I've always been a "hands on" writer and journalist, which is to say that I have not spent my entire career at a keyboard.  In addition to the professional positions I've held, I've also worked in hop and grape harvests, as a forest fire fighter, in a lumber mill, as a ranch hand and for a major aircraft manufacturing company.

My literary influences were shaped by writers also strongly identified with California; Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Jack London, William Saroyan, John Steinbeck, Joan Didion and Ernest Callenbach.