A little more about the author

I've been writing stories since I was twelve years old. In April 2019 (2023), I turned 52 (56) which marked my fortieth (44th) year of living my life in secret. Being overly introverted as a young boy I lived the larger part of the days inside my head. I remember piecing together those inside moments, changing the parts I didn’t like and reliving them. In 1979 it occurred to me that I could be writing these changes down either “diaretically” or possibly even changing all the parts and living something completely new. I tried to copy the form and flow of some of my favorite authors of the time but still was never satisfied with my final drafts to show anybody.

For those beginning years I lived vicariously through my main character, essentially creating a social vacuum around me, having cultivated only four relationships (Nate Donovan, Gil Katzen, Scott Lindblom, and Larry Kopp) with friends. Then Jr. High ended and I was thrust into a new environment that scared the introverted young boy in me into the rebellious main character I had been writing about. It began as a coping mechanism that afforded me the chance to be able to hide from, and interact with, the world. The next thirty years were filled with blurred decisions made by a main character in an ongoing series of books created by an angry, introverted little kid. Booze, drugs, lost licenses, expulsions, police, lawyers, colleges, more expulsions, more booze, more drugs, unhealthy relationships, marriage, divorce, and a whole bunch of people that are now just names on pieces of paper in my drawer. A rash decision made out of fear from an inexperienced young mind turned into a life I wasn’t meant to have.

I find myself now in the Sierras, my old escape. This is the place I used to come when the main character of my story began to forget about the introverted little kid. Up here in the mountains, cut off from all the ties that bound that main character, the introvert flourished and righted my psyche. Living in my own private Gethsemane Garden, the main character slowly disappeared, leaving me with that drawer full of forgotten names, along with volumes of stories about a person that didn’t exist. I rummage through the pieces of paper along with the volumes reliving my past while trying to make sense of it in a "what just happened" sort of way. A decade has passed since that story ended and I’ve come to the conclusion that the life that I wasn’t meant to have was pretty close to what that little introverted kid would have wanted.

Then life's cruel sense of humor found my hiding place. No longer needing that lifelong security blanket, having thrown away the mask of the main character, the need to write about things slowly evaporated, leaving me like the steam from a hot shower on a cold day. So, here I sit in my cold bathroom, wondering why it is so cold and not being able to see the answer through the analogy.

I doubt that this tale will ever be finished.

Bear River Sample

"Bear River Lake Reservoir" is the living definition of what summer is supposed to be to me. The cloudless blue sky looks so perfectly blue I keep looking up, checking to see if the clarity is as intense as it was

five seconds before. We drop into Bear's parking lot and catch our first glimpse of the lake. On it, the suns reflection shatters and bounces off the water in every direction, temporarily masking how much more impossibly bluer the water is than the sky. 'Impossible', I say to myself. The surrounding mountains hold everything together presenting..."What's impossible?" Mike says, interrupting yet another opening monologue as he turns around in the front seat to face me immediately falling out of the seemingly unlocked and ajar front car door. "Nothing...", I say to not Mike, answering his orphaned question. Dan begins to slow down to retrieve our friend. “Park first.” I say, already tired of Mike and his inability to function properly in public.

In Memoriam

Pictured here is the moment, that moment...my moment when I began writing the stories of my life with the passion that had been so undeservedly quieted in years past. Also, I'd like to thank my

closest friends, Dan Hale, Mike Beedy and Steve Keller without whom most of those stories would not have happened...keeping me safe and sane, giving me an audience for my usual rants, and keeping me out of jail…for the most part.

From the future I look back and wonder how Mike and I stopped talking, how I haven’t seen Danny in a decade, and how Steve’s death still doesn’t fit into my version of things. For me, this is a place (the world) for laughter, but now that the idea of Steve no longer being here grows on me, it doesn't feel appropriate. Except that all of my memories have us laughing. He never waited for the funny to happen, he used humor like a weapon, attacking you from all angles. Dinner with him was never just dinner, it was dinner and a show. Golfing with him was like walking through a minefield of jokes and you'd hope that someone else would misstep so you could share the first laugh with Steve, or testing his assistants moral line with outrageous lies about each other while she cleaned your teeth. Our yearly golf "trips" over that past decade were never about golf, it was a contest to see who could make someone laugh so hard that their drink would come spurting out of their nose.

I wrote about a weekend we spent in the mountains, decades ago, before the worries of the world weighed too much on our young minds. It was filled with everything we ever joked about and, to me, it was the perfect weekend. In my writing mind we had he challenged something bigger than us and because of our bond through friendship and laughter...we won. I wanted to have that memory where sun hated to set on its lost day, where the cool air around them breathed a sigh of relief as they moved on to other adventures, where the growl of an ancient and immense rock went unheard, making it just a rock, taking its power over us away. I forever read, write, re-read, and re-write that story as time passes and think about my friends and how far apart we are, but know how badly we would like another dinner show, or purposely misstep on the fairway, or tell a stranger the unknown secrets of a friend, or how willingly we would sacrifice a nose full of coffee, soda or vodka simply to hear us laugh together again…to hear him laugh again.

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