About

I always want the rest of the story...

I’m Michael Liverance, and I’ve spent most of my life moving between two instincts: take things apart and then tell somebody what I found.

I’m rarely satisfied knowing only what something is. I want to know why it looks that way, who argued for it, what almost replaced it, and which overlooked decision made the finished version possible.

That’s how an ordinary object becomes a story about the argument, accident, technology, or forgotten person hiding behind it.

Detours & Footnotes grew out of that habit. One question led to another, the notes kept multiplying, and eventually I needed somewhere to put the stories.

Why I dig deeper...

I graduated from Clemson University with a degree in electrical and computer engineering, a field of study that trained me to look for the system beneath the surface and to be suspicious of anything described as magic.

Clemson also gave me a lifelong attachment to purple and orange, an involuntary reaction to the opening notes of “Tiger Rag,” and the kind of loyalty that somehow feels stronger the farther you live from campus.

After college, my work carried me through manufacturing, engineering, medical devices, sales, leadership, startups, and new product development. I’ve spent a couple of decades around ideas being invented, tested, rejected, revised, launched, and finally presented to the world as though the path had always been obvious.

It almost never was.

The finished thing is usually the least interesting part...

Products, inventions, companies, and cultural habits all arrive with their rough edges sanded down. We see the version that survived.

What catches my attention is everything behind it: the discarded designs, the bad assumptions, the stubborn believer, the lucky accident, the meeting that went sideways, and the person whose contribution disappeared once the story became famous.

My professional life taught me to ask how things are built. Writing gives me an excuse to ask how they became part of the world.

This gets built alongside a full life...

I live in North Texas with my wife and our two sons. Detours & Footnotes gets built around family, work, baseball practices, business plans, school schedules, and the fulfilling chaos that comes with trying to care about everything at once.

There is no secluded writer’s cabin, though I remain open to acquiring one.

Most articles begin as a note, a question, or a sentence I can’t stop thinking about. Research happens in the margins. Drafts grow early in the morning, late at night, or whenever a promising detour refuses to wait its turn.

That pace may not be glamorous, but it keeps the work connected to real life. I’m writing these stories as a curious reader too.

What earns an article...

A subject doesn’t need to be important in the traditional sense. It needs an unexpected left turn.

I look for the moment when a familiar story becomes unfamiliar: the invention that almost failed, the object that changed meaning, the person history simplified, or the tiny decision that kept echoing long after anyone expected it to.

The best D&F subjects can carry facts, humor, surprise, and a little humanity without feeling forced. They leave enough room for the reader to enjoy the ride rather than admire the research from a distance.

Some ideas survive that test. Others remain stranded in a document full of enthusiastic notes and no article. They know what they did.

How the work gets made...

I choose every subject, decide the angle, research the story, edit every line, and make the final call on what gets published.

I also use AI-assisted drafting and editorial support. It helps me test structure, organize research, challenge weak logic, compare language, and find the places where a paragraph is pretending to be finished.

The editorial decisions, voice, and responsibility remain mine. Facts are checked, historical images are credited, editorial illustrations are identified, and source notes are collected so the work can be verified without turning each article into a wall of citations.

The goal is not to hide the tools or hand them the judgment. It’s to use them honestly in service of better work.

What I hope to build...

I want Detours & Footnotes to become the kind of publication where a reader arrives for one subject, leaves with three more open, and trusts that even the unfamiliar stories will be worth the time.

Not a content mill. Not a personal brand pretending to be a publication. A real body of work with a recognizable voice, a growing archive, and enough curiosity to keep wandering for a long while.

I don’t know exactly how large it will become, but I know what I want it to feel like: intelligent, funny, honest, human, and generous with the reader’s attention.

Glad you found your way here...

Whether you found this place through an object you recognized or a story you never knew you needed, I’m glad you’re here.

Thanks for reading, for passing a story along, and for following the detours with me.