I write exclusively about San Francisco in the Sixties because it was the site of my own bewildering youth and because it was the epicenter of the Counter Culture, the biggest cultural transformation of the second half of the twentieth century. And because there is no other literary fiction by a participant. For all the memoirs and histories, nobody, not once, told what it was like from the inside in literary fiction. Art critic David Bonetti was right when he wrote in the SF Sunday Chronicle-Examiner, "The Summer of Love might well be San Francisco's greatest contribution to world culture." Plus it was the signature experience of a generation.I began writing about that experience in 1968, and every couple years thereafter until about 1977, always trying to fit the experience into the novel form. I wasn't satisfied with anything I wrote and put it away for twenty five years. San Fran60s and More San Fran60s are my last attempt.

I wrote for the underground press in the Sixties, published irregularly in the mainstream press in the Seventies, and had a book published by Doubleday on American cartoonists in the Eighties. I am now a retired English teacher.There are almost certainly minor historical inaccuracies here. I made some efforts to correct a few but my purpose, before all else, is to tell a good story. Though there is less than 10% invention, less than many memoirs, I still consider this fiction. I need the freedom that comes with knowing I can invent if necessary. Besides my memory, I use an extensive personal archive of journals, letters, stories and story fragments, poems, newspaper articles I authored, etc. In San Fran60s, there is new information about the murder of Shob Carter, the event recognized by everyone at the time, including Time magazine, as the end of the Summer of Love.

That murder is the climax of "Amateur Insanity" the longest story in the collections. With recurring characters, themes, and scenes and with each story self-contained so they can be read in any order, these collections are like fractured or cubist novels. Or they are story collections with a narrative structure that is an expression of that time. Also, rather than have an aspect of a larger story in each short story, I've invested each as much as possible with the whole of the experience of San Francisco in the Sixties. The whole is in the parts. I write a story as if that was the only thing the reader would ever read on that subject let alone from these collections.