Red Diamond: Private Eye book jacket, 1983
These are the stories that my family and friends have heard, the high points and low points that make up my life. From working doing press relations for a hero cop who inspired the Starsky character in Starsky and Hutch, to being Mick Jagger’s bodyguard. From being a subject in federally funded ESP experiments, to being asked to buy cocaine in an undercover role. From being a target for drug traffickers, to being a decoy for TSA bomb-sniffing dogs. And when a bomb blew up in the driveway next to our house. Or the time the Trail Blazers saw me naked.
In most installments, I’m going to focus on my writing career. I’ve freelanced for New York Magazine, The New York Times, New York Post, Esquire and numerous other publications. I’ve had articles published in refereed journals. I’ve been on staff at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, USA Today, CBS and NBC. Most recently, I’ve written novels. My 12th one, The Master Mind, will be released by AM Ink Publishing in May 2022. Hopefully there will be stuff in this blog that is entertaining, informative and memorable. Sort of like life.
That pending publication inspired me to look back on what a long, strange trip it’s been. I had had hundreds of articles published by the time my first book came out in 1983. The good news, I kept all the articles. The bad news, I rubber cemented them into sketch books for storage. Most are yellowed, many virtually unreadable due to my half-assed archivist technique.
My last novel, prior to this one, came out in 2008. Tragic events in the later years kept me from writing. I did do one self-published nonfiction book on crisis de-escalation, a subject close to my heart. Something I’ve trained thousands of people in as a mental health professional. Aside from writing, training has been a big part of my professional life. More on that in upcoming posts.