I grew up in Redondo Beach in the Fifties and Sixties when it was a sleepy beach town. At age 11, I survived a near-fatal illness that lasted most of 1959. Besides keeping me bedridden during a long recovery, the illness afforded me an opportunity to read a year’s worth of classical and modern literature–Homeric sagas, Norse and Greek mythology, Renaissance poets, Dumas, Dickens, Twain, Steinbeck, Hemingway, McCullers, and poets Cummings, Ferlinghetti and Marquis. Later, I tried my hand at writing but abandoned the effort because I felt I hadn’t lived enough.
My brush with mortality left me with a lifelong habit of embracing challenges. In the summer of 1960, I began surfing. In 1971, I left the crowded So-Cal burbs and beaches for rural Oregon. I stayed. I always loved the woods as much as the beach. Anything to do with trees. I fought wildfire, became a smokejumper, worked as a tree faller, planter, and logger, and for the last 27 years of my working life owned a tree-service business. If it had anything to do with manual labor, trees, or lower back pain, I’ve done it.
Somehow, I also managed to write. My first break was my affiliation with Red Octopus Theatre Company in Newport, OR, where three of my one-act plays were produced along with two full-length plays. I was also co-author of a book and lyrics for a full-length musical based on The Gift by O. Henry, also produced. Some of my surf poems appeared in Pacific Longboard Magazine in the Nineties, and some of my fire-fighting poems were published in Wildland Firefighter Magazine, also during that time period. “Smokey and Kit,” included in this book, was originally published in the late Chris Bystrom’s The Glide–The Renaissance of LongBoard Surfing.
I now live on his working tree farm high in the Coast Range of Oregon and am writing a novel set in Western Oregon.
My Publications
In addition to my latest book, “Turn Your Back on the Shore,” I am the author of two novels, six stageplays, a screenplay, a children’s book, and numerous narrative poems and short stories.
Novels
- “The Book of Joe,” a comedy/drama about an extraterrestrial invasion of a small rural community in Oregon
- a plausible, fact-based novel about D.B. Cooper (in the works and not yet titled)
Stageplays
- “The Gift,” a full-length musical with nine original songs and a cast of 59; an adaptation of the classic short story by O. Henry
- “Oh, Dragon!” a children’s play with a cast of 20, mostly children; an adaptation of the classic tale, “The Reluctant Dragon,” by Kenneth Crahame
- “The Stolen Hours,” a comedy-drama original about a community theatre group putting on their own production of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” with a cast of 12-15 with many small parts for amateur actors
- “Monday is Wash Day,” a one-act play about relationships with a two-person cast
- “A Potential Merger,” also a one-act play about relationships, with a four-person cast
- “Love and the Left Side of the Brain,” again one-act and about relationships, with a three-person cast
Screenplay
“Oregon Rain,” a romance/action/drama set in Oregon in the early 1970s
Children’s Book
“The Chronicles of Humbleton,” about the activities of a loving but asset-poor royal family
Narrative Poetry and short stories
- “Turn Your Back on the Shore,” my surf-poetry collection
- “Smokey and Kit,” published in Chris Bystrom’s “The Glide: Longboarding and the Renaissance of Modern Surfing”
- Numerous other accessible narrative poems
- Many short stories