About
Biscayne Writers is a team of graphic designers, Web programmers, video editors, producers, writers, musicians and performance artists who have created marketing strategies for comic book legend Stan Lee, The Standard Hotel, Ethical Markets Media, Subliminal Media Solutions and Hostwire.com.
Melanie Feliciano, founder of Biscayne Writers, Inc., earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Journalism & Mass Communications, with a concentration in women and film, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1997, and is currently studying Film & Electronic Media at American University in Washington, DC.
She is available for writing and editing services, although you will get much more since she is a “Jane” of all trades:
Writing journalistic features (includes researching, reporting, writing, editing, fact-checking, hyperlinking, SEO optimization):
Latino.com
YO! Youth Outlook Magazine
San Francisco Chronicle
Wiretap
Biscayne Times
South Florida Business Journal
LatinaVoz.com
The Angel Journal
Ethical Markets Media
Balance Boost (Wellness news)
Urban Land Institute
Web programming/Web Updates (search engines, shopping carts, re-design) : Children’s Book Press, Ethical Markets Media
Webcasting (includes writing scripts, sponsorship proposals, storyboarding ad campaigns): Ethical Markets Media, Stan Lee/POW Entertainment
Market Research: Shapeshifters.net
Video editing: Ethical Markets Media
Copyediting: Biscayne Times, Success South Florida
Monthly E-Newsletter Marketing: Ethical Markets Media, The Angel Journal, Balance Boost
Speaking on panels at conferences: Miami Light Project
Organizing panels / conferences: Gold Coast Venture Capital Association, The Women’s Congress, The Standard Hotel,
Social networking (online): POW! Entertainment
Content aggregation for a web site (3-week process): Elastic Artists
My Bio
I started my company Biscayne Writers, Inc. in August 2005 to empower professional writers in South Florida. I have a wide range of experience in publishing with specific experience in writing, editing, multimedia production, management, IT Development and marketing. I have lived in and researched every region of the United States and traveled to Latin America, India, Thailand and Europe as a journalist.
I started working for dot.coms in 1997, at the dawn of the Internet Boom. I started at MichiganLive.com editing the Stargossip and Prep Sports sections. That’s where I learned most of my HTML skills. Everything existed as tables, whereas now, everything is contained within “div” tags. I also learned the art of search and replace. I would cut and paste Word documents that had paragraph tags and replace them with HTML tags. It was quite boring, but It helped me understand how programming works. I got tired of sitting in front of a computer 8 hours a day (I was 22 at the time), so I moved to Colorado serve as an AmeriCorps*VISTA volunteer, but again, I found myself in front of a computer. I created a web site for the Foster Grandparents program, which connected low income seniors with children in schools, daycare centers and juvenile halls. Through the web site, I was able to raise money and market the program.
Before I even finished my year commitment with AmeriCorps, I had attended the National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention in Seattle and met a Latina who was a pioneer in the Internet world. Her name is Lavonne Luquis, and she had started a web site in 1995 (extremely old by Internet standards) called LatinoLink, which later became Latino.com, a bilingual news portal for US-based Latinos.
So I moved to San Francisco and started out as a reporter, covering Ricky Martin concerts, writing about emerging artists from Argentina (Giselle Nicole) and one of the Backstreet Boys’ sister (Pollyanna – she was milking her quarter Hispanic heritage since there was also a Latino BOOM happening cuz of Senor Ricky and his VMA performance with Madonna). I also wrote profiles about Latino politicians, namely, a Mexicano from Kansas who was running for Congress. I wrote about the US Census, which was predicting Latinos would be half the population by 2050, stories about Latino couples from Chicago who were choosing NOT to have children (to their families’ horror), and I even wrote about a Latino sci-fi writer named Ernesto Hogan, who wrote a book called High Aztec. I also had the pleasure of interviewing authors Esmeralda Santiago, Julia Alvarez and Carmen Lomas Garza.
It was exciting interviewing all these people, but I got bored easily and I wanted to learn more about the backend of the web site, so I started doing more production. I was project manager of a sister site we created for singer Thalia, who became our spokesperson (this was the year she married Tommy Motolla and had 3 different dresses and 3 different parties for her wedding in true Diva style). She wasn’t that easy to work with.
It all came to crashing halt in January 2001. Our biggest competitor, QuePasa.com had folded, so we were all laid off on January 25, 2001. I’ll never forget that day. Because I was so relieved!
After some rest and relaxation, a few months later, I started hanging out in the offices of Pacific News Service, created by award-winning journalist Sandy Close in San Francisco, Calif. I worked with inner city kids who worked their way out of juvenile hall through poetry and multimedia. I built their first web site (www.youthoutlook.org) along with a few programmers who found that open source code was much easier to work with than license-heavy Microsoft asp and other languages. To this day, I don’t work with any web sites that aren’t written in PHP. My blogs are all on PHP.
When I moved to Miami in 2003, there wasn’t much web stuff going on since people were still recovering from the dot-Bomb, so I got a job as managing editor at The Biscayne Boulevard Times (now the Biscayne Times). It was a good education for understanding what Miami is all about. I wrote articles about the real estate boom, I attended city hall meetings, neighborhood meetings, critical mass meetings, art shows – anything that was happening on the Boulevard. I even interviewed 2 prostitutes in the offices in Design District at one point. They called me a square! I also covered all the parties the developers were throwing left and right, which were part of the Boomtown Fever phenomenon.
By the end of 2005, I knew another boom was about to go bust and I was itching to do my own thing. I had just established my new company, Biscayne Writers, and I wanted to freelance for magazines full time. Also during this time I got certified to teach yoga at the Miami Yogashala, where I gave myself a new “spiritual” name: Kemila Velan. I started publishing under this name (as you can see from my clips above).
So I went to India and gathered information about the real estate and spas over there and wrote some articles for Miami Monthly, the South Florida Business Journal and Success South Florida Magazine.
I wasn’t bringing in enough cash fast enough, so I started putting resumes out again and found the job that would combine everything I’d learned in the past 8 years all into one. Web 2.0 was just starting to become a phenomenon, and my job was to create The Angel Journal, a web site, newspaper and E-Newsletter for investors of start-up companies.
I didn’t even know what an angel investor was, but I figured I would learn as I started interviewing people. And since I was a cheerleader for journalists, creative writers, poets and screenwriters, I didn’t hesitate to pay almost every writer I hired $1/word. As a result, I got professionally written, fact-checked, on-time articles that impressed and hooked the US and Canada-based investors who read the monthly newspaper.
Since The Angel Journal folded in November 2008, I have been focusing solely on Biscayne Writers, Miami’s Online Literary Community, and working various freelance gigs. My goal is to continue “writing my life” as I go, and I hope to help other writers do the same.
