Biography
After high school, a long time ago, I worked in record stores in Portland, Oregon, til I and two other incredibly flakey jerkoffs started our own, the twist being we only sold "imports." The flakey boys thankfully chipped themselves away after a year or so, -- one staged a break-in to salvage his beloved speakers and I think the other one went home to Spokane to live with mommy and daddy, where he didn't have to pick up after himself. I was left with a helper who became my partner in a new endeavor, distributing that exciting music called punk rock. We imported from England and Sweden and and even more exotic locales like Los Angeles. Rough Trade was our god. I stayed with them many times, and vice versa. Times changed and by 1981, I was sick of dumb musicans and whiny co-workers, so I went to work for a company in SF that sold a lot of special "gardening" books and stuff like that. After 6 dead end years there, I moved on to the mainstream book world and worked for a mostly gay owned company in South SF, with a creepy, super rich tightwad owner who eventually fired me. Then I worked for a different kind of creepy owner, a much beloved small publisher in Berkeley. But he really only wanted girls to work for him and I'm not a girl, so he "let me go" after several months. But it is there I had my seminal publicity experience, when a young woman he'd gotten rather too close to up and quit, leaving the publicizing of a new book hanging. I stepped in and found it was something I liked doing, and my new life of blissful self-employment began. Or not so blissful, but still....also during this period I began writing regular fiction reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle book section. Pat Holt became, and still is, a most important and influential figure in my life. I wonder how I managed without her...in the later 80s she offered me a monthly mystery review column and I began reading books practicaly every weekend. I wrote about 8 at a time at first but leveled off eventually at 6 per column. This experience lead, yeasr later to the Pages column.
My website elaborates on what I do, and whom I've done it with.
I'm married to a great woman and we managed somehow to get very lucky and have an amazing child. Wonders never cease, they just don't make themselves especially apparent very often....
