About Me

Someone once said of me, "You're a collector of experiences." 

"Vancouver: Born and Raised," is my auto-reply to the question of where I'm from. On a map of Canada that's easy to point to, but the closer truth brings my youth back to Surrey and North Delta, with my birthday whereabouts being across the Fraser River in the original capital of British Columbia. 

  A childhood that was always in a state of flux, constantly on the go (moved 16 times before turning 16 years old), and as challenging as putting up my dukes at any new school my mom enrolled me in. I came up hard and poor, but not without hope: family, love and writing being my core beliefs all these decades. My interest to writing came about from incalculable sources. To name a few: Grade 9's writing of a Haiku and reciting my essay on John Lennon before class, grade 11's hand writing a wishful attempt at leaving for Los Angeles to start a new life, and reading Jim Morrison's 'No one here gets out alive' in one night (which mindfully started a paper trail of literary lineage stemming from his influences), and receiving a still-kept birthday present from my mom - a journal for my 19th birthday. In terms of following dreams, ideas and my imagination - when it comes to writing, nothing gets in my way.

  After what was far too long in the formal and woefully time-wasted public education I left school with a high of A's in History 12 Honours and a low of Grade 10 Science. Whatever averaged out education those thirteen years added up to (a GED was eventually gained for the sake of a resume) , there was no way I'd get a degree in medicine or become a journalist. So what does a 19 year old aspiring poet do but walk across the American border and hitch to California. Tripping around early 1990's San Fransisco and Los Angeles brought my attention to a world so unlike the one I grew up in that all I could do was write it all down. I took my growing admiration of authors and books to a literal end; using Henry Millers money making schemes in Brooklyn, I came back to Vancouver and sold poetry door to door. A published poem in the small Gastown Bergman Cafe publication could've set me for more attempts at getting my words on officially printed paper, however mailing envelopes cost postage stamps, and that would've meant getting a full time job. I never had an address long enough to ensure any rejections would ever reach me. 

 Fiscal responsibility eventually slowed my itchy feet. Bohemian and Romantic influences didn't pay the bills as easily as a variety of entry level blue collar jobs. Although not as worthy of penmanship, grammar, syntax or even an imagination, work like picking fruit, doing dishes, or whiling away nights in warehouses were enough to pay any minimum amount of bills; payments I tried to limit as much as possible. Always, though, was the writing. In 1999 I bought my first laptop, a used PowerBook, and have used only Macintosh/Apple ever since. The combination of digital creativity and paper writing didn't immediately combine to any personal or professional success. For one, I soon found out resetting a laptop was the equivalent of leaving a well worn notebook on a departed bus or at a payphone booth. Gone would be a multitude of paragraphs, chapters; even a manuscript wound up in the ether for the sake of not knowing how to power down or force-quit an application. Secondly, I never stopped writing by hand, and laptops were heavy back then. I'm getting ahead of myself - 30 years ahead and still with a heavy laptop, writing this in another country.

Where was/am I?

 Once out of Vancouver's static suburbs I basically never went back, unless for a change of clothes or shower. Into the city of Vancouver and always available for any way to leave it for other parts of this world - so long as I had a pen, paper and a sleeping bag the world welcomed my light trodden steps. Through the years experiences have surpassed the amount of stories I can recall, yet granted to me is enough time to write manuscripts, poetry, journals, short stories, and enough letters to corporations and government to change a law and save a business or two. 

That's enough 'about me'; I don't pay an annual website fee to GoDaddy just to grant strangers access to an all-revealing encyclopedia of my life. This is written to sell you a book. I write of exaggerated realities. 

Back to the writing...