Hello, Steemit! I've been watching your community for a couple of months now, and thought it was time to wade in and introduce myself.
I'm Andrew McMillen, and I'm a 28 year-old freelance journalist and author. I live in Brisbane, the third most populous city in Australia, where it's now summer. Our famously humid, subtropical climate today reared its head for the first time in a big way, maxing out at 38 degrees Celsius, or 100°F for you Americans. I tend to sweat a lot, living here. Besides that, it's lovely.
I make a living from writing words, and I love it. Today, I mostly write longform stories about topics that interest me. I started in music journalism back in 2007, but have been full-time freelance since 2009, and now write about all sorts of things.
You can find some of my favourite published articles from the last couple of years, on subjects such as suicide prevention, Wikipedia, political satirists, hospital schools, forensic anthropologists and Australian Outback police officers on my website: http://andrewmcmillen.com/about/
I wrote a book about about drug use and Australian musicians named 'Talking Smack: Honest Conversations About Drugs', which was published in 2014. http://talkingsmack.com.au/
I also host 'Penmanship', a podcast about Australian writing culture, which features in-depth interviews with Australians who earn a living from working with words. http://penmanshippodcast.com/
Now, I figure that Steemit is all about adding value to this community, so starting today, I'm going to be posting a weekly round-up of the best longform journalism, podcasts and books I've recently consumed. This digest already exists in email newsletter form, but I thought that it might find a keen audience of readers here, too.
I've just posted edition #131 of 'Dispatches' here: https://steemit.com/dispatches/@andrewmcmillen/dispatches-131-fruit-ninjas-borderline-personality-disorders-and-violin-thieves
I see that there are quite a few writers here on Steemit, and not too many freelance journalists and authors (from what I've seen so far, anyway), so if you have any questions about the craft or business of writing, I'd be happy to try and answer them.
Thanks for reading!
Andrew McMillen