About

I was born in upstate New York. I moved south again and again and again, and then west.  All the way to Hawaii. Then back to California.

I have degrees in English from Rutgers and the University of Virginia, where the likes of Peter Taylor, John Casey and even Paul Theroux (for one semester) gave me a sterling piece of advice: keep writing. Needing a day job to support my writing, I applied to law schools and business schools but those careers didn’t grab me. What grabbed me were issues of politics, and how we create an efficient and equitable society. I ended up in the Graduate School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, a fabulous experience.

In my most recent job for the state of California I managed the staff within the Department of Finance who oversee the state’s thirty departments, boards and commissions that deal with environmental and natural resource issues. Notably, I help design the state’s market-based program for dealing with climate change, which later became law; the report is available here: Climate Action Team Report

I participated in and advised governors on other issues, including renewable energy, coastal protection, water quality and wildfire resources. I served two governors as Assistant Secretary for Health and Human Services. During all this time I wrote fiction for at least a couple hours every day. Now, although I continue to follow political issues closely, I am finally writing full time, and expect to do so for a long time.