In the previous blog I offered some of the many mythological gods and goddesses who were armed with a bow. This popularity has continued...

Standing at the line at the Washington Park archery range, I take my position, trying to be mindful of every muscle. Holding the bow...

“Hot!” I shout, not as self conscious as I was the first time I yelled it out. It’s the cue to my fellow archers that I am about to shoot....

Paul Conti has a Stanford Medical School and Harvard (chief psychiatric resident) pedigree. But it was his compassion for clients and an...

In 1992, renowned psychiatrist Dr. George Vaillant wrote an article entitled The Beginning of Wisdom Is Never Calling a Patient a...

With what I had learned about psychology, and being based in Portland, I wrote two novels-Borderline and Fixation--with a new...

As a staff clinician at Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, my writing largely consisted of assessments, treatment plans, and chart notes. I...

One day at work I remember clearly, from what went on outside of work. My wife knew not to call me. I was always back-to-back with...

After my internship, Southeast Mental Health Network offered me a job on the crisis team. I took it, even though I preferred doing longer...

My dress shoes were uncomfortable and so I wore funky old sneakers. This may seem like an irrelevant detail but stick with me. My plan...

I still remember the crushing feeling when a novel I had worked on was rejected by my agent. I didn’t cry but felt like it. The news had...

My Red Diamond books were optioned multiple times. Options, except for big name properties, are usually a small amount, a few thousand at...

Nowadays, it’s clear that authors must do their own publicity. When you submit a book to an agent, many will actually ask about how big a...

Realizing that journalism was never really going to satisfy the writer in me, I had begun working on a novel back in my Herex days. As...

Ultimately, in 1982, I left the Herald to work for the Los Angeles CBS affiliate, then called KNXT. Network owned and operated. Connie...

After about nine months, I was assigned to federal court. Frank Candida had state court, where there was a lot of activity, but most of...

In my less than two years at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, I wrote several hundred articles, sometimes with more than one story in the...

I forgot exactly how I was introduced to him, but Ed Caffrey was a retired New York Police Department sergeant who had been undercover...

So I had become a New York Magazine writer, with multiple stories published. I did the cover story that was, at that time, their biggest...

Back in the 70s as I was writing for Courier-Life, I did a couple of stories on Joseph Lauria, a bright and dedicated prosecutor who went...