Welcome to jerrydrew.com. This website started as a way to put my professional writings out there, particularly after my book was published in January 2024. Eighteen months later my co-author and I have nearly sold all of the hardback copies from our first printing, and we have a paperback edition that is in the final stages. There are some updates in the paperback edition because sometimes you just aren’t happy with things the first time around.
What I plan to make this blog is a reflection on past projects, a means of updating readers on current projects, and a place for stories—like the story of how The Battle Beyond and some of my other works came to be. As a writer who leans more toward the hard/non-fiction/academic side, I expect that it will be difficult for me to blog at first because I see blogs as less structured, less planned, and less formal than the “serious” writing I am used to. That is part of the reason why I want to do it. It will be a new experience, and it will force me to become comfortable with the lack of structure.
Plus, let’s face it. Blogging is a way of drawing readership into a website. I’m told that it is still a valid marketing tool in this day and age even though I could probably hav artificial intelligence draft me at least a mildly interesting blog post in about 30 seconds. I may try that sometime, but my pledge is to at least acknowledge when I am using AI. I consider it unbecoming to pass off large-language-model writing as one’s own. Such practices may be acceptable when utilitarian purposes are all that one has in mind, but
It defeats the purpose of engaging in a difficult pleasure, which most creative processes are.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that we are all meant to create. Maybe we don’t all do it well, and maybe we don’t all do it in the same way, but we all at least create ourselves and the world around us. Maybe you are interested in creating something, but you think you won’t be able to come up with anything good. That will probably be true at first. One typically must produce a lot of crap before getting to anything decent—forget about masterpieces. That being said, I’m pleased enough with my modest creations to share them on this website. I hope you enjoy, and feel free to leave a comment, contact me through the site, or reach out via social media. I’m still learning about that animal also.