local community college and high
school for about four years. I completed the manuscript for my book, and I’m
currently revising it to start sending it out to agents and publishers.

Even as a teacher, though, I was drawn to copywriting. I taught several
unconventional English classes that included promotional writing and mass media
as part of the curriculum. I put my kids to work promoting our new high school
building, as well as a student literary magazine called “Mixed Nuts.”
Little was expected of most of the students put in my classes, but soon they
were making headlines in the local newspapers. (Click
here to see some of the publicity they garnered)

About the time that my daughter Laney came into this world (2006), I found a
way to learn more about copywriting. I took the “Accelerated Program for
Six-Figure Copywriting” from American Writers & Artists Inc. (AWAI) and
began taking on clients on a freelance basis. I was surprised to discover how
much I loved writing copy for websites, catalogs, and sales letters.

I guess it was in my blood. Although I have soldiers on my dad’s side of the
family tree, my mom’s side was flush with marketers and advertising copywriters.

I’ve been a Copywriter since 2007. CopyEnRichment

was my original copywriting practice, and I still take general copywriting
assignments, but now I am putting my love of the Outdoors together with my love
of copywriting in Great Outdoors Copywriting. I hope you’ll agree it’s a good
match.

Currently, I’m teaching English and Publications at Concord Academy Boyne in Boyne City, Michigan.