About Todd Hicks, the Self-help/Fiction Author

Who are you?

I’m Todd Hicks, a custodian at a seasonings

and spices plant. I have written self-help

books on:

• touch typing

• job hunting

• tennis

• cooking

• travel

• study tips

 

I had to spend a lot of time doing these things

and make major blunders to obtain the

knowledge needed to write these how-to

manuals. Please allow me to elaborate.

 

What made you become good at studying?

Entering The University of Missouri at St.

Louis in August 1992 as a student who didn’t

know how to study as well as I previously

thought was a wake-up call. From the time of

my college debut until the winter semester of

1996, I earned a few F’s and a lot of D’s. I finally

became familiar with the art of repetition and

developed other good study habits on my own;

consequently, I went from having a grade point

average of about 1.5 to graduating with a

Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from

UMSL with a 2.279 GPA in May 2000.

 

How did you learn to cook?

When I first began preparing dinner on Fridays

while still living at home in November 2008, I

learned to make certain dishes such as Sloppy

Joe’s from my parents or my brother. I have

learned to fix other meals through trial and

error over the years.

 

One key thing I have learned about food

preparation is to have keen time coordination;

if I’m fixing BBQ spare ribs, beans and

cornbread for the meal, I’m likely to start

cutting up collard greens and red cabbage then

adding these items to my cornbread mixture

while I’m baking the ribs at 400 degrees on the

front side for about 20 minutes. After that time

elapses, I’ll flip the ribs over then bake that

along with the cornbread for about 20 minutes,

and during this time I’ll cook canned beans

which I’ll add chopped eggplant and red beets

to.

 

Another key thing I learned is to wait until I

reach the final step of my dish preparation such

as chopping up a beet before turning on the oven.

Running the oven longer than is necessary will

make your gas bill higher besides putting extra

wear and tear on your stove/oven range.

 

Why did you decide to master touch typing?

It’s a necessary skill to have if you want to

type documents, letters and other

correspondences quickly; but more

importantly, I needed to go from coming

out of college as a hunt-and-peck typist to

being someone who could type at least 35

words per minute to increase my odds of

finding a job or temp assignment that

required good typing skills.

 

Years of practice gave me the typing and

10-key skills I needed to land a data entry

assignment with Iron Mountain in 2005.

One of the most important things I

learned about keyboard typing is to keep

my hands positioned where I can easily

reach the Q, A, Z, W, S, O, P, L and caps

lock keys with my end fingers at all times;

a helpful thing I learned about using

the 10-key pad exclusively is to have the

first three fingers on both my hands

hovering over this pad when taking 10-key

tests.

 

Screenshots of my most recent 10-key and

typing tests at the Learn 2 Type website are

below.

Your accuracy was impressive. Your

speed was 9641 Keystrokes Per Hour.

 

Your accuracy was impressive. Your speed

was 46 WPM

 

What qualified you to write a job hunting

and career advice guide?

Reading a lot of materials on these subjects

and making many blunders in my job search

as well as on the job prepared me for this. The

biggest mistake that haunted me from the early

2000s until I finally began working full time

for good in May  2019 as a long-term

warehousing industry temp through Randstad

was arriving at a teacher assistant job interview,

thinking I didn’t need to do research on a

school district ahead of time – I felt so foolish as

I sat in my chair, unable to answer their question

on what I knew about them. Over the following

15 years or so, I was only able to find work as a

substitute teacher or a temp sporadically.

 

What made you a good tennis player?

Receiving instruction on the proper mechanics

and playing this sport regularly since 1991 took

me from hitting too many balls weakly or out of

bounds to consistently hitting the ball well. Until a

veteran player taught me to raise my racket head

over my right shoulder then lower it toward the ground

then bring it to my left shoulder to properly

make ball contact in the late 1990s, I couldn’t hit well

enough to get many other people to play with me.

 

What made you qualified to write a travel tips

guide?

I have taken a lot of trips over the last 15 years,

and I have messed up on some of them. I based

this book on what I learned to do and what not

to do in order to make my trip planning and

execution flawless. The biggest traveling

blunder I ever made was not getting back on

the Greyhound bus which was heading to my

final destination (Cleveland, Ohio) when I was

on layover at the Indianapolis station one day in

2014.

 

Because the driver said our layover was to be 45

minutes long, I paid no attention to the boarding

call which was announced about 30 minutes

after I exited the bus; consequently, I had to wait

six hours for the next bus, and thus arrive in

Cleveland too late at night. This mistake cost me a

grand opportunity to see my cousin before she

was set to end her visit to my aunt’s house.

 

I take pride in having written these books to

help you improve your life, but there is more I

have to offer as a promising writer. Based on my

creativity and vivid imagination, I have written

many fiction books and they keep coming as

though they were on a moving conveyor belt. I

began creating these works in January 2012, with

the goal of entertaining you greater than my

desire to earn money.

 

What separates me from many other authors is I

make reading my books pleasant to the eye with

double-spaced paragraphs and I never put

profanity or any other vulgar language in my

books – please keep this in mind if you want to give

a lesser-known author like myself a chance. I avoid

buying or reading so many books I find online or in

person because they contain vulgar language or are

written in a single-spaced paragraph format.

 

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