Creative Sample: To Marry a Selch

Word count: 1423

Creative Sample: Twenty Souls

This short story was originally published in 2013 in Warp & Weave, a journal of speculative fiction published twice a year by Utah Valley University's Department of English.

Professional History: iTOK.net

From June 2014 to February 2015, I worked as a copywriter for iTOK.net, (now Bask) a third-party tech support company that wanted to revamp and expand its website to be more informative and accessible.  As the copywriter, it was my task to write ~300 word drafts for each planned page of the new site, except for the pages of legalese such as the satisfaction guarantee and Privacy Policy.  I wrote many pages about iTOK's services and the wide range of technologies they support, following the style and SEO guidelines provided by my manager.


After I completed the original list of planned pages, my manager gave me a side-project to produce blog articles about computers and tech support that referenced iTOK so she could submit them to blogs around the internet and increase the company's SEO.  Most of the articles I made were average, but one that I wrote about caring for computer hardware impressed my manager so much that she decided to put it up on iTOK's website along with similar blog posts about basic computer knowledge.  She called it the Knowledge Base and asked me to write more posts for it.  I produced five of the current articles in the Knowledge Base before I was let go from iTOK.

Personal Statement

     I am Trevor Brogan. In my first attempt at college I declared my major to be Computer Science, but soon discovered I lacked the mathematical acumen to grasp more than the basics of computer programming.  I realized that although I had admirable computer skills and a love of video games, my interests were more in the stories those games told than the mechanics. When I returned to school, I changed my major to English and began searching for the type of literature that I would enjoy studying the most.  I’ve taken both general survey courses and courses on particular periods, including contemporary American Lit, the Bible as literature, and Medieval British Literature.  My conclusion is that I prefer older stories, those that draw heavily on folklore and legend, and stories with a fantastic or speculative twist.  I am less interested in old political tracts and thinly-veiled social commentaries.  I think that a writer’s message can reach a wider audience if it is carried by an entertaining story, although I do acknowledge that blunt, straightforward language can be just as valuable.

     I take a lot of pride and motivation from my accomplishments in gaining a little internet popularity with my early creative work.  Throughout High School I worked alongside my brother to create a webcomic based on popular video game characters.  The art quality was nothing to brag about, but the writing attracted enough regular readers to keep the comic in the top 100 of a comic ranking site for the latter half of its run.  More recently, my hobby writing on Tumblr and some fan fiction websites under the pseudonym CTVulpin has acquired its own small group of fans.  Those small proofs of success have driven me to constantly improve my skills and submit original material to UVU’s speculative fiction journal, Warp & Weave.  I have been published in that journal twice so far, once in the Fall Semester of 2013 and again in Winter 2015.  My first short story was set in an alternate medieval Europe where heavenly angels take indirect action against corrupt clergy.  The second story takes place in a world populated by talking animals with human-like societies and problems.
   Currently, I run a blog called "Nexus Fox Writings Studio," which you will find a link to on the main page of this portfolio.  The main feature of my blog is Down the Stacks, which is published weekly or bi-weekly depending on my other obligations.  In Down the Stacks, I provide introductions and brief reviews of speculative fiction books I have discovered at my local library, with a focus on books that I've never heard of before but I feel are near the quality level of bestsellers.  Occasionally, I will also write posts on fiction writing topics of particular interest to me.

     I enjoy researching and have a superb memory for details.  I particularly like seeking out little-known facts about the history and inspiration behind popular stories and lesser-known variations thereof.  I can identify common literary tropes, character types, and plot developments as I encounter them.   Outside the realm of literature, I can quickly gather information on any assigned topic and compile it into a concise, well-written summary within a day at the longest.  This skill was put to great use when I worked for the tech support company iTOK.net.  I wrote the copy for all of the pages of the company’s redesigned website, except for the legal pages, in less than the three-month period the company had budgeted for the project.  I also wrote a couple of how-to blog articles about basic computer care which impressed my manager so much she created a new “Knowledge Base” section of the website just for me to write more “tips and tricks” pieces into.  I have a foundation in literary theory and tend to favor a basic deconstructionist approach in my casual reading.

Creative Sample: The Epic of Abraham

Academic Sample: "The Waste Land" Through the Cards