Currently, Lary Crews is a freelance writer, editor and proofreader.
In addition to my full-time jobs, I have been a freelance Internet content writer, editor and proofreader since 1990 and I taught writing for America Online from 1993 to 2000. I am also the author of two novels which are available from Amazon.com.
As a twenty-year veteran telecommuter, Crews most recently, (10/2005-05/2008) provided encapsulated research on HR best practices to Fortune 500 companies as a Knowledge Center Manager for the Seattle-based Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), the world’s largest private network of corporations focused on improving workforce productivity. As part of his work for i4cp, Crews wrote three published Highlight Reports – Benefit Trends, Retirement Benefits and Flexible Work Arrangements. He retired from i4cp in May 2008
Prior to that, (1/1990-10/2005) Crews was a freelance Internet content writer/editor/proofreader for his own company, Crews Biz Ink and a published novelist and in-demand writing convention speaker.
Noted for his ability to pick up the technical argot of clients quickly and effectively and write about virtually anything, Crews wrote online web content, television ad copy and both fiction and nonfiction books.
Published in 2000, two of his popular 80s historical mysteries – Kill Cue and Extreme-Close-Up – remain in print and available from Amazon.com. He also served as a speaker at 25 writers conventions, seminars and training sessions on the East Coast.
Concurrent with his freelance writing career (7/1993-12/2001), Crews was America’s first online writing instructor, in on the ground floor of Internet Education. Via AOL’s Online Campus, Crews taught more than 4,000 students how to write, meeting with them in virtual classrooms several times a week. AOL teachers paved the way for future E-learning classes with their use of interactive chat scripts to teach classes, as well as organized chat rooms, monitored message boards and extensive E-mail newsletters. (Crews met and married his wife, Lori, in one of those virtual classrooms.)
Lary’s Writing the Novel course was honored with a full page spread in the 3rd Edition of The Official America Online Tour Guide.
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.”
Before he began his Internet writing and editing career in 1990, Crews was a respected broadcast journalist for CBS Radio News in Tampa Bay, covering everything from politics to zoology.
