Seventy-Three-year-old Highway Shaman
Many people tell me that my story, my autobiography, should be one of my books. I haven’t had a boring life, that’s for sure. An adventurous life is the fodder to great story telling: boring people can’t write good fiction.
Since most of my writing is fiction, I couldn’t possibly have done all the things my many characters do. So I do my homework. When I write about the medicine man and shaman teachings, its because I was once a student of a shaman medicine woman. The issues Lucky faces regarding intimacy with women, happened to me.
I could go on and on, the point being that a fascinating life leads to fascinating story telling. I have been a life-long investigative reporter, always skeptical of the “official” version. I’ve always wanted to find out for myself, or at least thoroughly study the subject before offering a conclusion. These books are full of historical fiction, the result of hours or years of research.
The beginning of my autobiography
I’ve always been one of those intelligent souls, society doesn’t have a place for, though I’m not lost in drugs or subversion, at least not yet. I was one of those kids back in 1963, sitting at my Sophomore desk one afternoon when they told us the President was assassinated. Almost right after I could see holes in the story. It wasn’t right. LBJ looked like he was laughing at an inside joke, all these people were being murdered, a lone gunman? I was sixteen and already thinking WTF? Jack Kerouac was my influence in high school, red wine and early Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, hitchhiking as far as we could on weekends and turning around, just to be free, out on the road. You can imagine my life in the late 60’s. Many stories, how I went to college is beyond me, four years of dodging the draft, travel around the world and so on. Sort of, but not quite a hippy. A gatherer of information and life experiences, a story teller with tales to tell. I now live in Thailand and write novels. I have ten going and a couple wonderful movie treatments.
I saw a building demolition program the week before the Twin Towers went down. My first reaction – this is so f-ing obvious. Why can’t everyone see that this is a classical building demolition? Duh? Airplanes? Arabs? Building 7? Now Bush looking like he’s laughing at the inside joke. Flash , flash, flash of the same false story over and over so all minds believe the fabricated lie. All these things I see, it’s how my mind works. An investigative reporter putting the puzzle pieces together. Now I travel in a world police state, the TSA everywhere with supreme power to stop us from coming or going.
I questioned religion from the moment in 1967 when the draft board denied my being a conscientious objector to that stupid war. I studied every religion, and I guess that’s how I got “spiritual.” But not New Age. I realized that all religions and the New Age are programming us away from our divine right to be f’ing awesome creator gods. My teachers were a gypsy woman and a shaman medicine woman, and my journeys were into higher states of consciousness. Always in ceremony. So I learned to see beyond the third dimension of reality. I was a shaman mask maker.
In 2002 I was asked by a big mucky-wuk to write a new story series for the collectable trading card world. I wrote this fabulous adventure series, but they didn’t want to pay me because I wouldn’t kill anyone. I couldn’t be a part of the system that programs children’s minds that its OK to kill. I had finished four books in a six book series by 2008, which I basically threw in the trash. In Kauai, where I lived for 20 years, I sold 400 copies of the first book – people loved it. I was on the front page of the paper, had radio interviews. Readers thought it would be the next Harry Potter series. In the trash.
I had this idea of a story where four old folks escape from their old folks home and go to the mythical valley of Shambala. I began writing that book in 2010, after I left Kauai and began traveling around the US for a year, which ended up in Thailand in Nov. 2011. The Shambala book turned into a five book series, which I’ve been writing for ten years now.
In the past year I’ve been wanting to turn it into a TV series. I work on it now in then from my home in Mexico.
My history of publishing is eighteen years of rejection. Oh well. The system sucks. And I understand it. My brother has been in a Santa Cruz Book Reading Club for years, read all the best sellers, and he’s all frustrated knowing I have a best seller that nobody knows about.
I put everything into this series – American Indians, Enlightened Masters, detectives, possible murder mystery, parallel lives, travel to exotic places and yes love, because what’s more important than love? But the overall theme is anti-GMO. It is a long fictional story where in the end the characters come back and take down the FDA and Monsanto. End sex slavery. And save the country. Cyber Terrorist win in the end. I’m not a writer who just got off the banana boat – I’ve been there, seen it, done it, on more than one dimension of reality. The world needs more people who put the truth out there. My choice in doing so is ‘easy to read’ fiction, but I’m saying all the things I want to say anyway.
Check out my books on my website: www.highwayshaman.com
What do I want? A patron. Someone or some team that reads my books and goes oh shit, how do we get this story out to the world. Sure I’d like to make money, but that isn’t my driving force. The f’ers are poisoning our food supply and getting away with it. I can stand on a box in the city and shout the truth of what’s happening, or I can take a million readers by surprise with a great story – where by Book Five the readers are all on the side of their heroes, the ones who are destroying the power elite and their deadly game.