• Early 1980's: Tiny dog creates hundreds of pages of fan fiction on manual typewriter. Situations involve Mary Sue version of self interacting with the respective lineups of General Hospital, The Monkees, and Huey Lewis and the News. Horrifyingly, this content still exists.
• 1992: Starts writing again in college. Cranks out collection of inconclusive short stories about clueless young persons resembling self and college classmates.
• 1995-present: Employed as technical writer who actually makes lists of file names and attends meetings instead of writing. Writes about five random unfinished stories during this time, frequently concerning pets.
• 2003: Writes Last Seen Leaving, a novel concerning slackers, romance, and missing persons who may in fact be dead. Follows this with short story collection about roadkill, religious epiphanies, and the mentally ill, that fails to move literary magazine contest judging panels.
• 2004: Writes Fanboy, a novel concerning a bad garage band and two pathologically lying sisters.
• 2005: Writes Silicone Sisters, a novel about strange women obsessed with prosthetic infants.

Novels:

Last Seen Leaving, a novel (excerpt)

LSL concerns the suspicious disappearance of a drug-addled office worker from the SF bay area, and the ripple effect of this event on those close to her. Characters include her mother, addicted to prescription pain medication and raw food therapy, her brother Elliott, a bitter, college rock DJ, his ambivalent girlfriend Mary, and Mary's neighbor Dean, a fashion-forward kid who is negotiating a relationship with an in-the-closet, suicidal Berkeley freshman named Brian.

In the featured excerpt, Dean has come to Berkeley to visit Brian, and assess whether he can save the relationship, and in fact, save Brian from his own destructive tendencies.

Status: The first draft of the novel is complete. I have not in any serious way begun to rewrite it, however.

Fanboy, a novel (excerpt)

Fanboy is set in Sacramento in the year 2000, and details one season in the life of a largely untalented garage band. Characters include two sisters (Ruth and Jen), a singer-songwriter team with a habit for pathologically lying and sleeping around, Eddie, the tasteless and self-proclaimed band-leader, lead guitarist, and Little Steven disciple, and Reuben, the adultering, unambitious pot-head drummer who unloads night-shift delivery trucks at Safeway. In the novel, the band attempts to record a demo and begin a local tour, which results in cuckoldry, unproductive practice sessions, alcoholism, broken mic stands, and a showdown at a three-bands-for-three-bucks gig.

In the featured excerpt, Ruth (the narrator) reveals her long-term affair with Reuben to her husband, an irate software engineer, from the parking lot of a Denney's restaurant.

Status: First draft completed, plot summary completed. Draft 2 re-write in progress, but currently bogged down by realization that author will never be John Updike.

Silicone Sisters, a novel (excerpt)

Silicone sisters is a novel written after I happened across this article which, once you read this article, you'll understand the brilliance of this topic and why a novel about it would be an entirely worthwhile undertaking. Because these women are insane. The novel mainly concerns the relationship between Dori, an aimless 30-something on the cusp of a divorce, and her unhinged mother, a HeatherTree Angels doll collector

In the excerpt, Dori is visiting with Theo (son of another HeatherTree Angels doll collector), who reveals details of a lost love from his school days.

Status: First draft complete, rewrite in progress. I definitely like this one the best of the three.

Short stories:

Mostly this is just kind of experimental dreck.

Page Not Found A painfully autobiographical and unfinished ramble about life in a doomed start-up.

K-9000 An unfinished experiment in semi-science fiction writing, concerning an animatronic dog, sort of like Teddy in A.I.

Panda, the miraculous Frisbee cat A totally random short story about a cat, one of the many stories I wrote in the late 90's, for reasons no one can discern, about cats and dogs.

Y2K Yet another story about household pets, a sort of uber-short, flash-fiction story.

Comics:

My major idol of all time and space is Lynda Barry, and so, in homage to her, I have actually written comics, although I can't draw.

Albert, the fake Christmas Tree

Wrote this in one day during Xmas a few years back when the in-laws were in town... the inspiration struck suddenly, as I sat there over a Scrabble game, staring at the artificial Christmas tree. It seemed to radiate an inner life.

Blank Mind Comix

A college-era endeavor... everyone I knew was so into comics, and thus, was I.

Fan fiction:

I was going to publish some heinous fanfic excerpts mentioned above, but the prospect of the potential humiliation overwhelmed me, as I detail in this rant.