In 1980, just after passing the California Bar, I hit the newspapers in San Francisco and was approached by the William Morris Agency to write my story. I received a pile of paper several inches thick and a hefty number of pounds to sign. It was my first entertainment contract and I was delighted in going through it. I made changes and along the way I discovered that this contract could really harm me while making me their property for quite a length of time. It was there that i first learned how advertising and promotion costs could make any return to the author small or non-existent.
I was assigned a Los Angeles reporter Tia Gindick to help me along and it would have made for a reasonably stuffed bank account and a busy schedule on the talk show and guest circuit.
I turned it down. I turned William Morris Agency down! I did not want to be known only as a a transsexual freak but for what I hoped to do in law as I was a new lawyer.
After all this time and continued encouragement by many to write my story, even up to today, has given me the impetus to try a Kickstarter campaign and get the equivalent of an advance (which seems to only be available to celebrities these days).
With an advance that involves the kind donors and supporters in the writing and development of my interesting, unusual and fascinating story of growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area and being a pioneer hippie on Haight Street, with all the excitement of the famous Sixties that San Francisco is credited with, which started here and changed the world.
The trips, literal and psychedelic, student days at Berkeley in the late sixties to service in the Peace Corps and other adventures mark this autobiography as another, perhaps more poignant and idealistic, view of the turbulent times by a witness (and sometime participant).
Having been the only Legal Counsel for OccupySF by consensus and dedicated to activism, helping the poor and paying it forward, I find myself with neither time that is free or funding to comfortably write. I can still do all this as a public service but if I can be able to be unconcerned about making my next coffee money or meal money, I believe I can devote all my time in calm surroundings to actually concentrate on this task which may touch many hearts with my path and its results in the future.
I will be grateful to you donors as this will be a personal and group catharsis, especially to write it 50 years after the seminal events I lived through as a young teenage boy. Your philanthropy will allow me to challenge the bull of the white screen before me and write with the flourish and confidence of the great matadors I once witnessed in Alicante, Spain : El Cordobes, Linhares and El Manzanares- all three receiving the applause with the tail and two ears at the end of their meetings with “El Toro”.
You can vicariously attend Janis’ concert in the Panhandle, Altamont and most of the major events and meet the people you have heard of with my personal recollections. Perhaps you will think I was a minor participant. William Morris thought I was more than minor and I suspect you will not be disappointed. I know The Brotherhood of Love will not be disappointed.
I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. My life has it’s “ups and downs but never counted out” flavor as the title of this column is also the title of the book. It might bring tears and laughter but most of all the same hope that we had in the Sixties!
Please go to Kickstarter and support my campaign to spin you a few good yarns!
Ready, Set, ……GO! I AM LIVE!