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Pirates of Sausalito

by | Apr 22, 2024 |

My fourth novel, Pirates of Sausalito: Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery, is now available. The story, inspired by true events, is set in the late 1970s on the shoreline of Richardson Bay. Hippies and squatters living on houseboats in a ramshackle shantytown are...

‘Writing California’ + Seeking Feedback on Book Cover Redesign

by | Sep 11, 2023 | ,

On September 21, I’ll be part of a local author panel at the Mill Valley Library discussing researching and writing about California. I’ll be discussing my 2015 novel Wasted, a “green-noir” mystery set in the garbage and recycling world of Berkeley, as well as my work-in-progress, a historical mystery/comedy based on true events in Sausalito during the houseboat wars in the 1970s.

Because I’ll be talking about Wasted, I am percolating, again, on whether or not to redesign its cover, which is a problem.

Sausalypso Video on YouTube

by | Jun 5, 2023 |

Finally getting around to posting the video of Sausalypso Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery, the play I wrote and directed earlier this spring. Watching it on the screen can’t match the energy of being there in person, but it’s still fun. Replete with a pretend pirate, a greedy developer with a maniacal laugh, his vengeful ex-wife and his hiccuping henchman, not to mention Sausalypso’s first ever woman police chief. 

Here are some highlights — in case you don’t have time to watch the whole thing. 🙂

Scene 3 (The Greedy Developer and the Liberal Police Chief) 7:24
Scene 4 (The Vengeful Ex-Wife Confronts the Mistress) 12:28
Scene 6 (Eviction Raid) 24:20 (includes sword fight)
Scene 7 (I Hated You Before You Were Born) 33:12

Sausalypso! — ‘All is Lost’ or ‘The Show Must Go On’?

by | Mar 27, 2023 |

While directing my play, “Sausalypso Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery,” I read a book called Save the Cat Writes a Novel, in which author Jessica Brody lays out the various “beats” in a novel, one of which is “All is Lost.”

Three days before Opening Night, when three cast and crew members got covid, that was how I felt. All is lost. 

Oh, and all four shows were sold out. Which was great, except a full house without a full cast is not great.

But we came up with a plan to push Opening Night from forward a week, so by the time three more cast members notified me they had covid the next day, we had switched the show dates, canceled our in-person rehearsals, and were practicing on zoom. Crossing our fingers that enough of us would be healthy to mount the show on our new Opening Night.

Reading My Own Novel, Nine Years After Writing It

by | Jul 11, 2022 | ,

In June, I hiked and hung out with my brother-in-law at his family’s off-the-grid cabin at Echo Lake, and one evening, impatient with the library book I was reading on my tablet, I scrolled through what other books I had downloaded and there was my first novel, which I finished writing nine years ago — Bones in the Wash: Politics is Tough. Family is Tougher.

I started reading it and could not stop.

It was a thrilling experience, to enjoy my own book, enjoy it immensely, as if I were a reader, and not the writer.

I like to say that I write the kinds of books I enjoy reading, so I have to acknowledge that I am the target audience of my book. Which means there are plenty of readers for whom it may not sing. But that’s true of all books.

(Reminds me of what I wrote long ago in an online dating profile — ”I’m not for everyone, but if you’re looking for someone like me, I’m perfect.”)

My Podcast/Video Interview on ‘Let’s Talk Death’

by | Jun 6, 2022 |

In May, I was invited to be a guest on the Let’s Talk Death podcast, which is also a video now, to discuss my assisted-suicide family thriller, When I Killed My Father. I talked about how the book was inspired by my family coming together to deal with our mother’s dementia, and how somewhere along the way, I imagined a fictional situation characterized by conflict instead of communication.

I wrote the book because I believe it’s important to talk about death. But it’s not easy to talk about death and it certainly wasn’t easy to write the book. Now that it’s been several years since our mother’s death and several years since the novel’s publication,  however, I find that it’s not as hard for me to talk about these issues as it used to be. And if you watch or listen, you’ll see it’s not a heavy conversation. It was fun, enough so that part of me feels like there’s something wrong with that. But no, there isn’t.

The Whole World is Watching, Part 2

by | Nov 17, 2021 |

This is Chapter 12 of my novel-in-progress, Sausalypso Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery, and I’m sharing it because it requires less context than most chapters. The protagonist in this chapter is Tin Alley, the first woman chief of police in Sausalypso, an affluent town...

Sausalypso Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery

by | Dec 14, 2020 | ,

I recently finished writing my third play, “Sausalypso Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery,” and soon, I would be working with my local community theater troupe, the Tam Valley Players on casting and rehearsing — if this were a normal year. 

But it’s not. I’m happy with the script, and disappointed we won’t be performing it anytime soon.

My New Play: Sausalypso Houseboat Wars Murder Mystery

by | Sep 17, 2020 |

Scene 1. A History of the Sausalypso Waterfront

In 1942, as the U.S. ramped up its involvement in World War II, the Bechtel Corporation opened a shipyard in Sausalypso, on the shores of Rich Bay. Called Marinship, at its peak, it employed 20,000 workers, who built 93 cargo ships and oil tankers in three years.

Workers came from all over to work at Marinship, but housing was in short supply. A joint venture between the feds and the Marin County Housing Authority created Marin City on what had been a dairy farm and built housing for 6,000 workers. But it wasn’t enough. Many workers lived on old boats or jerry-rigged them from whatever they could scrounge.

Bechtel abandoned the shipyard when the war ended, and a boatbuilder named Donlon Arquez bought a 20-plus acre waterfront parcel — almost as large as the Golden Gate Bridge — considered worthless and full of shipbuilding debris.

Arques dragged old boats, like decommissioned ferries, onto the mudflats and rented them to G.I.s returning from the war. Free-spirited artists built homes on barges and rafts. Out of packing crates, railroad cars, motor homes. These floating homes — most were not boats as they were not navigable — connected to land with ramshackle wooden walkways or floating docks made from styrofoam topped with plywood.

Arques charged minimal rent, and his landlord style could be generously described as “benign neglect.” City leaders called it anarchy. The waterfront became home to junk collectors, boat builders, carpenters, artists and craftsmen, and then, after the Summer of Love turned dark in San Fransilly, came hippies and squatters, seeking free love and free living.

It was a shantytown on the water. Most homes had electricity, the wires strung along posts on the piers, but not sewage hookups.