I've always loved fascinating tales, hard questions and interesting people. For the last decade, I've gotten paid to write about such things, for newspapers in South Dakota and Wyoming and for various websites as a freelancer. I've edited everything from news copy to grant requests, and learned the terrors and joys of editing fellow journalists.

I've shaken hands with Barack Obama and Carmine Girone. Only one of those two was restoring a forgotten oil refinery with the aid of a Pakistani ex-fighter pilot. I was there when the KKK met with the NAACP in a small Wyoming hotel meeting room.

Stacks of research tempt me. I've got a weakness for history. I've dug into jump drives full of emails, endless PDFs, spreadsheets and the earth itself in search of a good story. I've lived, studied and traveled in the Middle East, specifically Yemen and Egypt. I've visited a town called Al Qaeda. Arabic and I are in a long-term complicated relationship.

Anomalies fascinate me, whether they're pipeline explosions, tiny mummies, pistol-packing Santa Clauses, telling statistics or yeti hands.

The fun's just beginning.