How the Hell Did I Get Here?

I’ve been writing stories for fun and profit for fifty years now. (Yeah, I can’t believe it either.)

Co-created an ‘underground humor magazine’ called Foolscorner with three other guys who went on to be Rand Corp double-doctors, hacker-spies for unnamed semi-governmental agencies, and art directors for a national magazine. And me. Worked my way through college doing dorm newsletters, writing term papers for non-English majors, letters for Penthouse (no, seriously: “Dear Penthouse: I used to think these stories were made up, but then it happened to me!”), and news releases and catalog copy for UC Extension.

Learned the business side of publishing at Harvard/Radcliffe in ‘76; sold my first ‘legit’ piece for $50 when I was 20 and my first paperback novel – a sword-and-sorcery fantasy – when I was 24, in 1978. Started a magazine, an ad agency, a daily radio show in Santa Barbara during the wild and wonderful 70s, all of which taught me too much and I schlumped down to L.A. in 1980 to start over, and do a bunch of things.

Since then, I’ve bopped back and forth between the business die of publishing, writing, editing, and ghostwriting. I’ve produced stuff under my name and others in just about every medium you can imagine – novels, non-fiction books on everything from special effects and movies and health, screenplays, reviews, audio work before they called them podcasts, podcasts after they started calling them podcasts, newsletters, branching adventure games, magazine articles, erotica, horror both real and imagined, celebrity interviews, web content, annual reports, sales kits, comics, speeches, fundraising letters, junk mail that made other people millions, and on and on and on.

Back in Santa Barbara I used my small-town celebrity to try and kick up work with a business card (hey, remember business cards?) that had nothing on it but my name and phone number (hey, remember phone numbers?) on one side and the words “Anything For Money” on the other. And yes, I meant any writing thing for money And no, I had no idea it would define my life and ‘career’ to this day, more than fifty years after that first sale.

Today, in my early seventies, it’s still true: I’m producing non-fiction audio for big-time medical non-profits, writing scary books, coaching other writers old and new, slinging out the occasional marketing consultation or direct response package for old friends. It never stops. I never want it to.

Here are the covers of some, just some, of the things I’ve had a hand in. You can see what’s still out there and for sale on this page, along with some background notes. And you can always drop me a line.

What’s next? Hell, I don’t know. More scary books, some non-fic, maybe some courses, certainly more audio. It’s still pretty much Anything For Money, though now it’s more Anything I Want To Do, With People I Want to Work With for Fun or Profit (preferably both). Come on: I’ve learned to draw a few lines over the last gazillion years, but…well, you never know.

You just never damn know.