About
After decades working in advancement, fundraising, leadership, and communications, I became interested in a deeper question:
Why do stories work?
Not as a marketing tactic — I’d seen plenty of that — but as something closer to the center of how human beings make sense of their lives. The more I looked, the more it seemed that storytelling isn’t a communication skill we layer on top of experience. It’s the way experience becomes meaning in the first place.
This project is an attempt to answer that question in the open — to publish ideas before they’re finished, test what resonates, and discover what this work wants to become. It is a laboratory, not a launch.
This project is part of Oklahoma Hail, the name on Dave Hail’s essays, software, and small tools on fundraising, story, and judgment.
The software, writing, research, and experiments here share one aim: helping people move from information to judgment.
Explore our other projects →
- InkwellA writing studio for long manuscripts. It keeps structure, characters, and continuity where you can check them.
- Inkwell JrA writing studio for young storytellers.
- Henry Hail and the Whittier KidsA middle-grade mystery adventure series.
- MarginSomething worth stopping for, and room to answer it. Margin moves on when you do, not when the calendar does.
- VantageA listening assistant that decides which podcast episode is worth your time next and shows its work for every call.
- Operation FloridaSeven people, thirty options, one week in Florida. A record of how the answers became a plan.
- PathmarkTravel intelligence across deals, timing, and planning.
- HorizonDisney trip planning. It turns crowd patterns and ride timing into a day-by-day plan.
- Norman Dinner DealsVerified restaurant deals in Norman, for the weeks nobody wants to cook.