Personal Stuff About Floyd Kemske

I was born in 1947. I have been married to the same woman — Gerry — for over 30 years. We live in the suburbs, about an hour’s drive from Boston, and have two dogs. Like most people, I’ve had several different careers, but my formative professional experience was the 12 years I spent editing trade magazines. When that career, for one reason and another, came to a close, I became a freelance writer. Except for a one-year interlude, during which I worked as editorial director of a website, I have freelanced for nine years. I write articles, newsletters, and the occasional novel, and I also do a little designing: brochures, ads, web pages. But the largest part of my income comes from writing direct mail letters. (I am the co-author of a book on writing copy for direct marketing called Write On Target.) I will write pretty much anything I can get paid for, and you can find some of it (if you’re a glutton for punishment) by searching for my name at the Google site. There are white papers and statistical studies — even a short story that got a Maggie Award, which is given by a magazine editors’ association on the west coast. This next photo shows the most important things in my life in the categories of people, animals, and machines. They are, left to right, Sugar, Gerry, Travis, and the TT coupe. Here are more pictures of Travis, together with some humorous essays I wrote about him. You might enjoy them if you like dogs and appreciate absurdist humor. Gerry doesn’t particularly like my putting her on display, but I wanted to show you one more photo. The next photo was taken after Travis had run off across the yard to investigate something. “Investigate” is a euphemism. He actually ran off across the yard to bark at something. Barking is his principal recreation. Gerry, meanwhile, is trying to cheer up Sugar. Maybe it’s because she lives in a writer’s family, but Sugar seems to harbor a bleak, almost tragic view of life, as you can see in the way she resists Gerry’s attempts to get her to smile. This photo also shows one my vanities: a license plate on the TT coupe that reads “TTLION.” You may have figured this out already, but it stands for “The Third Lion.” There’s a kind of theme here. Here’s an explanation of how a life-sized bronze figure of me came to be put in front of the Newark Free Library in Newark, Delaware. It really has nothing to do with me. I just happened to model for it when I was much younger.

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