See also: the professional biography of Robert Nagle who runs Personville Press. Below is another biography which was written a decade earlier but contains a little more detail.
Here’s a 15 minute video in 2025 I made about my ebook passions!
Contact Information: idiotprogrammer at fastmailbox.net . Telephone: 832 251 7522, Current Address: 5115 Sandyfields Ln Katy TX 77494. (That’s a few miles away from I-10 and Highway 99).
Social Media: Mastadon: @nagletx@booktoot.club , Facebook, bluesky, Linkedin, Librarything and my inactive twitter: nagletx . Here’s the Robert Nagle link.tree page.
Employment Status: I am available for Full Time and Part Time work — especially in West Houston, downtown Houston and remotely. I am available to do editorial work. If you would like to submit a book proposal to Personville Press, check out these guidelines.
Personville Press: I am founder and editor of Personville Press, a Texas-based ebook publishing company started in 2010.
Resume: Check my linkedin profile . See also my technical writer portfolio site . Here’s a printable version of my most recent technical writer/instructional designer resume. See also my essays and professional writing samples.
I was born in New York in 1965. Most of my writing can be found on idiotprogrammer weblog, which is a hodgepodge of things I’ve been reading/learning or having opinions about. It tends to go in random directions. Most of the time I use the weblogs not merely as a receptacle for links but a guide to my thoughts and beliefs.
For the voyeuristically inclined, here are links to my not-toorecent photo gallery archive at flickr . I started this in November 2004, and it has over a thousand photos. If you want, you can view all the photos with ME in them. Update: I stopped uploading to flickr 15 years ago. Probably my Facebook profile has more photos of my older, uglier self.
My latest interests have been ebooks, docbook, climate change fiction, indie fiction, climate change policy, copyright reform, podcasting, video production and editing, public domain literature & Project Gutenberg, live storytelling. Also, I am a gigantic fan of Eurovision!
I’ve always been committed to reading and writing. Since about 2019 I’ve been writing semi-regular posts about indie ebooks and authors I have discovered. The columns are called Robert’s Roundup. About 70-80% of my blogging energies has been devoted to these columns.
I call myself a technical writer, although that is a generic catch-all term. For a decade I worked for several IT companies in Houston and Austin. More recently I have worked in teaching and ebook publishing. Nowadays I do a lot of short term and freelance gigs for businesses and am always looking for new opportunities. (The services I do are listed here). I have a degree in English from Trinity University and a master’s degree in creative writing from Johns Hopkins University. I’ve participated in writing workshops with several notable writers, including John Barth, J.M. Coetzee (who recently won the Nobel Prize ), Robert Flynn , Stephen Dixon and Joyce Carol Oates. I’ve written short stories, novellas, dramatic pieces, travel essays, book reviews, cookbooks and political commentary.
I occasionally write book reviews, but recently (as of 2024 or so), I have started to review more often. In the 2000s I used to review technical books for Slashdot.org. Here’s my policy on writing book reviews, and a (very incomplete) list of book reviews.
I write and publish fiction under various pseudonyms. But I have published two books under my own name: a user’s guide to an open source content management system (Plone) and a critical study of the 1942 novel, My Heart for Hostage by Robert Hillyer (which is a free download). I once organized a storytelling event in Houston and used to regularly perform stories at the Houston Storytellers’ Guild. For more than a decade I have been interviewing people in the arts.
Between 1995 and 1997 I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Vlore, Albania. I taught university students at the University of Vlore. I also had the chance to witness firsthand a grand civil uprising that eventually led to the evacuation of all Americans in 1997. (More photos and commentary about Albania) . Between 1997 and 1998 I taught at a business institute in Lutsk Ukraine and had an opportunity to witness firsthand a country’s transition to a free market economy. I’ve written several travel essays about my experiences, including my description of the Albanian civil unrest in 1997.
I obtained Irish dual citizenship in July 2002, so I am officially a European citizen! I aspire someday to return to Europe. As much as I love America, it’s helpful not to view the world merely from an American’s perspective.
The countries where I lived had limited or no Internet access (Albania didn’t even have computers, much less electricity!), so it was not until 1998 that I really learned about the Internet. I created my first Excel spreadsheet in late 1998 and my first decent web page in early 1999. I studied a few things, and before I knew it I was working as a technical writer at Dell Computers (well, least until the high tech bubble began to burst and I was laid off). I have managed to learn a bit about networking, linux, databases and content management systems. But despite my geek pretensions, I am first and foremost a writer.
For those searching me out using keywords, I’ll mention a few related to my past: Strake Jesuit, Trinity University, Johns Hopkins University, Johnson O’Connor, Nada Magazine, Slashdot, Teleread, Book Review, Killough, instructional technology, hapax, sharethemusic, share music, Carfiction, Peace Corps Albania, Vlore, Vlora, Bobby Nagle, Alief, Austin, Robert J. Nagle, Dell, Texas Instruments, TI, Lutsk, Ukraine, Albania, Volyn Institute of Economics and Management, frayday, Booknotes, imaginaryplanet, asiafirst, south by southwest, Ismail Qemali. Robert Nagle is a writer living in Houston with a background in teaching, technology and Eastern Europe.
By the way, I am not the Bobby Nagle who is the European gay porn star, nor am I the Robert Nagle who sings country music or does adventure racing or was the stunt double in the film Ford vs. Ferrari.
Last Updated: June 2025