I WAS IN THE BACK YARD working on my mini-bike, doing something simple—replacing the throttle cable. I was directly next to the gate outside the garage when it sprang open, startling me.

I shot up to my feet and turned to face a big, burly undercover cop pointing a shotgun directly in my face.

“Don’t move,” he barked.

My soul left my body momentarily.

I glanced over with my eyes, being careful not to make any unnecessary movements, and saw a sniper rise up behind the fence at the back of our yard. We were sitting on an acre of land, so he was pretty far off in the distance.

I heard loud banging at the front door. Then it stopped abruptly.

Mom must have opened the door.

I knew Rod was inside. (Note that I only called him “Dad” to his face or when we were out in public. He insisted on it. Otherwise, he was always “Rod” to me.)

I thought, This is it. He’s finally going back to prison, and we’re going to get a break from this fucking bullshit.

The cop lowered the shotgun from my head, marched me out to the front of the house, and had me stand with my back against the garage door.

There were eight police vehicles in front of our house, marked and unmarked, and a few squad cars blocking the streets in every direction. Neighbors were standing on their lawns and sidewalks, gawking and scratching their heads, wondering what the hell was going down.

There were eight police vehicles in front of our house, marked and unmarked, and a few squad cars blocking the streets in every direction. Neighbors were standing on their lawns and sidewalks, gawking and scratching their heads, wondering what the hell was going down.

I stood there quietly and waited.

I expected the cops to come out of the house any minute with Rod in handcuffs, muscling him through the front door and into one of the cop cars.

Nothing.

It was eerily quiet.

I could faintly hear my mom’s voice. She was being interrogated.

Then it was my turn.

Another plainclothes cop made his way over to me, and he and the shotgun cop moved in tight to apply pressure.

“Have you ever seen this man?” he asked, holding up a mugshot of Rod.

I thought, Where the hell did he disappear to?

It made no sense.

“No, I don’t think so.” I paused dramatically. “He doesn’t look familiar.”

The two cops looked at each other knowingly.

They knew I was a trained actor.

They decided not to ask me any more questions.

I stood there waiting, for who knows how long. Waiting for the grand finale that never came.

Three detectives came out of the front door and quietly walked to their unmarked cars. They got in and drove away.

Slowly, all of the other cops followed.

They didn’t bring Mom out with them. I guess they had nothing to charge her with. That was her gift.

I was still confused about how Rod had pulled off another disappearing act.

He was a master at that.

There were many stories of him eluding the cops while being chased, and I was present for a few of them—car chases and whatnot.

Mom asked, “Did you tell them anything? What did they ask you?”

“Nothing. They showed me a picture of Dad, and I said I didn’t recognize him. And they didn’t ask me anything else.”

“I guess that’s good. They knew you were lying, but what else could you do?”

“That’s what I figured, too.”

Then I heard some thumping noises coming from the attic.

Immediately, I knew what that meant.

Mom rushed over and slid a chair into the hallway, placing it directly below the entrance hole in the ceiling.

Rod slid the fitted wood piece out of the way and dropped down onto the chair. Then he slid the cover back into place.

“That was a close one,” he said.

“Lazy fucking cops,” Mom said. “When that one poked the cover up with his rifle, I was sure they were going to go up there… find you and all of that shit.”

They had a lot of shit stashed up there.

Five hundred pounds of Panama Red and who knows how much cash.

Rod told her, “A huge wave of relief washed over me when that fucker said, ‘No. He didn’t have time to get up there.’ Dumb fuck pig… he was sooooooo close.”

I couldn’t believe his dumb luck.

It always worked out for him.

It was like the Universe was approving of his behavior.

But nothing lasts forever.

Not even dumb luck.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

My new book is now available on Amazon and a few other retail sites. Below is a sample of the first 22 pages. And at the very bottom of this page is a link to a FREE DIGITAL COPY for my paid subscribers (that’s most of you!).

Thank you!

​​​​​​​THE OTHER DRIVER is best described as Beat Noir: a stripped-down all-American road story with counterculture DNA that gradually mutates into psychological horror, supernatural suspense, and American Gothic.

A fragile man fresh out of psychiatric confinement takes a strange cross-country driving job in search of freedom, normalcy, and a way back to himself. What begins as a dusty American road story—part Beat odyssey, part noir—slowly fractures into something stranger. Memory slips. Time disappears. The vehicle that seemed to offer escape begins to feel like another kind of confinement. By the time Robbie realizes the road may not be taking him where he thinks, he may already be too far from home to turn back.

Prologue

The Bounder sat in the cracked lot of a boarded-up body shop in the San Fernando Valley and waited.

Late-afternoon sun highlighted a hard, dusty sheet across the windshield. Texas plates. Faded paint. A long scrape down one side that looked older than the RV itself. The engine was cold. The key dangled inside on its dirty string.

The man who had driven it last had worn a cheap gray suit that day. He had since changed out of it. The suit was gone now. All he had left was a dirty work shirt. He had picked the cleanest one he owned, which wasn’t saying much. The sleeves were frayed. The collar had gone soft with age. There was a permanent stain near one pocket that no amount of washing had ever managed to remove.

He looked like the before photo in a detergent ad that had been pulled off the air for being too depressing and downright sad.

The man had taped the yellow paper to the bulletin board of the Canyon Country Store before noon.

DRIVER WANTED

$10K CASH

TO DRIVE MOTORHOME CROSS-COUNTRY

The number was written in block letters. He had checked it twice before walking away.

Now he sat on the rear bumper smoking a Marlboro Red, watching the haze thin out over the Valley. The compartment under the floor had been quiet for nearly a week. That was the pattern. Quiet first. Then the other thing. The part no one puts on the flyer.

A bus sighed to a stop somewhere beyond the fence. Footsteps crossed the gravel. A tall, thin figure came toward him through the heat, carrying a frayed black backpack that had seen better years.

The man in the work shirt stood. He reached inside for the thick envelope. Then he took the key.

He had done versions of this before. The details always softened once the key left his hand.

The new driver stopped a few feet away. Dark eyes. Black hair stuck to his forehead. The look of someone who had just been handed back his life and did not yet trust the gift.

The old man held out the key. For a fraction of a second his fingers stayed closed around the dirty string. Not long enough to call it hesitation. Just long enough to notice it. Then he opened his hand.

The Bounder took the new weight in the driver’s seat the way it always had. The engine coughed, caught, and shook itself awake.

The man in the dirty work shirt watched the motorhome pull out of the lot and turn toward the LA freeway system. He stayed where he was until the sound of it faded.

Somewhere under the cabin floor, something shifted. Softly. As if settling in.

The road would stretch east.

This time. And the Bounder, patient as ever, began to breathe.

1

The sun was sagging low over East Los Angeles when Robbie Ivison stepped out of the old Art Deco medico building with a green Samsonite in his hand. Thirty years old, tall and thin, black hair stuck to his forehead in damp strands. His dark eyes moved over the street the way a man checks a room he doesn’t trust.

It was 1997.

They had finally let him go.

The bus stop was blocks away. He started walking. The heat had begun to break, but the pavement still gave off the day’s record fever, a low grade infection seeping through his shoes. Cars moved through the intersection in tight, rhythmic waves. A stranger shouted something pointless from across the street. A siren rose somewhere far off and then died, the way a thought dies when you decide not to finish it.

Nothing changes.

That surprised him a little.

He kept walking.

The bus bench was cracked and still hot. Robbie put the suitcase down and sat. He closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sky, letting the traffic become a single solitary hum. He listened to his own breathing. It was steady. That was something.

He had waited for this moment so long he no longer knew what he was supposed to feel. Freedom, maybe. Fear. Or the flat gray nothing that sits between them like a receptionist who never looks up from her desk.

He opened his eyes.

The city was still there.

The bus arrived with a soft pneumatic sigh. The driver looked him over.

“How was your stay at the ol’ mental hospital, pal?”

Robbie gave him the thin smile, the one you give to people on the ward when you’re tired of their shit.

“Not the worst loony bin I’ve been locked up in. Thanks for asking.”

The driver laughed. Robbie took a seat by the window. The bus rolled west through Los Angeles, carrying him toward Laurel Canyon, toward the apartment his parents had arranged, toward whatever came next. He watched the city slide past the glass in broken pieces—strip malls, palm trees, faces that looked too long.

Maybe this time.

He wanted to believe it the way a man wants to believe the last bad stretch is finally over.

By sunset he was in the Canyon.

His new landlord, Terry Jenks, showed him the apartment above the Strip. Terry was in his fifties, face worn soft by years of talking his way into and out of things. Easy smile. The casual confidence of a man who had never quite paid full price for anything.

“Your parents worked out a good deal here,” Terry said. “You can stay as long as you like. They’ll cover the rent.”

“I appreciate it.”

The place was small and fully furnished. Old rock posters covered the walls. Van Gogh reproductions hung beside faded Tijuana velvet paintings. A Pioneer reel-to-reel quietly played bebop in the living room, the music low and constant, like elevator music but with a really swingin’ groove.

“Your folks and I go way back. Hippie days. We lived in a commune around here—around the corner, actually. You were a toddler.”

Robbie looked around the room.

“How’d they find you?”

“Your mother tracked me down. She was always good at that. Said you needed a quiet place to heal or something.”

They walked into the backyard. The air smelled of eucalyptus and long lost summers.

“You used to live here?”

Terry laughed.

“Man, did I ever. This was my Fully-Functional Babe-Lair, as I called it. Seventies, eighties. I pulled plenty of tail from the Whisky and the Rainbow.”

“I bet.”

“Then I fell in love with one of ’em and got married. Eighteen years now.”

Terry grinned. Robbie managed a small smile. The place felt less like a rental than something his parents might eventually leave him in their will.

“I had no idea they set me up like this.”

“They wanted you to have a fresh start.”

Terry gave him a soft pat on the shoulder.

“Take your time. I’ll check in on you.”

After Terry left, Robbie stood alone in the apartment and took it all in.

For the first time in years he was alone.

Not locked up.

Alone.

He walked from room to room. The windows looked out over the canyon and the rising lights of the Strip. In the kitchen the refrigerator hummed quietly. He opened it and stared.

Milk.

Eggs.

Beer.

Cold cuts.

A six-pack of his favorite beer, cold and waiting.

Full refrigerator.

It almost made him laugh.

He cooked dinner and ate it standing at the counter. The food tasted ordinary and good, the way ordinary food tastes when no one is watching you chew.

Afterward he found a Martin guitar in a corner of the living room. The wood was worn in all the right places. He hadn’t played in years. He sat on the couch and tuned it. The first chord was wrong—sour, a little off. The second was closer. Soon he was playing, the notes falling into the quiet rooms one after another.

Later he carried the guitar outside and sat on an old stump at the edge of the trees. Below him Los Angeles began to light up, a million small lights refusing to go out. He played until his fingers remembered the old shapes. Then he sang.

The words weren’t much.

A few lines about getting out.

Starting over.

Leaving the past behind.

But they were his.

And they were new.

That’s what really mattered.

When he finished, the canyon was quiet in a way that made him listen harder than he meant to.

Robbie looked down at the guitar.

“Maybe,” he said.

Maybe I can do this.

He carried the guitar inside.

The bedroom looked like something out of the old Laurel Canyon stories his parents used to tell—tapestries, a patchwork quilt, a lava lamp already bubbling up slow orange dreams, sandalwood hanging in the air. The only thing missing was the patchouli.

It reminded him of Free Love. All-night parties. Tripping on acid while the city burned soft and blue below. Stories. Always stories.

He changed. Climbed into the bed. Let the mattress swallow him whole.

For the first time in a long time, Robbie fell asleep without wondering who was watching him through the peep hole.

2

Early the next morning Robbie walked down to the little market he’d noticed the day before. The Canyon Country Store.

He bought coffee, The LA Times, and grabbed the latest Weekly. While paying he noticed the bulletin board. Most of it was ordinary—business cards, religious tracts, rooms for rent. One large sheet of white paper caught his eye.

EARN CASH NOW! BABYSITTER WANTED.

Robbie almost laughed.

“No thanks.”

He kept looking. Then he saw the yellow piece of paper.

DRIVER WANTED: $10K CASH TO DRIVE MOTORHOME CROSS-COUNTRY.

A phone number followed.

He read it twice. Ten thousand dollars. He pulled the paper down, folded it once, and slipped it into his pocket.

He didn’t need the money. Not really. But he needed something to do.

The walk back up the hill gave him time to think. The Strip was down there, waiting. Drugs were waiting. Women were waiting. Trouble was waiting the way it always waited in this town—patient, super patient, and never quite finished with you.

He shook his head.

Fuck drugs.

All he really wanted was to get laid.

Back at the apartment he placed the yellow scrap on the table while he read the paper. He kept glancing over at it. Cross-country drive. Maybe it was a job. Maybe it was an escape. He wasn’t sure which idea pulled harder.

By afternoon the apartment had grown too quiet. He cooked eggs and cheese. Washed the dishes. Picked up the guitar and played the same chords from the night before. They sounded different in daylight—thinner, somehow.

He took the yellow paper from the table again.

Ten thousand dollars.

Cross-country.

Motorhome.

The words had started to feel like a dare.

At dusk he put on a clean black shirt and walked down to the Strip. The neon was already burning—pink, blue, white. Music came through open doors. Cars crawled past. The street smelled of exhaust, fried food, and the familiar trouble that never quite left that part of town.

Robbie passed the Whisky. The Viper Room. The Roxy. He climbed the stairs of the Rainbow. A girl in a silver halter top caught his eye. He almost stopped. Then a guy in a black leather jacket and a Nashville Pussy trucker-hat stepped between them, and the moment was gone.

Robbie kept moving. He made his way through the bodies, found a place at the bar with his back to the wall, and ordered his second-favorite beer.

A woman a few stools away kept looking at him. Finally she moved closer.

“You waiting for somebody, darlin’?”

“No. I’m on my own.”

Her name was Claire. A nurse in her thirties, killing time before a shift. They talked about music, Laurel Canyon, the way the city was so different at night. For twenty minutes Robbie felt an old part of himself waking up—the easy smile, the one that used to come without thinking.

Then Claire touched his hand.

“You look like somebody trying to escape from somewhere.”

The smile stayed on his face, but something inside him started crawling for the door. He pulled his hand away and finished the beer.

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”

Claire looked at him a moment longer.

“Take care of yourself, whoever you are.”

She left.

Outside, the Strip seemed louder. Robbie walked uphill toward the canyon. Halfway home a car full of Valley kids blew past, bass rattling the trunk lid. He stepped into the bushes to take a leak, then kept climbing.

When he got back the apartment was exactly as he’d left it. The lava lamp threw its slow orange light across the bedroom ceiling. He stood in the dark for a while and listened to the trees. The restlessness was still there, quiet but steady.

He stared at the yellow paper on the kitchen table.

Ten thousand dollars.

Cross-country.

Motorhome.

He left it where it was and went to bed.

He woke late. The lava lamp was still doing its slow work. He needed coffee. He dressed, put the yellow paper in his pocket, and walked back down to the market.

He stood in front of the bulletin board and stared at the empty spot where the ad had been.

A man stepped up beside him.

“You took that one, didn’t you?”

Robbie turned. The man wore work boots and a faded Padres cap.

“I pulled it down yesterday.”

“I almost took it myself,” the man said. “Stood right here staring at it.”

“What stopped you?”

The man laughed, short and dry.

“Ten grand to drive a motorhome cross-country? Nobody pays that kind of money unless something’s wrong. My guess? Dope. They got it across the border and need some sucker to finish the trip. You get caught, you’re the one holding the bag.”

The man walked away.

Robbie stared at the corkboard a little longer. Then he ordered coffee and a chocolate donut. He ate the donut on the walk home, the paper still folded in his pocket, the man’s words riding along with him like a second shadow.

By the time he reached the apartment he’d already made up his mind. He picked up the phone and dialed. A man answered on the fourth ring. He didn’t sound happy.

“Yeah?”

“I’m calling about the motorhome.”

There was a strange pause.

“You got the ad?”

“Yeah.”

“You got a license?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You still interested?”

Robbie glanced around the apartment. The lava lamp was throwing its slow orange light across the wall. The guitar sat in the corner. The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen like it was thinking about something.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m interested.”

“Come here in the mornin’. I’ll give ya the address.”

Robbie found a pencil.

“Where?”

The man gave him the address.

“Bring your license. Nothing else.”

“Okay.”

“And Robbie?”

He stopped cold.

“How do you know my name?”

Another pause.

“You gave it to me a minute ago, friend.”

Robbie frowned. He didn’t remember giving it.

The man continued.

“So the deal is five thousand now, five thousand when you get to New York City.”

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch.”

Robbie almost laughed.

“There’s always a catch.”

“Come tomorrow or the deal’s off.”

The man hung up.

Robbie stood there with the receiver still against his ear, listening to the dial tone for a few seconds. Then he hung up. The apartment seemed quieter than it had a minute before.

3

Robbie grabbed his wallet and the yellow paper. Before leaving he looked at the guitar. He almost picked it up. Instead he walked out.

The bus into the Valley took nearly an hour. Robbie watched the scenery slide past the window. The farther he got from Laurel Canyon, the more the decision began to feel real. He was actually doing this. He had no idea where the road would take him. For the first time in a long while, that didn’t sound like such a bad idea.

The address turned out to be a cracked asphalt lot next to a boarded-up body shop. The Bounder was easy to spot—faded white and gold, Texas plates, dusty windshield, a long scrape running down the driver’s side.

A man sat on the rear bumper smoking. Mid-sixties, dirty jeans, stained work shirt, several days of gray stubble. When Robbie approached, the man stood.

“You the one who called?”

“Yeah.”

“License.”

Robbie handed it over. The man studied it, then pulled a cheap disposable camera from his pocket.

Click.

The flash was weak in the afternoon light, but the sound seemed strangely loud.

The man handed the license back.

“Just so I know who I’m dealing with,” he said. “In case you decide to go missing somewhere between here and New York City.”

Robbie slipped the license into his wallet.

“That’s reassuring.”

The man didn’t smile. He opened the side door.

“Take a look.”

Robbie stepped inside. The Bounder smelled of old carpet, stale cigarette smoke, and something faintly chemical underneath. Cramped but livable. Fold-down table. Small kitchenette. Lumpy bed in the back. A bathroom barely big enough to turn around in. Everything looked old. Everything looked used. Everything looked like it had been lived in hard.

He stepped back outside. The man leaned against the door.

“Five thousand now.”

He pulled a thick envelope from inside his jacket.

“Other five when you get to New York City. I’ll fly out and meet you. You give me the keys at the airport. We’re done.”

He pointed toward the Verdugo Mountains.

“Route’s simple. I-40 most of the way. No side trips. No overnight stays longer than you need to sleep. Keep moving.”

Robbie looked at the Bounder. The man looked at him.

“And don’t go tearing the thing apart.”

Robbie raised an eyebrow.

“There ain’t no drugs or money squirreled away,” the man said. “If something’s locked, like that belly box there, don’t try to force it open. Clear?”

“Clear enough.”

The man handed him the money. Robbie felt its weight in his hand. Five thousand dollars. More money than he’d held in a long time.

He looked back at the Bounder. The whole thing stank—the money, the camera, the warning, the way the man kept glaring at him. The alternative was the apartment. Four walls. Silence. Waiting. More bebop.

“All right,” Robbie said.

The man’s shoulders relaxed a little. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a single key tied to a dirty piece of string. He held it out. Robbie reached for it.

For a fraction of a second the man didn’t let go. Not long enough to call it hesitation. Just long enough for Robbie to notice the resistance. Then the fingers opened and the key was his.

An ordinary key. Dirty string. Nothing special.

The man handed him a torn-up Thomas Guide.

“Full tank. Oil’s good. Don’t push her past sixty-five. She’s old. And take it easy on the hills.”

“Yeah. I know.”

The man watched him a moment longer.

“Try not to get yourself killed,” he said. “I’ve got enough problems as it is.”

He turned and walked away.

Robbie climbed into the Bounder. The driver’s seat smelled of moldy naugahyde and wet cigarette butts. He put the key in the ignition and sat there a second. Then he turned it.

The engine coughed. Caught. The whole vehicle shuddered.

Robbie smiled.

“Come on, girl.”

He eased her out of the lot. The Bounder handled like a horse with a bad leg. The steering got loose above fifty. Every crack in the road shook the frame. The engine sounded like it had three hundred thousand miles and even more complaints.

He didn’t care.

He found the highway. The afternoon sun was dropping behind the buildings, turning the windshield gold. He turned on the radio. Static. He twisted the dial. More static. Then, somehow, bebop.

Robbie laughed and turned it up.

The Bounder lumbered west. For the first time since leaving the hospital he felt something close to exhilaration. Nobody knowing where he was going. Nobody telling him when to wake up. Nobody checking his pills. Nobody watching the clock. Five thousand dollars in his pocket. A road in front of him. Another five thousand waiting somewhere on the other side of the country.

He laughed again and pressed the accelerator.

For once he didn’t feel like somebody escaping.

He felt like somebody going somewhere.

He parked the Bounder in a pull-off near the apartment and shut off the engine. The motor knocked hard as it cooled. He sat there listening. Then another sound—a faint metallic tick from the rear. Then a loud thump right behind him, like it had come from the compartment below.

He waited.

Silence.

He laughed.

“Old piece of shit.”

He went upstairs.

Robbie packed some clothes, toiletries, his meds; cramming it all into the green Samsonite. He left the guitar. He couldn’t take it without asking Terry, and he didn’t want to be that guy. So he left it.

Or he thought he had.

When he finished loading the motorhome he found the Martin lying on the bed in the back.

Robbie stared at it. He knew he’d left it behind. He was sure of it. A cold wave passed through him.

Did I do something and forget?

The thought wasn’t pleasant. But it was a possibility.

He picked up the guitar as gently as he could and carried it upstairs. He felt guilty. If anything happened to it he’d feel even worse. He sat at the kitchen table and wrote a note.

Mom, Dad—or Terry, whoever finds this first,

Needed to get out of here for a while. Taking a road trip to clear my head. Call it a vacation. I’ll check in when I can.

Don’t worry. I’m not going crazy.

—Robbie

He left the note under an empty coffee mug.

By noon he was out the door.

4

The first few days were almost exactly what Robbie had hoped for.

Driving.

Eating.

Sleeping when he wanted.

No schedules.

No locked doors.

No nurses.

No doctors.

No one trying to hurt him.

He stopped at roadside attractions because he had nowhere particular to be. He bought postcards he never intended to send. Took pictures of stupid things. Ate greasy food at places with hand-painted signs. Slept wherever he felt like stopping.

The Bounder was beat to shit, but it was his. At least for the moment. He liked that. He liked waking up and not knowing exactly where he was.

One morning he opened the curtains and found himself staring at a field of nothing but scrub and telephone poles as far as he could see. Another morning there were mountains filling the view out of the windshield. He drank coffee in truck stops and talked politics with strangers. He flirted with waitresses. He bought a homeless man dinner. He liked having choices.

One afternoon he stopped at a roadside attraction advertising ”Big Fun! Big Guns!” The sign showed a black-and-white photograph of men in suits holding Tommy guns. Robbie put it on his MasterCard. A few minutes later he was standing behind a Thompson submachine gun himself.

The instructor showed him how to hold it.

“Keep it tight against your shoulder.”

Robbie nodded. That’s not how they do it in the movies.

He squeezed the trigger.

The gun kicked hard. The sound jackhammered through his chest. For a few seconds the world disappeared. He wasn’t Robbie Ivison anymore. He was somebody else. A dark alley. A dark city. Men in long coats. Hat brims turned down. Cars with running boards. A Chicago Organ Grinder in his hands. A man running. Then the gunfire. The man falls. He kept firing. Blood and guts flying everywhere.

The fantasy became incredibly vivid. Too vivid.

He released the trigger. Silence rushed back in.

The instructor looked at him.

“You want another magazine?”

Robbie stared at the smoking barrel.

“No. I’m good.”

He handed the Tommy gun back and walked away. He didn’t know why it bothered him. It was just a stupid fantasy. Gangsters. Prohibition. Bodies dropping in alleys. Nothing to it.

He climbed into the Bounder and drove.

By late afternoon he was tired enough to start looking for a place to stop. He found an RV campground just off the highway. Maybe a dozen rigs scattered across a patch of dusty ground. A few families sat outside their campers. Somebody was grilling hamburgers. A little boy rode a bicycle in circles near the office.

Robbie paid for a site with his card. The woman at the desk handed him a paper with the hookups marked.

“Dump station’s down there,” she said. “Fresh water is on the other side.”

“Thanks.”

He drove the Bounder over. The whole process was unfamiliar enough that he had to look twice at the connections. He got out the sewer hose. Connected it. Then the fresh-water hose.

An old man in a Greek fisherman’s cap was working on his own rig a few spaces away. Robbie looked over.

“You mind giving me a hand, sir?”

The man walked over.

“First time?”

“Pretty much.”

The man laughed.

“Everybody’s got a first time.”

He showed Robbie where everything connected.

“Black tank first. That’s the toilet.”

Robbie nodded.

“Gray after that. Sinks and shower.”

“Got it.”

“And don’t open anything until you’ve got the hose secured.”

“Sage advice, I’m sure.”

The man pointed toward the valves.

“Pull that one.”

Robbie did. Nothing happened for a second. Then the black tank began draining. Robbie looked away.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s probably enough.”

The man laughed.

“Wait until you catch a whiff.”

“I’ll try not to.”

When the black tank was finished they moved to the gray. Robbie opened the valve. Water rushed through the clear elbow of the hose. He watched it for a second. Then furrowed his brow.

“Strange…”

The older man looked over.

“What?”

Robbie pointed. The water coming through the hose wasn’t clear. It had a dark pink tint.

The man leaned closer.

“Probably soap.”

“Yeah.”

Robbie watched it. The pink slowly deepened. Not much. Just enough to notice.

The man shrugged.

“Somebody dumped something in your shower.”

“Probably.”

The water kept running. Pink became darker. A dirty red.

Robbie stared. For one ridiculous second it looked like blood. He almost laughed. Blood? Jesus. Get a grip. It was probably rust. Or some cleaning fluid. Something somebody had poured down the sink.

The older man had already wandered back toward his rig. He yelled back.

“You good?!”

“Yeah!”

Robbie closed the valve.

“Thanks!”

“No problem!”

The man gave him a wave and went back to whatever he’d been doing.

Robbie finished the hookup. Filled the fresh-water tank. Disconnected everything. Then parked the Bounder in his assigned spot.

By sunset the campground had settled down. A television played somewhere nearby. A dog barked a few times. Someone laughed around a campfire. Robbie fixed a sandwich and drank a beer. He marked more attractions in the Thomas Guide. Then he went to bed.

That night he dreamed he was driving. The road stretched straight ahead forever. The radio was playing something soft. Robbie had one hand on the wheel. Then he felt a drop of water hit his face. He wiped it away. Another drop landed on the top of his head. Then another on his shoulder. He reached up and wiped his face again. This time he looked at his hand.

Blood.

He stared at it. Then another drop hit his cheek. He looked up. Blood was dripping from the ceiling. A thin stream ran down the wall beside him. Then another. He looked over his shoulder. The entire ceiling was covered in it. Blood poured down the walls of the cabin in sheets. It ran down the windows. It came from everywhere—the walls, the ceiling, the cabinets, the vents. Soon it was pouring down so hard it looked like torrential rain inside the Bounder.

Robbie turned back toward the windshield and froze. There was no road. No sky. Nothing outside. The entire windshield was covered by a torrent of blood cascading down the glass. He couldn’t see anything. Only blood.

He woke with a violent start. Sat upright, breathing hard, beginning to sweat.

“What the fuck was that?”

He looked around the darkened cabin. Nothing. No blood. No noise. Just the refrigerator humming softly. And for a second he could have sworn he heard the Bounder’s motor knock a few times.

He sat on the edge of the bed for several minutes. His heart slowly settled. That was a dream. That’s all it was. His imagination running away with him. That stupid thought about the gray water. He had stared at that pink-red shit for five minutes. Of course his brain turned it into blood.

He rubbed his face.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

He got up and walked into the tiny bathroom to take a shower. For a few seconds he stood there looking at the showerhead. He actually prayed that blood wouldn’t come out of it when he turned it on.

He turned the knob.

Clear.

He laughed under his breath.

“Very funny.”

He stepped into the shower. The water was nice and hot. He finally relaxed.

END OF PREVIEW

This book is available on Amazon in print or digital forms.

Read more

TALES OF RENFIELD’S VAMPIRATS!
(Target audience: Young Adult 13-18+)
Book I

Introduction

There is a particular audacity in returning to the well of Dracula and drawing up something the original myth never quite imagined. In Tales of Renfield’s Vampirats: Book I, that audacity is rewarded.

The novel begins where Stoker left a suggestive silence: with Renfield, the thrall whose appetite for lesser lives has always hinted at a deeper, more unsettling communion with the night. What follows is not merely a pastiche, but a careful and inventive extension of vampire lore. The blood, once bestowed, does not remain obedient to its source. It mutates. It thinks. It organizes a rebellion.

Captain Nosferati and his crew of Vampirats occupy a fascinating position in the hierarchy of the undead. They are neither pure vampire nor simple vermin, but a new and self-aware intermediary form—creatures who understand both the hunger that drives them and the political reality of existing beneath greater powers. Their decision to name themselves, to build, to cross an ocean, and finally to reach for human blood and human transformation feels, in the logic of the genre, almost inevitable.

The book moves with confidence from the gothic interiors of Castle Dracula to the open Atlantic and, at last, to a decaying amusement park outside New Orleans—a setting that manages to be both absurd and genuinely atmospheric. Along the way it balances genuine dread with flashes of black humor and a surprisingly sharp attention to questions of loyalty, ambition, and the ethics of creation.

What lingers most is the novel’s willingness to follow the consequences of its own premise. The Vampirats do not remain content with the role the night assigned them. By the final pages, the act of turning a human being becomes not simply a plot development, but a philosophical and mythic escalation: the moment when a secondary bloodline attempts to write itself into the primary tradition of the vampire.

Tales of Renfield’s Vampirats: Book I is a complete and satisfying gothic horror, yet it also functions as the deliberate first movement of a larger legend. Readers familiar with the classic lore will recognize the old patterns even as they are twisted into something new.

Those less steeped in the tradition will simply find themselves caught by a story that knows exactly how dark—and how strange—it intends to become.

The night, once again, has company.

— Robert Thatcher

CHAPTER 1

In the dead of a winter night, draped in a moonless shroud of pitch darkness, Renfield moved through the desolate corridors of Castle Dracula with a single flickering candle. The flame leaned and recovered in the cold drafts that whispered down from the high, narrow windows. His hollow eyes, haunted by years of servitude and madness, fixed on nothing and everything at once.

For years, he had danced on the precipice of sanity, his mind a labyrinth of twisted corridors and forbidden desires. The Count had granted him the blood, yet left him something incomplete—a creature still bound to the lowliest lives of the night. Insects. Spiders. And above all, the rats. He kept them in a hidden chamber deep beneath the eastern wing, a place the other servants never entered, and the Count himself had long ceased to notice.

Tonight, the hunger was different.

He pushed open the low iron-bound door and stepped into the close, rank air. Dozens of rats scattered at the sudden light. One remained. Larger than the rest, snow-white fur, it sat on its haunches and regarded him without fear. Renfield smiled, the expression cracked and private, almost tender.

He had already fed the creature drops of his own blood for three nights running. The animal’s eyes had begun to change—no longer the blank mirrors of vermin, but something watchful, something waiting. Tonight he finished the work.

He caught the rat with surprising gentleness, held it close against his chest, and bit. Not the clean puncture of a true vampire, but a messy, animal-like tear. He forced his own blood into the wound, then pressed the creature’s muzzle to the open cut on his wrist. The rat drank. Its body shuddered violently. When Renfield released it, the animal dropped to the cold stone and lay still for a long moment.

Then it rose.

Its movements were no longer those of a rat. It walked with a new and unnatural grace, head held high, eyes reflecting the candle flame with a red intelligence that had not been there before. Renfield felt a strange pride rise in his chest, almost affection. At the same time, something colder stirred—the first awareness that he had made a thing he might not fully command.

“Nosferati,” he whispered. The name came without thought, dripping from his tongue like a secret. “You are the first. You shall be my emissary.”

The rat’s head tilted. For a heartbeat, Renfield thought it would only stare. Then a voice, rough and small yet unmistakably shaped, issued from a throat never meant for speech.

“I know what I am.”

Renfield’s candle trembled in his hand. The voice was not an echo of his own madness. It was separate. Aware. Alive in a way that unsettled him.

Nosferati stepped closer, claws clicking softly on the stone. “You gave me this gift. But I am not yours the way the others are.”

Renfield laughed, high and thin. The sound bounced off the damp walls and vanished into the dark. “Everything in this castle belongs to someone, little one. You will learn that soon enough.”

Nosferati’s new eyes did not look away. “We shall see.”

In the nights that followed, Renfield brought the creature more rats—those he judged strong enough to survive the change. Some died in the transformation. Others woke changed, their eyes bright with the same red light. They gathered around Nosferati as if they had always known him, forming a silent, watchful circle. Renfield observed from the edge of the chamber, proud and increasingly uneasy. The bond between him and his first creation remained, a thin living thread of blood and will. Yet every night that thread felt a little less like ownership and a little more like a negotiation whose terms he no longer fully controlled.

Castle Dracula held its silence. The Count had not yet noticed the new scent moving through his cavernous halls.

But the night was long, and secrets rarely stayed buried.

CHAPTER 2

In the nights that followed, Nosferati did not wait for permission.

He moved through the lower passages with quiet purpose, selecting the strongest of the remaining rats one by one. Some died in the change. Others woke with the same red light in their eyes and the same unnatural grace. The first and strongest among them was a scarred gray rat Renfield had once called Fangor. When the transformation took hold, Fangor rose on his hind legs, shook himself, and immediately took his place at Nosferati’s side as if the position had always belonged to him.

“You are first after me,” Nosferati told him in the darkness. “You will remember that always.”

Fangor’s new voice was low and rough. “I remember everything now. Including what we no longer need to fear.”

By the seventh night, eleven others had joined them. They gathered in a forgotten sub-chamber beneath the eastern wing, a place of dripping stone and old bones. There Nosferati spoke to them of what they had become, and of what they might yet be. Renfield watched from the shadows of the stairs, proud and increasingly troubled. The thin thread of blood that still bound him to Nosferati remained, but it no longer felt like a leash he controlled.

It was Count Dracula who broke the secrecy.

One night, as the twelve rats stood in a rough circle around their leader, the heavy door at the top of the stairs groaned open. A tall figure filled the frame. The temperature in the chamber dropped as though the stones themselves had drawn breath.

Dracula descended the steps without haste. His black cloak whispered against the stone. When he reached the floor, the rats did not scatter. They only watched him with their new, intelligent eyes.

“Renfield,” Dracula said, his voice soft and terrible. “Explain this obscenity.”

Renfield stepped forward, hands trembling. “My lord, I only— I sought to serve you more fully. To create servants who might—”

“Servants?” Dracula’s gaze moved slowly across the gathered rats and settled on Nosferati. “This one does not look at me as a servant looks.”

Nosferati rose onto his hind legs. He was still small, still a rat in form, yet something in his bearing made the difference in size feel almost irrelevant.

“I am no one’s servant,” he said. “Not anymore.”

Dracula’s eyes narrowed. “You speak. How is this possible?”

“The blood made me more than it was meant to,” Nosferati answered. “I am the first of a new kind. These others are mine.”

“Yours?” Dracula’s voice remained quiet, but the air around him seemed to darken. “You were made in my house, from my bloodline, by my thrall. Nothing here is yours.”

Fangor shifted closer to Nosferati’s side. The other rats tensed. Renfield looked from one to the other, the old terror rising in his throat.

“My lord,” Renfield began, “I can still command them. The bond remains. I feel it.”

Nosferati turned his head slightly toward Renfield. “Do you?”

The question was soft, almost curious. Renfield opened his mouth, then closed it again. The thread between them was still there, yes—but it no longer pulled only one way.

Dracula watched the exchange with cold interest. “Interesting. You have created something that questions its maker. That is either very clever or very foolish.” He took one step closer to Nosferati. “I will not have a second hierarchy in my castle. You and your little court will leave this place tonight. If you remain, I will unmake every one of you.”

Nosferati did not flinch. “And if we refuse?”

“Then I will begin with you,” Dracula said, “and I will take my time.”

For a long moment the chamber held only the sound of water dripping somewhere in the dark. Then Nosferati inclined his head, a gesture that was neither submission nor defiance.

“We will go,” he said. “But understand this, Count: what has begun here will not end because you command it.”

Dracula’s expression did not change. “Go. While I still allow it.”

He turned and ascended the stairs without looking back. The door closed behind him with a final, echoing sound.

Renfield stood frozen. Nosferati approached him slowly.

“You will not come with us,” the rat said. It was not a question.

“I… cannot if I desired,” Renfield whispered. “He still holds me.”

Nosferati studied him for a moment longer. Something that might have been pity, or merely calculation, passed through those red eyes.

“Then remember us,” he said. “And remember that you were the first to see what we will become.”

With that, Nosferati turned. Fangor and the others followed him up a narrow secondary passage that led toward the outer walls. Within minutes the chamber was empty of everything but Renfield and the lingering cold.

Outside, beneath a sky without moon or stars, the thirteen rats paused on the frozen ground and looked back once at the black silhouette of Castle Dracula.

“Where now?” Fangor asked.

Nosferati’s whiskers twitched. He gazed south and west, as though already seeing roads that did not yet exist.

“Anywhere that is not here,” he answered. “And then… farther still.”

They moved into the night, small dark shapes against the snow, carrying with them a new and hungry silence.

CHAPTER 3

They found shelter beneath the Grand Library of Transylvania in Cluj Napoca, in a forgotten chamber of stone and dust far below the reading halls. The building above them held the accumulated knowledge of centuries; the darkness below held only the thirteen who had been cast out.

For several nights Nosferati did not speak of the future. He moved among the high shelves of the library when the human keepers had gone, selecting volumes with deliberate care. Fangor accompanied him, silent and watchful. The others waited in the lower chamber, their new hunger turning inward, restless, seeking a shape.

On the fourth night, Nosferati returned dragging two heavy books bound in cracked dark leather. Each volume was many times larger than his own body. He had looped a thick leather strap through their bindings and pulled them behind him across the stone floor. The strength the blood had given him made the task effortless; the great books slid and scraped as though they weighed no more than ordinary burdens. He brought them to an overturned crate, released the strap, and opened the first volume beneath the light of a stolen candle. The pages smelled of salt and old ink. Engravings of tall ships and black flags stared up at them.

“These men,” Nosferati said, his voice low, “were not content to remain what the world named them. They took what they wanted. They made their own law upon the water.”

Fangor leaned closer. “Pirates.”

“Yes.” Nosferati turned a page. “Outcasts who became legends. Feared. Free. Masters of their own decks.” He looked up at the gathered crew. “We are no longer the Count’s discarded vermin. We are something new. But new things require form. Direction. A name the night itself will remember.”

A restless murmur moved through the rats. Moldy Marvin shifted his weight. Joey Two-Toes’s claws clicked against the stone. Even Pat the Fat, usually slow to stir, watched with narrowed eyes. The hunger that had followed them from Castle Dracula was no longer only for blood. It had become a hunger for meaning, for a place in the dark that belonged to them alone.

Nosferati placed one claw upon the open page. “We will take their model and make it ours.” Then he drew the second book forward and opened it beside the first. This volume was thicker, its pages crowded with precise diagrams: the curved ribs of a hull, the geometry of masts, the careful stitching of sails, the placement of cannons and cargo holds. Detailed illustrations showed every stage of a ship’s construction, from the laying of the keel to the raising of the colors.

The crew pressed closer. For a long moment no one spoke. Their red eyes moved across the drawings with nothing less than wonder. The ambition of it—the sheer scale of building a vessel that could carry them across open water—settled over them like a challenge they had not known they wanted.

“It can be done,” Fangor said at last, his voice rough with excitement. “We have the strength. We have the night.”

Joey Two-Toes traced a claw along the image of a completed schooner. “We could make it our own size. A ship for us alone.”

Moldy Marvin let out a low, eager sound. Others joined him. The chamber filled with a rising current of anticipation that had not been present before. The project was no longer an idea. It had become a shared desire.

Nosferati watched them, satisfied. “We will build a vessel. We will sail beyond the reach of any castle or any master. And we will call ourselves what we are.”

He paused, letting the silence stretch.

“Vampire, pirate, rats. We are Vampirats.”

The word settled over them like a claim. Fangor was the first to repeat it, the sound rough but certain in his throat. Others followed. The name passed among them until it no longer felt like a suggestion. It felt like a banner raised in the dark.

“We will need wood,” Nosferati continued. “Rope. Cloth for sails. Knowledge of currents and stars. All of it is here, in these books, waiting for those bold enough to take it.” His red eyes moved across their faces. “The old world has already rejected us. The new one has not yet learned to fear our name. That is an advantage we will not waste.”

Fangor stepped forward. “When do we begin?”

Nosferati closed both books with quiet finality.

“Tonight.”

Above them, the great library slept on, unaware that a new and darker chapter had just been written in its lowest chamber. Outside, the winter wind moved through the streets of Cluj Napoca, carrying no warning of the small, determined shapes that would soon leave the city behind and seek the open water.

CHAPTER 4

They built the ship in a prehistoric cavern beside the Someșul Mic River, far from the eyes of men and the shadow of Castle Dracula. Night after night the Vampirats labored beneath the earth, guided by the diagrams Nosferati had taken from the second book. They stole what they needed from riverside yards and forgotten warehouses: seasoned wood, coils of rope, scraps of canvas, iron nails, and tar. Their new strength made the work possible. What would have been impossible for mortal rats became, under the moon’s light and their own fierce will, a vessel that grew from the dark like something alive.

It was a quarter-scale schooner, low and black, with a single mast and sails the color of old blood. When at last it was finished, the crew stood on the cavern shore and looked at what they had made. For a long moment no one spoke. The ship seemed to wait for them.

Under the next full moon they launched her onto the black water. The current took them. The sails filled with a night wind that smelled of thawing earth and distant rain. Captain Nosferati stood at the small helm, Fangor at his side, and the others ranged along the narrow deck. For the first time since their banishment, the weight of the old castle fell away.

Fangor produced a scrap of parchment on which he had scratched the beginnings of a song. He began to sing in a low, rough voice that carried across the water:

“Yo ho, yo ho, the Vampirat’s life for me,
Sailing the rivers and the haunted sea,
Under the moon’s pallid glow, we thrive,
Children of the night, forever alive.”

The others joined him, their voices rising in eerie harmony. The song echoed off the riverbanks and followed them downstream like a second wake.

“Through the misty fog and the moonlit night,
We prowl the waters, a spectral sight.
With crimson eyes and eternal gaze,
A Vampirat crew on the haunted waves.”

Captain Nosferati raised a small goblet of stolen wine. The crew answered with a chorus of chirps and growls that was almost laughter. For a few hours the night belonged entirely to them.

CHAPTER 5

They made landfall near a modest European city whose lights glittered along the shore. The Vampirats slipped into the alleys and cellars as naturally as shadow. Mortal rats fell easily under their gaze and their fangs. The feeding was swift, almost effortless. By the time the first pale light threatened the eastern sky, the crew had returned to the ship heavy with blood and a strange new dissatisfaction.

In a dark corner of the hold, Fangor and Stilton remained awake.

“These rats are nothing,” Stilton said. “No sport. No fight. The cats and dogs were scarcely any harder. I remember chasing cockroaches when I was still mortal and finding more thrill in it.”

Fangor licked a trace of blood from his claw. “Aye. Too easy. Humans at least have wits. Some of them might fight.”

Stilton’s red eyes gleamed. “Then why do we waste ourselves on vermin? We are Vampirats now. We should hunt what is worthy.”

Fangor was silent for a moment. “The Captain may not agree.”

“Who says he has the only voice?” Stilton asked. The words hung in the air between them, colder than the river wind.

Word of the conversation moved quietly through the younger members of the crew. By the following night, as the ship drifted farther from the city, a restless undercurrent had taken hold. Murmurs of independence. Of testing the limits of the bond that tied them to Nosferati.

Captain Nosferati felt it at once.

He called all hands to the deck at dusk. The black sails hung limp in the still air. His gaze moved slowly across their faces.

“I hear whispers,” he said. His voice was calm, almost soft. “Some among you wonder whether the blood that made you still answers to me.”

No one spoke. Stilton held his ground near the rail, but his whiskers twitched.

Nosferati stepped forward. The air itself seemed to thicken. Every rat felt the old thread of blood and will pull taut inside its chest—not a command shouted aloud, but a deeper pressure, the reminder of what they were and who had first opened that door.

“You are free to hunger,” Nosferati said. “You are free to want more than rats and easy blood. But you are not free of me. The same darkness that raised you still runs through my veins into yours. Test it if you must. You will find the bond holds.”

Fangor moved first. He lowered his head in clear acknowledgment. One by one the others followed, even Stilton, though his eyes remained defiant. The pressure eased. The mutiny, if it had ever truly begun, dissolved like mist at sunrise.

Nosferati returned to the helm.

“We sail on,” he said. “And we will find better prey. But we will do it as one.”

The ship turned toward deeper water. Behind them the lights of the city faded. Ahead lay only the long dark of the river and, beyond it, the unknown sea.

CHAPTER 6

The decision came on a night when the river widened and the air turned sharp with the first true scent of the open sea. Captain Nosferati stood at the helm and spoke without raising his voice.

“The Old World has already cast us out. The New World has not yet learned our name. We will cross the vast West Ocean and find a place that belongs only to us.”

No one argued. The hunger that had driven them this far simply turned, like the compass needle, toward the unknown.

Most of the crew went below. One by one they curled into the deepest shadows of the hold, bodies drawing inward, breath slowing until it was almost nothing. The sleep that took them was deeper than any mortal rest—an unnatural stillness that smelled of cold earth and old blood. Only Nosferati, Fangor, and two others remained awake to guide the black schooner into the Atlantic.

The ocean received them with a long, low guttural sound. Waves rose and fell in slow black hills. Salt crusted the rails. The wind carried a vast, empty cold that worked its way into fur and bone. Days blurred into nights. The sky above them was a single unbroken vault of cloud or stars, indifferent and endless.

Then the nightmares began.

They started as small disturbances—twitches in the sleeping bodies, soft sounds that were not quite squeaks. Soon, the entire hold filled with a restless, troubled energy. The air itself grew heavier, thick with the scent of fear-sweat and the metallic tang of remembered blood. The sleeping Vampirats tossed against one another, claws scraping the wooden planks, teeth clicking in the dark.

Fangor was the first to cry out.

In his dream he ran through a narrow alley that stank of refuse and wet stone. Human shapes moved at the far end—tall, deliberate, carrying the cold gleam of silver and polished wood. He tried to climb, but his limbs felt packed with wet sand. A stake pressed against his chest. He felt the point break skin, felt the sudden bright explosion of pain that was somehow both fire and ice. The dream did not end with the strike. It lingered on the sensation of his own body coming apart, of the blood-bond snapping like a cut thread, of the final awareness that he would not rise again.

He woke with a choked sound, heart hammering, the phantom pain still burning beneath his fur. The hold around him smelled of terror.

Near him, Stilton thrashed harder.

His nightmare placed him back inside Castle Dracula, but the corridors had grown impossibly vast and airless. The stones so cold that it sank straight into the marrow. A great shadow moved behind him—Count Dracula, larger than memory, eyes burning with a fury that had no bottom. Stilton fled, but the floor clung to his feet like tar. When the Count finally reached him, there was no fight, only the slow, deliberate opening of a mouth that seemed to contain the entire night. Stilton felt himself lifted, felt the hot, dry rush of being drawn inward, felt the castle’s ancient darkness close over him like water over a drowning thing. The last sensation was the complete erasure of self.

He woke gasping, the taste of dust and his own blood thick on his tongue.

The nightmares spread. One by one, the sleeping crew suffered their own variations: the snap of traps in the dark, the sudden heat of sunlight through a broken shutter, the sound of human voices calling for their destruction, the feeling of the blood-bond fraying. The hold became a chamber of shared dread. Even those who did not wake fully carried the dreams in their bodies—the tight shoulders, the restless claws, the low, involuntary sounds of animals that know they are being hunted.

Above them, Nosferati kept the helm. He said nothing of the disturbances below, but his red eyes stayed fixed on the western horizon as though he could already see the shape of what waited for them. The ocean wind moved through his fur. Salt dried on his whiskers. The black ship rose and fell, carrying its cargo of troubled dreams toward a shore none of them had ever known.

Weeks passed. The nightmares never fully left. They only grew quieter, settling into the crew like a second, darker blood—something they would carry with them onto whatever land finally rose to meet them.

CHAPTER 7

Land came first as a change in the air.

The endless salt wind softened. A new scent rose from the west—wet earth, decaying leaves, the faint sweetness of distant blossoms mixed with something older and less wholesome. Captain Nosferati stood at the helm and felt the pull in his chest like a second heartbeat. It was not the city itself that called him. The glittering lights of New Orleans, when they finally appeared along the horizon, held no true interest. Something farther inland, up the dark curve of the river, drew him with quiet insistence.

He turned the black schooner away from the docks and followed the pull.

The crew, newly risen from their troubled sleep, gathered at the rails. They watched the city lights slide past and vanish. The river narrowed. Cypress and oak leaned over the water, their roots like knotted hands. Spanish moss hung in long gray curtains that brushed the mast. The air grew thicker, heavy with the smell of stagnant water and night-blooming flowers that had gone half-wild.

Miles upriver the lights disappeared completely. The schooner drifted into a wide, still bend. On the eastern bank stood a ghost town: empty streets, sagging balconies, windows like blind eyes. Beyond it, half-swallowed by vines and young trees, lay the remains of an amusement park.

They anchored at a crumbling wooden dock that groaned under even their small weight. One by one the Vampirats stepped onto the land. The ground felt soft and secretive beneath their claws. A warm wind moved through the overgrown paths, carrying the ghosts of old music and laughter that had long since faded into the trees.

Nosferati led them deeper.

They passed the rusted skeleton of a carousel, its painted horses cracked and leaning, eyes flaked away. A row of game booths stood open to the night, their prizes reduced to mildewed scraps. The air here smelled of damp wood, iron oxide, and a faint, lingering sweetness—like cotton candy left to rot. Beneath it all ran another scent, older and harder to name, as though some residual energy still clung to the place where so many human joys had once been spent.

The path climbed a low hill.

At the top stood a miniature castle.

It was no larger than a generous human house, yet it carried itself with the full arrogance of a fortress. Turrets rose against the sky. A small gatehouse still held the shape of a portcullis, now choked with ivy. The stones were dark with age and mottled with moss. In the moonlight the whole structure seemed to watch them.

Nosferati stopped at the edge of the overgrown courtyard. For a long moment he said nothing. The pull that had guided him across the ocean settled here, quiet and certain.

“This,” he said at last, “will be our stronghold.”

The crew moved forward with a sense of reverence. They circled the castle slowly, taking in the broken windows, the cockeyed doors, the way the vines seemed almost to part for them. Inside, the rooms were moist and layered with dust, yet the walls still held a strange dignity. High chambers. Narrow stairs. Windowless inner rooms that never saw the sun. A cold draft moved steadily through the halls against the direction of the wind, and once or twice, a faint warped note of old carousel music rose from nowhere and vanished again.

Fangor found a deep stone chamber near the foundation and claimed it with a low sound of satisfaction. Joey Two-Toes and Moldy Marvin disappeared up a turret stair, already arguing over who would keep lookout. Pat the Fat discovered a low alcove behind a collapsed tapestry and settled there like a creature returning to a known den. Stilton moved through the upper halls alone, restless even in this moment of arrival.

Before the night ended they dealt with the park’s remaining tenants.

Mortal rats had nested throughout the rides and under the castle itself—thin, nervous creatures that fled at the first scent of the newcomers. The Vampirats hunted them with quiet efficiency. There was no frenzy this time, only the calm assertion of dominion. By the time the eastern sky began to pale, the amusement park belonged entirely to them. The last surviving mortal rats had either fled into the surrounding woods or been drained where they hid.

Nosferati stood in the small grand hall of the castle as the others chose their sleeping places. Dust motes drifted in the last of the moonlight. The air smelled of old stone, wet leaves, and the copper edge of fresh blood.

“We will rest here,” he said. “When the next night rises, we begin anew.”

Outside, the abandoned park settled into silence. The carousel horses leaned in the dark as though listening. Far away, the lights of New Orleans continued to glitter, unaware that something new and hungry had claimed a forgotten corner of their river.

CHAPTER 8

They waited three nights.

On the fourth, under a sky without moon, the Vampirats slipped downriver toward the outer docks of New Orleans. The air was thick with the smell of river mud, tar, and the low tide’s rot. A single man moved along the edge of the water—a dock worker finishing a late shift, coat frayed, boots heavy, a lantern swinging low in his hand.

Nosferati gave the signal.

They struck from three sides at once.

The man was stronger than any of them had expected. The first rush knocked the lantern from his grip; it shattered on the slick planks and threw a brief flare of oil-fire across the boards. He shouted—raw and startled—then swung a heavy iron hook he had been carrying. The curved point caught Moldy Marvin across the shoulder and flung him hard against a piling. A sharp crack of bone sounded in the dark. Marvin’s wail was high and short.

The others swarmed. Claws found cloth and skin. Fangs tore. But the man fought with the desperate strength of someone who understood, too late, that the darkness itself had teeth. He kicked Stilton away hard enough to send the younger rat skidding across the dock. He seized Joey Two-Toes in one thick hand and nearly dashed him against the planks before Fangor sank fangs into his wrist and forced the grip to open.

Blood ran freely now—hot, human, richer than anything they had tasted. The scent of it drove them harder. Still the man would not fall. He staggered toward the open street, bellowing for help, one arm hanging useless, the other swinging wildly. For a moment it seemed he might reach the light of the nearest warehouse and bring others down upon them.

Nosferati moved.

He climbed the man’s back with terrible speed, found the soft junction of neck and shoulder, and bit deep. At the same time Fangor and two others dragged the man’s legs out from under him. The dock worker crashed down hard. Even then he thrashed, boots scraping, breath coming in deep, furious gasps. It took the combined weight and will of nearly the entire crew to pin him until the strength finally left his body.

When it was over, the dock was splattered with blood and scattered with scraps of torn clothing. Moldy Marvin lay against the piling, one forelimb bent at an unnatural angle, breath hissing through clenched teeth. The others fed in a tight, almost frantic circle, drinking deeply of the cooling blood. The taste was everything they had imagined—complex, alive, heavy with fear and fury—but beneath the satisfaction ran a colder current.

They had nearly lost him.
They had nearly been seen.
One of their own was broken.

Nosferati stood over the drained body. Even in death the man was heavy, yet the blood had changed more than their hunger. A single Vampirat, given time, could drag a human body slowly across the boards; two working together could move it with surprising ease. Fangor and Stilton proved it now, hauling the corpse a short distance into the deeper shadow between stacked crates so it would not be found at once. The strength still felt new—unnatural, useful, and quietly unsettling.

“Enough,” Nosferati said.

The crew drew back. Fangor helped Marvin to his feet. The injured rat snarled once in pain but said nothing. Together they melted into the shadows, carrying the heavy knowledge that human blood was no longer a simple hunger.

It was a risk.
And risks, once tasted, demanded greater ones.

By the time they reached the black schooner and turned upriver toward their castle, the first pale edge of dawn had begun to threaten the eastern sky. None of them spoke of the fight. Yet the memory of the iron hook, the near-escape, and Marvin’s broken limb traveled with them like a second shadow—quiet, persistent, and already shaping what would come next.

CHAPTER 9

The morning sun, ever the optimist, rose over New Orleans, casting a golden glow that did nothing to warm the chill left by the previous night’s horrors.

On a narrow stretch of dock not far from the river’s edge, Officer Pierre LeBlanc stood over the body and felt the morning air press against the back of his neck like a held breath. The man lay on his back between two stacks of weathered crates, limbs arranged with an odd, almost careful stillness. His skin had the grayish cast of something thoroughly emptied. The wounds on his neck, wrists, and ankles were small, precise, and numerous.

“Mon Dieu,” Pierre muttered, his coffee spilling as he took in the scene. “What in the bayou happened here?”

Dr. Desiree Laveau arrived a few minutes later, kit in hand, looking more like she was ready for a séance than an autopsy. “Pierre, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, though her eyes widened at the sight of the body.

“Desiree, this isn’t just any crime scene. This is… this is like something out of a vampire novel, but with a swarm of rats. Vampire rats?”

Desiree knelt beside the corpse. Her gloves snapped into place with a sound that seemed too loud for the strange hush that clung to the space between the crates. “Vampire rats, you say? That’s a new one, even for New Orleans.”

She examined the wounds carefully. “You may be right, Officer LeBlanc. These aren’t just bites; they’re precise, almost surgical. And look at the exsanguination… it’s like the blood was… sipped out of the veins, as if straws were used.”

Pierre scratched his head and glanced toward the darker mouth of the alley. The air still carried a faint metallic scent the morning could not quite disperse. “But what could do this? We’re talking about creatures that can drain a man dry in the night, leave no trace, and vanish?”

Desiree stood, dusting off her knees. The light did nothing to soften the expression on her face. “Officially, Pierre, I’ll have to run tests. Unofficially? We might be dealing with something that science hasn’t caught up with yet. Or,” she paused, her eyes twinkling with mischief, “we’re in a horror book.”

Pierre gave a short, hollow chuckle. “Great, just what we needed. A horror book where the rats are the deadly villains.”

They worked in silence for a time after that. Around them the city began to wake—distant voices, the first clatter of carts—yet the small stretch of dock remained unnaturally quiet, as though the night had not fully released it.

As they finally packed up, Desiree glanced at the paling sky. “You know, Pierre, in old tales, creatures of the night fear the dawn. Maybe whatever did this is long gone, back to whatever dark corner it crawled out from.”

Pierre nodded, his gaze lingering on the place where the body had lain. “Let’s hope so. Because if these ‘vampire rats’ decide to make a sequel, I’m moving to a desert.”

They left the scene together. Even after the wagon had taken the body away, the dock retained that thin metallic scent and a lingering sense of being watched. Far upriver, beyond the reach of the city’s first light, an abandoned amusement park stood quiet among the trees. Inside its miniature castle the Vampirats slept, full and undisturbed, while the human world below them began the slow work of naming what it did not yet understand.

CHAPTER 10

The broken limb healed slowly.

Moldy Marvin moved through the castle halls with a lingering stiffness for several nights, testing the leg as though he did not yet trust it. The memory of the iron hook traveled with all of them. The first human blood had been richer than any they had tasted, yet the fight had taught a harder lesson: ordinary prey could still wound them. Ordinary prey could still nearly escape.

In the nights that followed, the crew grew restless. Easy victims no longer satisfied. The hunger that had once been simple now carried an edge of ambition. They had fully enjoyed that kill.

It was Stilton who gave the feeling its shape.

“We need one who already knows the dark,” he said one night in the grand hall. “Not a tired worker stumbling home. Someone who walks the night with open eyes. Someone who will fight harder… and change better.”

Nosferati listened without interruption. When the others had spoken their agreement, he only nodded.

“Then we will find such a one.”

Later, alone in the highest turret of Vampirats Castle, Nosferati stood at a narrow window and looked out over the dark canopy of trees. A cold draft moved through the room against the direction of the night wind as though the stones themselves were breathing. Far below, so faint it might have been imagination, came the ghost of carousel music, a single warped turn of the old calliope that no longer existed. Nosferati ignored it. For a long moment he allowed himself to remember the chamber beneath Castle Dracula—the taste of Renfield’s blood, the first dizzying rush of changed senses, the precise instant he had understood he was no longer only a rat. The memory carried neither gratitude nor hatred. Only a cold recognition of lineage. What had been done to him, he would now do to another. The chain would lengthen.

He turned from the window. The recognition was still cold in his chest when he went down to gather the crew.

They hunted with new care.

For several nights they watched from the shadows of the city’s edge, studying the few humans who moved alone after midnight with purpose rather than weariness. At last they settled on a man who walked the riverfront warehouses long after honest work had ended. A pale, jagged scar ran from the corner of his left eye down across his cheek. He smelled faintly of gun oil. Before each stretch of open ground he had a habit of tapping the short iron rod he carried twice against the side of his boot, as if confirming it was still there. He checked corners. He listened to the dark. Whatever business kept him abroad at that hour had already taught him that the night was not empty.

He would do.

CHAPTER 11

They struck farther from the docks this time, in a narrow brick passage that smelled of damp mortar and old coal. The scarred man heard them a half-second before they reached him. That half-second was enough.

He turned with the iron rod already in his hand and swung with precision. The first blow caught Joey Two-Toes across the ribs and sent him tumbling. The second nearly crushed Fangor’s skull; only a desperate sideways twist saved him. The man did not shout. He fought in grim silence, backing toward the mouth of the passage where a single streetlamp burned.

The Vampirats swarmed with greater fury than before. Claws raked. Fangs found purchase. Still the man kept his feet longer than any of them had expected. Blood ran from a dozen wounds, yet he remained standing, iron rod rising and falling, each strike a clear attempt to break bodies and buy escape.

Marvin, still favoring the once-broken limb, darted in low and locked his jaws around the man’s ankle with stubborn strength. He held on even when the man kicked and scraped him against the brick. That single, painful anchor gave the others the opening they needed.

Nosferati felt the blood-bond tighten across the crew like a drawn wire—the old, unspoken pressure that reminded every rat whose will had first shaped them. Fangor accepted it with a low, grim sound. Stilton’s ears flattened in a flash of resentment he could not quite hide. The sensation steadied them all the same. They pressed harder.

When the man’s back struck the brick wall and his swing went wide, Nosferati climbed him in three swift movements and sank his fangs deep into the side of the neck—not to drain, but to hold. At the same moment Fangor and Stilton dragged the iron rod from his grip. The rest of the crew bore him down by sheer weight and will. Even then he thrashed, boots scraping brick, breath coming in harsh, furious bursts.

Nosferati did not drink his fill.

Instead he forced his own blood into the open wound, exactly as Renfield had once done to him in the deep chamber beneath Castle Dracula. For an instant—so brief it might have been memory rather than sound—he thought he heard Renfield’s cracked, manic laugh somewhere behind his own thoughts. The man convulsed. A raw sound tore from his throat. His eyes, wide with rage and terror, locked on the small crimson-eyed creature latched to his shoulder.

Nosferati held on.

The change began as a tremor beneath the skin. The man’s struggling weakened, then returned in a different rhythm—less human, more frantic. His pupils stretched. A thin ring of red light appeared at the edge of the left iris—the eye beneath the scar—and slowly widened. At the same time the nails of both hands darkened, thickening, and a fine black hair began to push through the skin along the backs of his fingers and wrists.

Stilton took an instinctive half-step back. Nosferati saw it and said nothing.

The man lay on his side in the dark passage, body shuddering. One eye had already changed. The other still fought between human brown and the new, unnatural red. Then his right hand, which had been lying open and slack, slowly flexed. The fingers curled with a strength that no longer belonged entirely to a man. A low sound rose from his chest—not a scream, not a groan, but a questioning growl that was already half something else.

Fangor spoke first, voice low.

“It has started.”

Nosferati stood over the transforming body and looked down with something that was not quite triumph.

“Yes,” he said. “It has begun.”

Around them, the city continued its distant rumble, unaware. Above the river, Vampirats Castle waited in the trees. And in the narrow passage that smelled of spent coal and blood, the first human to carry their curse drew another shuddering breath, caught between what he had been and what the Vampirats had decided he would become.

The night held its silence, as though even the dark were waiting to see what would rise when the change was complete.

Fin

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

We stand in kitchen doorways
Scrolling through other people’s victories
Trying to remember
Where we put
Our own

You ever notice
How the smallest decisions
End up steering whole years
Sideways?

Life keeps happening
In the hallway
Between the plans we made
And the ones we
Dropped

In the long deep breath
Before we answer
In the “wait, hold on”
Right before we
Stop

We keep learning how to live
While we live it
And it’s messy
And it’s honest
And it’s ours

We collect versions of ourselves
Old passwords
Old photos
Shirts that almost still fit
Stories that almost do

I used to think
One day I’d “arrive”
Now I think arriving
Is just agreeing to
Keep going

Some days I am patient
With strangers
With traffic
And not with the person
In the mirror

Nobody taught us
How to grieve the futures
That never even had a chance
To start

Nobody warned us
How heavy a quiet room can feel
How loud our own name sounds
In someone else’s mouth

But listen
You’re still here
Heart improvising
On a beat it never heard before

So today
Maybe we praise the ordinary
The way the light lands on the sink
The way your chest rises
One more time

Life isn’t what we figure out
Then follow
It’s this
You listening
Me trying to say it
Before it slips away again

©2026 Jon Kinyon

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

A new slogan
Short enough for a bumper sticker
Long enough to hide a warning label
“Together
We’ll be safer”

They pass a rule on Tuesday
You scroll past it on Wednesday
By Friday
It’s an indelible fingerprint

These days
They don’t burn books
They update terms of service
The words still move
They just limp in a different direction

This is how it happens
Not with tanks
But with taps
You trade one little freedom
For a little less fear

This is how it happens
You shrug while the cage is built
Bolt by tiny bolt

They love a good emergency
Storms
Strikes
Strange new sickness
Every crisis a key moment
Every press conference a promise

“We’re only looking for threats”
But the mirror starts to sweat
Your phone learns your heartbeat
Before your mother ever did

They paint new lines on the pavement
Call it progress
Call it pride
Step outside the stripes
Watch how fast the sky gets smaller

Listen
Laws don’t grow teeth overnight
They sharpen them on silence
On the neighbor you didn’t defend
On the joke you swallowed
On the question you almost asked
Then didn’t

Some days
The hymn tastes like metal
The flag hangs heavier than it used to
You mouth the words anyway
Because the cameras are following your lips

And now
Count the cameras on your corner
Count the questions you’ve stopped asking
Count the names you no longer say out loud
Then ask yourself
Who’s doing the counting

And what happens
When they decide
You don’t count at all

©2026 Jon Kinyon

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

**best understood if you’ve read the book**

Our family has been trying to track down my dad’s girlfriend, Margery King, for more than 40 years. Homicide Inspector Falzon never put us in touch with her, and neither did any of his successors. Every one of them claimed that they tried. They said they relayed our messages to Margery and told her that we were looking to talk to her, but they claim she told them she wasn’t interested, that she didn’t want to hear from us.

Our search for her grew more intense after we got to look at the case file in 2010 and discovered that the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) had been lying to us all along, about everything. To this day, they insist that Margery had seen nothing and had nothing of value to add to the investigation, when in fact, she did. She was their most important witness. She was the last person to see Andy alive and got a good look at his killer minutes before the murder.

Margery told Falzon that Eugene had been strong-arming Andy for weeks and that Andy told her he’d be killed soon over a money debt. I now believe that Margery told Falzon more than what he wrote down in her statements. I’m convinced that his cover-up started as soon as he arrived at the crime scene or shortly thereafter, and that he was very careful of what he put down in his notes. He paraphrased a lot of what people were telling him, not using their exact wording, so that they could be interpreted in different ways. Falzon told me that he knew Eugene was the killer as soon as he arrived at the crime scene. How he knew, he can’t seem to remember, much less explain to me.

Although I can’t prove it today, I’ve come to believe that other witnesses named Eugene that night, and that Falzon later removed those statements from the case file, or never wrote them down in the first place. I’m also convinced that Falzon knew all about Eugene. He knew who he was, he knew his reputation and proclivity for violence, and he knew that he was connected to the mob. He likely knew of the threats to Andy from word on the street, and about the deal that had gone bad, and all parties involved.

My sister, Lori, and I have long known that Margery King is the single most important witness in this case. She held all of the answers. We never stopped looking for her. We never gave up. We both followed lead after lead, only to end up empty-handed and with a trail grown cold.

Police rely heavily on informants. I’m sure that the violent feud between Andy and Eugene was on his radar long before the murder. The entire neighborhood knew, even before his body went cold, that Eugene had murdered him. Including Falzon by his own admission. So, when Margery gave her first statement and told the homicide investigator that Andy had been confronted and threatened by a man in front of her, Falzon knew that Margery could identify that man as Eugene in a lineup.

When Falzon put out the All Points Bulletin (APB) that night, he stated that the killer had an argument with Andy minutes before the murder and that he “should have blood on his clothes.”

It always confused me why he didn’t call Margery in for a lineup to see if she could identify Eugene as the man who confronted Andy on the street before he was murdered. Well, I’ve concluded that he didn’t have to, because Margery must have told Falzon that it was Eugene from the beginning.

Margery had been Andy’s girlfriend for a year. She was living with him at his apartment. Eugene was known to hang out at the Camel bar downstairs. He also frequented all of the other North Beach bars that they hung out in. There’s no way that she didn’t know who Eugene was. I believe she told Falzon that it was Eugene who confronted Andy that night, and that’s why Falzon never conducted a lineup. He didn’t have to. She already identified him as the killer.

Based on everything I’ve uncovered, I now believe that Margery told Falzon considerably more than what appears in her surviving witness statements. I’m convinced that the cover-up started the minute Falzon showed up at the crime scene. He was being very careful about what he wrote down when interviewing witnesses. Margery’s eyewitness statement lacks any real detail. It mentions that threats were hurled at Andy, but the only one written down was, “I won’t fight you in front of her.”

Are we supposed to believe that’s the worst thing he said? The assailant had a heated confrontation with Andy, following him from one side of the street to the other, making threats, and yelling at Andy about something. And we’re supposed to believe that Falzon didn’t ask Margery what the argument was about. Why didn’t the detective ask her for specifics, like, “What was the guy saying? Did he say what he was angry about? Did he say why he was going to fight Andy?”

The only thing Falzon wrote down, the only quote that he had of this man in a murderous rage, was Eugene threatening Andy with “I won’t fight you in front of her.” It’s ludicrous. I believe that Falzon purposely misquoted her. I believe that Eugene was threatening to kill Andy, which he had done before. “I won’t kill you in front of her” sounds more like it.

Margery grew so terrified over this confrontation that she took off. She ran away at two in the morning to catch a 45-minute bus ride to her sister’s apartment on the other side of town, which is a pretty extreme reaction to some random guy saying he wanted to have a fistfight with Andy. Brawls were an hourly occurrence in that neighborhood on a Saturday night. Why didn’t she just go to her apartment if she wanted to avoid watching a fight? All she had to do was walk upstairs and lock the door.

If you know Eugene’s backstory, you’d know he would have no problem fighting Andy in front of his girlfriend. Killing him in front of her, yes, but fighting him, no. The man routinely fought people in front of a crowd. He lived for it. He didn’t care who was watching. He had no problem attacking and fighting police officers. He had no problem beating his wife with a hammer outside of a crowded restaurant. He gutted a dog with his knife in front of children. This guy was not afraid to fight anytime, anywhere.

A couple of weeks after the murder, Eugene confronted one of the witnesses, one of my dad’s roommates, at The Saloon and threatened to kill him in front of witnesses. When the guy talked back to him, Eugene nearly took his head off with a golf club that he was carrying as a walking stick. And we’re supposed to believe that he didn’t want to fight Andy in front of his girlfriend on a dark street corner in the middle of the night?

Within days of Margery officially identifying Eugene as the killer, by name, making sure it was on record, she decided to run again. She left California to move to her parents’ house in Florida, where she could feel safe. Eugene was threatening to kill Andy’s roommates and anyone who talked to the cops, so I’m sure he threatened to kill Margery, the eyewitness who was able to put him at the scene of the crime, making death threats.

The fact that Eugene was never brought in for a lineup to be identified by Margery is one of the strongest proofs of a cover-up in this case. Falzon never intended to solve this murder.

The day before she left for Florida, she called Andy’s parents and assured them, “Don’t worry, the cops know who killed your son. It’s only a matter of time.” Sadly, she was wrong. But her heart was in the right place.

My sister, Lori, and I have long known that Margery King is the single most important witness in this case. She held all of the answers. We never stopped looking for her. We never gave up. We both followed lead after lead, only to end up empty-handed and with a trail grown cold.

Over the years, I found a few contenders. One lady in Florida with the same name lived in Gulfport, not only in the same neighborhood but also on the same street that Margery told Falzon her parents lived on. It couldn’t be a coincidence, I thought. I was convinced it was her. The lady had recently died, and I talked to her sister-in-law a few times. Slowly, I counted her out. She had never visited California and certainly had never lived there during the hippie era. And then I found out that her birthday didn’t match. Margery told Falzon that her birthday was April 6th, 1952, and that birthdate was also on her arrest record in San Francisco.

My sister found a “Marjorie” King living in Texas who had the same birthday. She was convinced it was her. But I had my doubts. My sister sent a few messages on Facebook to this lady, and she didn’t respond. I also sent a couple of my own, and she didn’t respond to me either. I then contacted a few of her family members. I asked the lady’s sister if she would speak to her and tell her who I was and that I wanted to know if she was possibly my dad’s ex-girlfriend. She told me she’d ask her sister, and then she stopped responding. None of her other friends or relatives would respond to my private messages, no matter how I worded them.

So, I was left wondering. Was she not the right person, and thought I was trying to pull some kind of scam? Or was she the right person and didn’t want to talk about Andy or anything that happened?

Her unresponsiveness made my sister even more convinced it was her. She said, “They have the same name and birthday; it has to be her.” But I began to lean more toward my doubts. I still had unanswered questions. I had also come close to finding her before, and I needed more to believe we had the right Margery King. Sharing a birthdate could have just been a coincidence. It happens.

Besides that, there were a few sticking points that needed to be resolved.

On the witness statements taken by Frank Falzon and on her San Francisco arrest records, Margery King was listed as a WFA (White, Female, Adult). The lady Lori found on Facebook was 100% Native American. She should have been listed as an IFA (Indian, Female, Adult) by the SFPD, and she wasn’t. And there’s no way anyone would mistake this lady for a white female.

Lori reminded me of a loose photo we found in our dad’s case file. It was of a young 20-something Native American woman who could have passed as a young version of the 70-year-old lady on Facebook. I took note of it and put it in “her column” as a possible photo of Margery. But there was a good chance that it wasn’t her. The photo could have been a photo of a witness or even someone not related to the case at all. The case file was in such disarray that there was no way of knowing how the photo got in there or why it was in there.

Another big hurdle for me was the fact that the lady on Facebook spelled her name differently. The lady that we were looking for spelled her name M-A-R-G-E-R-Y. That’s how Falzon wrote it down. That’s how Andy wrote it down in his little black book. And that’s how it was spelled on an arrest record I saw in the case file. Additionally, she also went by Margaret, which she wrote down on a court paper, and Andy wrote inside one of his notebooks. So, I assumed her name was Margaret and her nickname was Margery.

The lady on Facebook spelled her name M-A-R-J-O-R-I-E and her nickname was Margie. She wasn’t a Margaret like the girl in San Francisco; she was a Marjorie, and her nickname was Margie, which the girl in San Francisco didn’t use.

I was hung up on this for about two years and needed to have it resolved before I could believe it was the right Margery. I felt that it could easily be a coincidence that this lady on Facebook had the same birth date and a similar name. My sister thought I was being stubborn and pigheaded, so it caused a lot of tension as I continued my search for Margery King.

I never gave up on Lori’s find. I kept trying to put the pieces together so that I could count this woman out or count her in. I didn’t like it being unresolved. When I compared the photo of the young Indian girl to the old Indian lady, they looked somewhat alike, but their noses were completely different. The older woman’s nose was nearly twice the size of the young woman’s. And sure, I was aware that noses can grow in size over the years, but it was such a marked difference that it fed my doubt.

Every so often, I’d check the lady’s profile on Facebook and send her another note, only to be ignored. My sister also attempted a few more times. Then the woman became ill. There were photos of her in a hospital and then she passed away. If she were the woman we were looking for, then we’d never be able to speak with her. It was very depressing. Our most important and consequential questions would never be answered.

Shortly after she passed, I noticed a few new people posting on her Facebook profile. I noticed that a daughter I hadn’t seen before posted a public comment, and I asked her if I could contact her. She agreed.

The daughter turned out to be the lady’s stepdaughter. I started out by asking her if her mother lived in San Francisco in the late ’60s or early ’70s, and surprisingly, she said she did and that she was a Flower Child back then. She instantly volunteered that Marjorie told her “something really bad happened” while she was living there, and that she left the city and never went back. She said her mother never told her exactly what happened.

I filled her in on our story and asked her if she could talk to her family members. We’d be interested in anything they heard about her time in San Francisco. She said she would ask her dad and siblings. Sometime later, she got back to me and told me that her mother didn’t talk about her past. She had a hard childhood and ran away from a foster home at thirteen. She said that Marjorie wanted to forget everything in her past and that the family respected her boundaries. They never pressed her on it. Her background, her childhood, and everything that happened up until she started her new life were unknown to her family.

All of this, of course, bolsters the position that it was probably her, that this was the woman that we had been looking for forever.

I asked Marjorie’s daughter if she could find some old photographs of her. I wanted to compare them to the old photo I had because the only photos on her Facebook profile were recent. I wanted something closer to the early 1970s to compare. She looked for photos and got back to me. The oldest ones she had were from the mid-1990s. It was better than nothing, but the difference in the size of her nose was still throwing me off.

I happened to run across a picture of Marjorie’s granddaughter, and her nose looked exactly like the lady in the old police file. And then I got the bright idea of trying to find a computer program or app that could compare the photos using facial recognition. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? I found that a few of these apps were available. So I ran the new photo along with the old one, and three of the four apps said that it was the same person in the photos. So that is what finally convinced me it was her.

In all probability, we found my dad’s girlfriend, Margery King. And sadly, she was so traumatized by what happened and was still so scared that she couldn’t bring herself to talk to us and tell us what she knew. I mentioned to her family early on, when I was trying to contact her, that the killer was dead, so she didn’t have to fear him. Of course, I can’t know why she chose not to speak to us. But maybe she was actually afraid of the corrupt San Francisco Police Department and/or others involved in the murder who have never been named.

I finally reconciled why she spelled her name differently when she was living in San Francisco. I believe that she moved to San Francisco as a runaway during the Summer of Love in 1967 when she was 15. Like so many others, she changed her name slightly to throw off anyone trying to find her, like her foster family. If they looked up her name in the phone book or if she got in trouble with the cops, her name “Marjorie” would not be found.

So that’s the end of our search for Margery King and how it turned out. It’s sad that she couldn’t bring herself to speak to us, for whatever reason.

R.I.P. Marjorie King

I fully understand that reasonable people may disagree with some of my conclusions. That’s their right. I’ve simply tried to follow the evidence wherever it led, even when that evidence raised more questions than answers. After more than a decade of investigating my father’s murder, these are the conclusions I’ve reached.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

Is it selfish to realize
You’re the only proof that you exist
Is it wrong to want warmth
When you’re left cold

Can you be selfish and giving
Hold your heart and still offer it
Can you love your own life
And let that love spill over

Maybe the question is crooked
Like a picture frame
Tilted left
Blaming the wall

What if caring for yourself
Isn’t stealing from the world
But planting seeds
That will fill the orchard

You can’t pour from empty vessels
You can’t lift with weak arms
You can’t light up the room
If you’ve smothered your own flame

So yeah
I want good things
For me firsthand
Not leftovers

I want rest
So I don’t snap at strangers
Space
So I can listen without being smothered
Joy
So my laughter isn’t borrowed

There is a kind of selfish
That closes every window
Builds a chair on a pile of faces
Calling it “winning”

But there’s another kind
Quiet
Unapologetic
Sacred

A selfish that says
“I am here
I matter
I will not vanish to make you comfortable”

From that place
Giving feels different
Not martyrdom
Not scoreboard charity

More like
“I have enough, so take some
I want you full
While I stay whole”

Maybe life’s meaning
Isn’t a short sentence
Carved in stone
At the end

Maybe it’s a rhythm
Of reaching in
Then reaching out
Breathe in
Breathe out

Remember
You are allowed to choose yourself
You are allowed to protect your time
You are allowed to keep pieces of you
Only you will ever see

And still
You can show up
You can listen
You can give
In ways that don’t erase you

So if anyone asks
“Is it sinful to be selfish?”
Ask them back
“Is it holy to be hollow?”

Because I think
The world is better off
When your “yes” to others
Doesn’t require
A lifelong ”no”
To yourself

©2026 Jon Kinyon

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

D.B. Cooper leaped from the Boeing 727 he had hijacked on Nov. 24, 1971, with a military parachute and $200,000 in ransom money strapped to his body. He vanished into the mist of a frigid Pacific Northwest night and instantly transformed himself into an American folk legend. “Dan Cooper” has since been the singular target of one of law enforcement’s all-time greatest manhunts. He also might have been the man who was like a second father to my younger brothers.

Ron Freeze served as a paratrooper during the Korean War and was later stationed in Guam, instructing Vietnam-bound troops in the fine art of assault parachuting. He became one of the first civilian sport parachutists in the U.S. With thousands of jumps under his belt, he wowed crowds as a stunt pilot and skydiver at air shows. He also opened a skydiving school in Washington State and was a flight instructor, aircraft salesman and mechanic, accomplished farmer and building contractor.

He said, “You know, I buried all of the money on my property in Saratoga.” My mom asked, “What money?” “The D.B. Cooper money,” he replied. She was a little taken aback, but he was never more serious:

In the early 1970s, Ron was flying DC-3s and Cessnas under the radar and across the Mexican border, smuggling untold tons of marijuana into the U.S. He ended up serving three years in federal prison after his fingerprints were discovered on an aeronautical map inside a downed aircraft loaded with 1,000 pounds of Colombian Gold. Upon release, he found himself a prime suspect in the D.B. Cooper case—his background and recent stint in the joint fit the FBI profile to a T.

My mom met Ron through mutual friends in the shady underworld of the San Francisco Bay Area before he was hired to fly by the Mexican Mafia. They reconnected shortly after he was released from prison, at a pivotal point in both of their lives when they were attempting to sever entanglements with unsavory characters and former partners in crime. Together, they were able to go straight and stay straight.

The ex-convict became a role model and stand-in dad to my two younger brothers. They spent summers flying around the country and traveling in his motorhome. They visited nearly every haunted spot in California, prospected for gold on public (and not-so-public) land, and even flew the route taken by D.B. Cooper. “This is where I jumped from the plane,” Ron quipped. “I landed somewhere over that way.” My brothers couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, though it seemed like he was at the time.

Our longtime friend never straight-out denied being the elusive fugitive when the subject came up, which I always found intriguing. Ron would simply brush it off or make a joke out of it. We often ribbed him and referred to him as D.B., but he never broke character. I wish I had taken it more seriously, sat him down, and had a heart-to-heart about it. I robbed myself of the chance to look him in the eye and ask, “Did you hijack that damn plane?” I think I would have known whether or not he was lying.

Ron was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in the mid-1990s. It progressed rapidly, and he volunteered for an experimental brain surgery to treat his shaking and stuttering. The surgery appeared to be a success, but then the symptoms returned. He was crushed when he lost his driver’s license and devastated when he was no longer able to fly. He stubbornly continued to jump, though; he lived for it. Ironically, the former marijuana-smuggling felon was later treated with medical marijuana.

Toward the end, Ron confided in my mom more than ever. Initially, it was all about regrets: not being a better dad to his kids, his five failed marriages, years wasted partying too hard, chasing money, chasing women, and the like. Then, out of nowhere, he told her, “You know, I buried all of the money on my property in Saratoga.” My mom asked, “What money?” “The D.B. Cooper money,” he replied. She was a little taken aback, but he was never more serious: “I buried it next to an oak tree by the creek. It was there all that time, and I couldn’t touch it. It was useless to me. Then a big storm came and washed it away.”

Ron had my mom drive him to his old property, where he pointed out exactly which tree he was talking about. Still, she wasn’t sure what to believe. Was he losing his mind? Was he messing with her? She thought she should ask more questions but didn’t. A week went by. A month. And then nearly a year. Then, when Ron’s health went into rapid decline, he was unexpectedly relocated to Reno, Nevada by the Veterans Administration. By the time my mom put a little more weight on the confession, he was gone.

Parkinson’s beat Ron Freeze on March 30, 2014. Not long before his death, two FBI agents showed up to conduct a final interview with him. They leaned on him the same way they had over the previous 30 years, but this time there was a sense that they were wrapping things up. Sure enough, two years after Ron died, Special Agent in Charge Frank Montoya Jr. officially closed the D.B. Cooper case.

But that’s not the end, because the Ron Freeze story soon got a lot more interesting. The FBI had him as a suspect in the D.B. Cooper hijacking, and I knew a few things about his past as a drug smuggler. What I didn’t know was that he wasn’t just a hired gun, a lowly pilot in the operation. He was the person in charge of recruiting skilled pilots, securing the planes, modifying them to carry cargo, and coordinating and negotiating the deals with the Mexican Mafia. He was a kingpin—the ringleader who partnered with an acting Assistant District Attorney and a police lieutenant in San Jose. Testimony at trial indicated that the son of San Francisco Mayor Joe Alioto was (allegedly) an investor.

Ron paid the pilots he hired $25,000–$50,000 per flight (adjusted to today’s dollars: $176,000–$350,000). They smuggled illegal weapons into Mexico and brought back tons and tons of marijuana and cocaine from 1968 to 1973. When the conspiracy was exposed, Ron had 5 tons of marijuana sitting in a warehouse in Mexico awaiting pickup. It was also revealed that one of his partners was working on a double-cross; he contacted a member of the San Francisco Mafia Family and attempted to hire a hitman to kill Ron. In all, 13 people were prosecuted and imprisoned in the case.

It’s interesting to note that the charges of illegal gun running went away before trial, which suggests to me that the U.S. government (CIA) was likely involved in that portion of the business. There was a lot of that going on at the time.

At the end of his life, when Ron told my mom that his money got washed away in a 100-year flood that hit San Jose, we assumed he was talking about the D.B. Cooper money—because that’s what he said it was. But I now realize he must have been talking about his gun and drug-running profits, which would have been much larger than the D.B. Cooper haul.

The FBI profile for D.B. Cooper indicated that the suspect would possess the skills of a pilot and a parachutist (both of which Ron had in spades) as well as be an extreme risk-taker with a significant criminal history. Ron totally fits the bill. I know there will be some D.B. Cooper aficionados who will discount our family friend in favor of their own personal favorite suspect. Internet sleuths will find some minute thread to pull and raise questions. That’s all well and fine, but as for me, I have only one question: Who’s up for a treasure hunt?

04/27/18 - Initial walk on Ron Freeze’s property alongside the creek where he claimed his money had been buried. The hillside collapsed during the 100 year storm of 1983. We found a beer can from the late ‘70s or early ‘80s which was encouraging because that means that that layer of sediment might be close to the surface now. Wouldn’t that be nice.

UPDATED: Originally published APRIL 18, 2018 by the now-defunct OZY Magazine

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

MY EARLIEST MEMORY is a nightmare. I had to be two or three, taking a nap in my crib. I woke up and looked around the room. A gentle breeze was billowing the sheer white curtains. It was a warm summer day, and I was overdressed, sweaty, and uncomfortable in my terry cloth pajamas.

I stood up, tucked my baby-bottle in my left armpit, and climbed over the railing and down to the floor. I was well practiced in the feat, and there was little risk of my falling.

I hit the ground running, swung the bedroom door open, and took a sharp left down the hallway leading to the living room.

Mom was sitting in a chair, back to me, facing the console TV. She had on her favorite powder-blue sleeveless white-trimmed dress, hair in a towering beehive. I ran to her side. She pulled me onto her lap, wrapped her arms around me, and held me close. I felt safe and loved. When I looked up at her face, it wasn’t Mom at all, it was an imposter; a horrifying creature with purplish-grey pockmarked skin, a thick mono-brow, bulging eyes with giant black pupils, and a wide gaping grin full of rotten, broken teeth.

I sucked in a sharp breath. My eyes locked on the nickel-sized mole on her left cheek, its scraggly hairs writhing like tentacles. I screamed and fought to escape. Mom’s evil twin cackled like a witch and tightened her death grip. I knew I was going to die.

I shot upright in my crib, still screaming, and jumped to my feet. My heart pounded wildly. Mom called my name from the living room. I backed into the corner as her footsteps raced up the hall. I stood frozen in terror. Relief washed over me when my real Mom rushed in. I hoped desperately never to see that monster again.

Nightmares like these haunted my childhood. Skeletons were my greatest fear, and they invaded my dreams for years. I’d close my eyes and see them coming for me. I’d cry out in terror, and Mom would rush in to calm me.

One night, I dreamed I was inside a Disney animated movie. As I prepared for bed in an upstairs apartment, Cinderella’s mice scurried about, sewing wedding clothes for the prince and his bride-to-be. I pulled the blankets to my neck and began to doze off. Suddenly, the mice panicked, jumping and shouting, “He’s coming! He’s coming!”

“Who’s coming?” I asked.

They pointed to the window. I got up and looked down at the street below. A skeleton in a tall black top hat, black suit, and using a walking stick was approaching. He entered the building. I dove back under the covers and pulled them over my head. The mice hid.

A long silence was broken as the bedroom door creaked open. Bare bone feet clicked across the wooden floor. The skeleton leaned over and touched my shoulder. I shot up screaming as he grabbed me tightly.

I woke to Dad holding me: “It’s all right, Jonathan. It’s just a bad dream.”

These dreams turned out to be dark premonitions.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

EIGHT YEARS INTO investigating my dad’s murder cold case, I began writing the book. Summarizing the previous fifty years was daunting. Beyond building my case against the San Francisco police and the killer they covered up for, I needed to select which facts and anecdotes best revealed my brilliant, driven father—my hero who died young—so that readers could know him, even as I continued to understand him myself.

So many of my questions had never been asked, buried beneath decades of denial and grief. To even think of my dad was traumatic, but to speak his name and remember who he was became unbearable for everyone in our family, especially my mom. We never talked about Andy over the years, and sadly, it was almost as if he had never existed.

I began to write about how my parents met and married young. My mom was still in high school when she gave birth to me, and my dad hadn’t yet turned 19. For the first two years of my life, we traveled up and down the West Coast as Andy built his business, employing teenage boys as door-to-door magazine salesmen and teenage girls to work the phones.

So many of my questions had never been asked, buried beneath decades of denial and grief. To even think of my dad was traumatic, but to speak his name and remember who he was became unbearable for everyone in our family, especially my mom. We never talked about Andy over the years, and sadly, it was almost as if he had never existed.

I knew little about that time in our lives, and reconstructing those early years required many Q&A sessions with my mom. One of my first questions was, “Mom, why did you and Dad get divorced when we were living in Sacramento?”

After an uneasy silence, she said, “I don’t remember why.”

“What? That’s ridiculous… who doesn’t remember why they got a divorce?”

“I don’t know… I guess I was young and dumb.”

She shut down completely, the way she always did when hiding something. I backed off, knowing I’d need to wait days before trying again.

A week later, I squeezed out some more info.

“We left Sacramento. Andy was pissed at his boss, Charles Botts, because he owed him a lot of money,” she said. “We moved into a motel in Chico to drum up some new business. We didn’t take you with us. We left you with the neighbors, Bunny and Manny.”

“You left me with the neighbors?”

“Bunny was your babysitter. She loved you… and they wanted to adopt you.”

“Adopt me? How long was I left with them?”

“You were there for about a month. And then Andy finally got paid by Botts,” she said. “We paid Bunny fifteen hundred dollars when we picked you up.”

(Note: $1,500 in 1964 is equal to more than $16,000 today)

“Charles Botts died in a fire around that time. They found him with a heavy dresser on top of his head,” she volunteered out of nowhere.

I had never heard any of this and needed to hear more. But she zipped her lips again and shut down. She wouldn’t elaborate on any details. I waited a few days before pressing her again. My strategy worked—she soon began revealing long-hidden secrets meant to stay buried forever.

I told the detective that I had information about the murder and that I might know who the main suspect was. He said that the case had been cold since 1964 and that they weren’t interested in using any manpower to work on it. I asked if I could find out any details of the crime, and he said, “Not without a court order.”

“When we moved to Seattle, your dad had a falling out with his boss there, Ray Curtis, because he kept trying to make moves on me and attempting to woo me away. That’s how we ended up leaving and going to Sacramento,” she told me. “Then the same thing started up with Charles Botts. He thought he was a big shot. He’d take me and Andy to San Francisco on the weekends and show off. He knew everybody in North Beach, in all of the fancy restaurants. He always got the best table and they treated him like royalty. He thought he was something, flashing money, parading around with his blonde bombshell girlfriend, Ingrid.”

“So, you said he was hitting on you, too?” I asked.

“Botts sent Andy out of town to go to a big meeting with the company that owned Look Magazine and invited me over for dinner with him and Ingrid. I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was a friendly gesture. The next thing I know, I wake up in bed, in their guest room, naked. And almost as soon as I woke up, Ingrid popped her head in the door, ‘Did you have fun last night?’ she asked with a big grin on her face. It was creepy. I didn’t remember anything after dinner. They must have given me a knock-out drug. I checked myself, and I had been raped. I was bruised and bloody down there, my thighs had big bruises on them, and I was sore all over. I was terrified. I was six months pregnant with your sister. I was afraid I might lose the baby.”

“What the fuck?!” I blurted out. “Why is this the first time I’ve heard about this?”

“It’s not exactly something you advertise,” she said.

“Mom, did Andy kill Charles Botts?”

“No… he wasn’t even in Sacramento when it happened.”

“Where was he?” I asked.

“He was living with me in Palo Alto, at my parents’ house.”

“Oh c’mon, Mom. You were divorced. You just got divorced. No way was he living with you in Palo Alto.”

My mom stuck to this story for weeks. She even tried to claim that she never told Andy that she had been raped. But I kept on her case, asking for more and more detail of what was happening in their lives at that time. I told her that it was obvious that they had gotten divorced over what happened.

I found an old newspaper mention of the fire that killed Charles Botts. It stated that it was a fast-spreading and suspicious fire, and that neighbors had heard loud banging and what sounded like a door being kicked in shortly before the fire. There was no mention of a dresser being found on top of the victim. An old friend of my dad’s told me that my mom told him about the rape not long after it happened, and he was sure she told Andy at the time as well.

I called the Sacramento police department to find out if Botts’ death had been determined to be murder. Sure enough, it had. It was an open cold case. I told the detective that I had information about the murder and that I might know who the main suspect was. He said that the case had been cold since 1964 and that they weren’t interested in using any manpower to work on it. I asked if I could find out any details of the crime, and he said, “Not without a court order.”

I finally got my mom to admit that Andy was living in a storage locker with all of his stuff in Sacramento, just a few miles from Botts’ apartment at the time of the murder. He had no alibi. He had a motive. He had the opportunity.

Coincidentally, one of my earliest memories of my dad was watching him take a can of Ronson lighter fluid, squirting it all over our kitchen table, and setting it on fire for laughs. He always had lighter fluid close by to refill his collection of Zippo lighters, and now I have this series of images in my head of him breaking down Botts’ door, fighting with him, eventually crushing his head with a heavy bedroom dresser, and then spraying lighter fluid around the room before setting it on fire.

I told a friend of mine this story and that I believed my dad was a murderer. She corrected me, “Manslaughterer, Jon… not murderer.”

Note: My parents were divorced in early 1964, but then got back together not long after my sister was born and remarried in 1965. It’s interesting to note that a wife can not be forced to testify against their husband. I’ve come to believe that was part of their motivation to get married again.

There are also a lot of details left out of this short story that are elaborated on in the book I wrote, “San Francisco’s Hottest Cold Case.”

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

YOU CAN’T GLANCE at social media for five seconds without coming face-to-face with the raging war of the sexes. It’s WWIII out there, and the bodies are piling up (and not in a good way). “Red-pill” dudes whine that they’re worthless to women. They see modern feminists as entitled bitches with impossible demands, only to be met head-on by equally militant waves of “all men are trash” energy from the other side. What began as legitimate gripes has curdled into full-scale tribal hatred, guns drawn and blazing. And it’s not confined to the internet and private discussion groups. It’s at every corner bar, gas pump, grocery store, classroom, and 24-hour Fitness across the country.

Marriage and long-term relationships are circling the drain, young adults are proudly single and couldn’t give a shit about dating, and birth rates are approaching extinction levels. The family is dead and dying. We’ve collectively decided the opposite sex isn’t worth the time or emotional investment—unless, of course, they magically align with our exact personal stars, signs, therapy-approved buzzwords, and ever-shifting whims. The second they dare step out of line, question something, or—heaven forbid—rub the massage oil in the wrong fucking direction? Poof! They’re gone. Ghosted. Erased without a hint of regret. And so be it. Their gender made the crash and burn inevitable.

Behold the incels—those sad, seething gooners who’ve declared themselves outcasts in the world of love and sex. Involuntarily celibate bastards who’ve concocted a grim “black pill” fatalistic ideology centered on the belief that the vast majority of average or below-average men—labeled “normies,” “betas,” “subhumans,” or simply “incels” are permanently excluded from meaningful relationships or sexual access to women, no matter their personality, effort, wealth, or self-improvement attempts.

Behold the incels—those sad, seething gooners who’ve declared themselves outcasts in the world of love and sex. Involuntarily celibate bastards who’ve concocted a grim “black pill” fatalistic ideology centered on the belief that the vast majority of average or below-average men—labeled “normies,” “betas,” “subhumans,” or simply “incels” are permanently excluded from meaningful relationships or sexual access to women, no matter their personality, effort, wealth, or self-improvement attempts. Their echo chambers are toxic cesspools: women reduced to “foids” (or “female humanoids”), “roasties,” and whatever fresh dehumanizing slur they’ve invented this week, all marinating in violent fantasy talk that would make a medieval torturer blush. Their porn collections overflow with violent gang rape, incest, bestiality, necrophilia, and worse. Some glorify “Supreme Gentlemen” like Elliot Rodger, who carried out bloody attacks framed as retribution against the system, adding a layer of martyrdom or justification to real-world violence.

But let’s not pretend male entitlement and violence toward unresponsive or disobedient women is some shocking new invention spawned by right-wing dirtbags on 4chan. For tens of thousands of years, men treated wives and daughters as property—chattel to own, trade, beat, or fuck as they pleased. Ancient legal codes encouraged strict spousal discipline and normalized domestic abuse across cultures. There were no laws protecting human property from the evil of their owners. That tradition is older than the dirt we’re standing on. Modern incel rage is just the same ancient ownership fantasy, now dressed up in pseudoscience, doom-scrolling, and algorithm-fueled copium. Gentlemen, start your Fleshlights!

On the flip side, many women are swearing off men entirely—not just in America in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement. South Korea’s 4B movement—“no dating, no sex, no marriage, no children with men”—has gone viral worldwide, especially whenever another man walks away from a rape charge or the murder of his wife or girlfriend with little more than a slap on the wrist. Women are tapping out: exhausted by low-effort man-children, the ever-present danger that a date can turn violent or deadly on a dime, and the soul-crushing emotional labor of “working through communication issues.” Surveys show growing numbers of Gen Z women looking at dating and responding with a firm “Hard pass.” Why bother when you can stay single, keep your peace, and avoid the whole exhausting circus?

The elephant in the room is that women hold far more power and control in this post-relationship, non-committal world than they’re willing to admit in public. And that power only grows as the old patriarchal system crumbles.

The emerging female superpower is one the vast majority of modern men can only dream of. Guys go out of their way to offer or pursue sex all day long. They’re not picky—they’re dirty dogs, admittedly, and hardly connoisseurs. Sex with men comes cheap; its value keeps dropping on the open market. Sex with women, by contrast, is treated as rare and highly sought after, so it commands a premium. With rarity comes skyrocketing demand.

As one modern woman was recently quoted, “You give me money, and I give you the time of day at fucking all.”

Nearly every woman can go out and snag a man at will, simply by deciding to make herself available. She shows up, makes eye contact with a half-smile, and boom—options materialize out of thin air. Her daily existence is a nonstop parade of saying “no” to every variety of man: “no” to the awkward dweeb at the bar, “no” to the desperate DMs and unsolicited dick pics, “no” to the guy who thinks “hey, how ya doin’?” counts as game. All day, every day, she’s the gatekeeper, swatting away suitors like annoying little bloodsuckers. All she has to do is whisper “yes” once—just one hint of affirmation—and she’s off to an enjoyable romp, anytime, any place. Dinner date, attention, validation, whatever she’s craving in the moment—she can get it at will.

This flaming shitshow is almost guaranteed to get worse. As real-world dating success rates continue their death spiral, more guys will retreat even deeper into porn, video games, and AI girlfriends that never talk back. Meanwhile, more women will quietly construct entire lives that have zero room for men.

It is not so for the average man. These poor bastards have to work for it, and it’s not fucking easy. Women generally expect them to be utterly charming, quick-witted, brutally handsome, at least 6 feet tall, successful, financially stable (preferably well-off), emotionally intelligent, politically correct in word and deed, and magically tuned into whatever cocktail of traits she’s craving that week, day, or minute. He must sculpt himself into her fantasy checklist, risk rapid and final rejection, and still keep swinging like a masochistic optimist. The only exceptions are men with fame, fortune, or model-level jawlines who skip the audition altogether. Everyone else? Back to the content mines, grinding for scraps that might briefly catch her eye and whet her appetite.

It’s a brutal asymmetry dressed up as “empowerment.” Women hold the veto power in the sexual marketplace; men carry the initiative burden. In a world of infinite swipes and algorithm-fueled hypergamy, that gap has become a chasm. She can afford to be picky because the queue is long. He can’t afford to be picky, because for most guys, the queue is imaginary. No wonder the war of the sexes feels less like a fair fight and more like one side has paid off the judges while the other begs for a participation trophy.

This raw power imbalance feeds the resentment seething on both sides. When women can summon companionship on demand—short-term or long-term—it breeds a certain casual contempt for men in general. They’ve become as much a disposable commodity as women ever were throughout history. When men face a landscape where basic access requires constant performance art, it breeds exhaustion, black-pill nihilism, or outright rage. Women demand that men be “open” and “vulnerable,” yet what they actually create are men who are experts at faking it. Neither side is wrong about the mechanics—they’re just living on opposite ends of the same rigged machine.

The causes are brutally obvious and thoroughly depressing. Women’s massive gains in education and earning power have completely nuked the old courtship playbook without bothering to replace it with anything that actually works. Meanwhile, too many men — especially the non-college crowd — are stuck with stagnant wages and shit prospects, making them about as appealing as long-term partners as a consolation prize. Dating apps have turned the whole miserable game into a brutal, addictive casino where everyone’s convinced they can do better if they just keep swiping one more time. Throw in sky-high housing costs, crushing student debt, the total death of actual third places where humans used to meet, and the slow-motion collapse of community, and you end up with two camps of lonely, seething people perfectly primed to hate each other’s guts instead of figuring out how to compromise like adults.

And here’s the really dark punchline: this flaming shitshow is almost guaranteed to get worse. As real-world dating success rates continue their death spiral, more guys will retreat even deeper into porn, video games, and AI girlfriends that never talk back. Meanwhile, more women will quietly construct entire lives that have zero room for men. The smaller, more fucked-up generations coming up behind us will only sharpen the scarcity mindset into something truly ugly. Every single fight over family court, campus rules, or workplace policies now feels like total war. Nobody wins this one. We just get lonelier, more atomized societies stuffed with people who never learned how to actually be with each other. The incentives all scream “escalate,” and right now almost no one has the slightest interest in hitting the brakes.

So tell me… are we equals now?

Here’s an old 4-track cassette demo song ©1991 Jon Kinyon

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

A FEW NIGHTS AGO, I suddenly woke up at 3 am, startled by a loud automated female voice in my bedroom, "You are under surveillance. Everything is being recorded and documented."

It was beyond terrifying. One of the adverse reactions to my antibiotic infusion med can be auditory hallucinations caused by a rare neurotoxic response that can lead to severe morbidity and even death. I was specifically told to report any such instances to my medical team.

One of the adverse reactions to my antibiotic infusion med is auditory hallucinations caused by a rare neurotoxic reaction that can lead to severe morbidity and even death.

I desperately clung to the hope that I hadn't imagined the voice. But I couldn't figure out where it had originated from. Did it come from my smart TV? Was it my iPhone? Was it my computer?

Who was I fooling? The message, "Everything is being recorded and documented," sounded exactly like what a hallucination would produce, you know, paranoia about the government spying on us through our devices. Right?

I grew even more terrified. I couldn't get back to sleep. Was this it? Was this how it ends for me?

I told my sister about it, and after I convinced her that I wasn't dreaming at the time, she thought I should hold back on telling the doctor. "If it happens again, then you'll know for sure that you're having a reaction." That seemed reasonable to me, so I held off.

Yesterday, I was sitting at my computer next to my open bedroom window, and I heard the voice again, "You are under surveillance. Everything is being recorded and documented." It was even louder this time and sounded like it was coming from the parking lot behind my apartment building.

Upon close inspection, I discovered that the church next door had installed a brand new security camera system.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

TWO MONTHS AGO, it started as a simple earache, and it has now turned into a life-threatening nightmare. I’m in a battle with a drug-resistant inner ear infection that has escalated into a severe bone infection in my skull. A CT scan also revealed missing bone between my brain and inner ear, putting me at a higher risk of death. What started as dismissed pain became a fight for survival, a big part of which has involved pushing back against a healthcare system that was eager to send me home to suffer and die.

Frustration hit from the start. After two failed antibiotic rounds prescribed by doctors at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank, CA., my ear swelled shut and the pain intensified. The ER once again dismissed the seriousness of my situation and attempted to discharge me with the very same useless medication. I refused to leave. A bulldog of a nurse barked orders at me to “go home,” and an ER doctor attempted to shoot down all of my concerns and dodge questions.

I was told that an ear, nose, and throat (ENT) specialist had agreed to see me the next day in Santa Monica and that I needed to vacate the bed in the ER immediately. I knew there was a chance I’d be turned down by the specialist because I only have Medi-Cal, so I called his office to confirm. Sure enough, there wasn’t a chance in hell that he’d see me in this life or the next.

I was eventually admitted, but not before being mocked by the ER doctor with his shit-eating grin, “We’ll get the whole team on this right now! ENT! Infectious disease! And the skull doctor! How does a skull doctor sound?!”

The helpful nursing staff decided to completely ignore me, refusing to bring me even a cup of water. They treated me like I was being an asshole for being scared for my life. I called the social worker/patient advocate at St. Joseph’s and made my case to be admitted to the hospital for CT and MRI scans, and more aggressive treatment. I clearly had a drug-resistant infection and was in a life-threatening situation, and I deserved to be fully evaluated.

The social worker then got into a shouting match with the ER doctor. After much back and forth, I was eventually admitted, but not before being mocked by the ER doctor with his shit-eating grin, “We’ll get the whole team on this right now! ENT! Infectious disease! And the skull doctor! How does a skull doctor sound?!”

An hour later, a staff doctor and an ENT specialist appeared. I was taken down to the basement for scans, and the horror deepened. Turns out that I have a rare condition where bone is missing between my ear canal and my brain. The doctors admitted they’d never encountered my condition before. Heavy pus behind my eardrum, infection now in the skull bone behind my ear. Another specialist looked at the scans and felt that the lining of my brain was already infected; death was looming. I was officially admitted and hooked up with three IV antibiotics while they debated what to do next.

The ENT specialist refused to drain my ear for fear he’d make things worse, though I suspect it was actually because I no longer had premium insurance. When I worked at Nickelodeon and had top-notch coverage, I was never treated this way at St. Joseph’s. But nobody loves you when you’re down and out, or on Medi-Cal… you’re better off dead and off their books.

“There’s no end game here!” the ENT ass clown shouted at me, “You’ll just get another infection so… [what’s the point]?”

After five days of antibiotics and a couple more CT and MRI scans, it was decided to send me home for six weeks of antibiotic infusion treatment via a PICC line, despite my instability and abnormal blood test results. The night nurse quietly warned me not to return to St. Joseph’s. She said I’d get better treatment and attention at one of the UCLA hospitals. It seemed she was aware of the game being played on me, “If I was you, I’d check out of here and go straight to the ER at UCLA.” I wasn’t sure if she was playing good cop to their bad cop, but it seemed like sound advice.

I requested records from my St. Joseph’s visit and was stunned to learn that my “bone infection” was understated. My actual diagnosis shows that I’m in a very precarious situation with a chronic disease that is “often fatal” and historically resistant to treatment. I’m facing survival odds I’ve never faced before.

I wasn’t told what my diagnosis actually was, just a vague description of what was going on. A “bone infection” behind my ear and “missing bone” was the extent of it, I was told. But I felt the doctors were hiding information from me, and wanted me to go home and take my chances, or worse, to die. I think they were in cover-your-ass mode after their misdiagnosis, early on. Who’s to say?

I went home that night, and the first delivery of IV antibiotics showed up on my doorstep at 10 pm. I watched the instruction video online and administered my first dose. I was to shoot up every eight hours for the next six weeks. But there was a problem. I got intense cold chills and then bizarre burning sensations all over my body that didn’t let up for hours. I was sure I was having an allergic reaction to the first dose of Cefepime–which could also turn life-threatening in a heartbeat. It absolutely terrified me—how was I to fight the deadly infection if I can’t handle the meds?

I called my brother and had him drive me to the closest UCLA-affiliated hospital and check in to the ER. The next eight hours were the scariest of my life, to date. The ER was packed. My condition and my sense of urgency was completely blown off by the admission staff of course, “Everyone here thinks they’re dying, sir. You’ll have to wait like everyone else.”

I was sure I was dying. But I waited my turn… to die.

Finally, in the morning, I was taken in for another round of CT and MRI scans. The ER doctor was familiar with my condition and seemed assured that I’d make it. “Believe me, I’ve seen much worse.” Which helped calm me a little, though I knew I wasn’t out of the woods and still in very dangerous territory.

He agreed with the IV antibiotic treatment I’d been set up with and prepared to admit me to their hospital. After administering a dose of Cefepime and checking my bloodwork, he concluded that my earlier reaction was actually withdrawal symptoms from five days of heavy morphine around the clock and not from the antibiotic, which was somewhat of a relief. He also stated that the prior rounds of antibiotics didn’t wipe out the infection but did keep it from getting worse.

The doctor who took over after the first doctor’s shift wanted to send me home to continue treatment as an outpatient instead of admitting me, even for a day or two. I initially argued against it, after all I’d been through, I felt I was being dismissed again. I wasn’t going to allow that. But he assured me that wasn’t the case. After a long, calm conversation, I relented and agreed to a new plan of action. UCLA outpatient: home IV setup, nurse visits, blood draws, follow-up with doctor, ENT specialist appts., more CT and MRI scans, etc. The optimistic docs say the antibiotics will win, and maybe I’ll have surgery later.

I requested records from my St. Joseph’s visit and was stunned to learn that my “bone infection” was understated. My actual diagnosis shows that I’m in a very precarious situation with a chronic disease that is “often fatal” and historically resistant to treatment. I’m facing survival odds I’ve never faced before. I’ll follow up with a specialist in three weeks, who will evaluate my response to treatment. With a little luck, I’ll have a few more years ahead.

It’s a damn good thing I fought to be admitted and evaluated early on. If I had gone home with the pills they prescribed on my third ER visit at St. Joseph’s, I’m sure I wouldn’t be here now. I was in dire need of aggressive action and I only got it by being stubborn and demanding.

In this “great country,” advocacy isn’t optional—it’s survival. Frustrated by dismissals, insurance bias, and incompetence, I have learned to speak up, question, and refuse bad advice. You’re your own best advocate. Don’t let the bastards get you down… or kill you.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

I RECENTLY SHARED traumatic childhood experiences from the Palo Alto Elks Lodge, where I was 5 or 6 years old, only to be dismissed and called a liar by a current member of the lodge in my hometown. It’s clear my account unsettled the man or touched on something he’d rather not face—who can say? Others have since validated what I already knew to be true, though I never needed anyone's confirmation. I know these memories are real; I didn’t imagine them.

My maternal grandfather was a dedicated member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE) for over 40 years. Though it’s a men-only fraternal group, families were welcome at certain events and facilities. We spent many summers happily swimming in their outdoor pool, which had the best high dive in town, and my grandmother’s memorial service was later held there on El Camino Real—those remain positive, cherished memories.

Publicly and on paper, it simply didn’t happen. One AI-bot summed it up: “these groups were careful to project conservatism outwardly, though a casual, ‘good old boys’ dynamic might have existed in private.”

But alongside those good recollections are darker ones that still haunt me, all tied to the lodge’s members-only areas. My first visit happened late at night, entering through a plain side door under a single bare bulb. My grandfather led me downstairs to an indoor pool area with steam rooms, jacuzzis, and a bar. The bartender—and every other man there—was completely naked. We were the only ones clothed. Needless to say, it was very awkward.

Grandpa led me to the locker room and told me to undress. I resisted, but after he grabbed my arm and insisted firmly, I reluctantly complied. Surrounded by old hairy men admiring me with their schlongs hanging out was terrifying—like I was trapped in a nightmare. There were no others my age, only adding to the sense that something was off. I recall being paraded around the facility, as if on display, with guys silently nodding to my grandfather. We skinny-dipped in the pool before leaving, and I was beyond relieved when it ended.

Coincidentally, or not, it’s at that same age that my memories of sexual abuse by my grandfather begin to surface. I understand that many details from those days are blocked out or repressed. The possibility of more forgotten events, possibly at the lodge in the middle of the night, chills me to the marrow.

One reason some people doubt my account of our local Elks Lodge is that BPOE, along with other longstanding fraternal organizations, has no official history of clothing-optional spaces in any of its facilities. Their focus was on brotherhood, charitable work, community involvement, and patriotic endeavors. Recreational amenities such as private bars, dining areas, event rooms, pools, or gyms are described as fully clothed settings, with clear expectations around dress codes and decorum that mirrored highly conservative American social standards.

Extensive internet searches and AI-assisted inquiries reveal nothing—no historical documentation, no leaked unofficial policies, no scattered personal accounts or anecdotes—that point to nudity, skinny-dipping, naturism, or any clothing-optional practices ever being part of Elks Lodges. Publicly and on paper, it simply didn’t happen. One AI-bot summed it up: “these groups were careful to project conservatism outwardly, though a casual, ‘good old boys’ dynamic might have existed in private.”

That said, what I remember is clear as day. The scenes play back in my mind with the sharpness of something that happened yesterday. I’ve also heard from a handful of others who quietly acknowledged that the club's members-only sections operated as “clothing optional” in practice. External records may show one version of events, but personal memory and corroboration from those who were there tell a different story—one I know to be true.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

HAVE YOU HEARD of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre? Well, this is my own personal version, with me as the only one shot down in flames.

I was 24, working at a TV production h…

Read more

I’VE BEEN AN ARTIST my entire life. I began drawing daily at age 2, and I’m forever in the middle of new art projects. I’ve been writing and recording songs since I was a teenager and spent many hours in high-end recording studios and low-rent home studios to record songs, often with top-notch musicians. But I’ve had very limited success at making money at it, no matter how hard I tried. I’ve accepted that. I’ve been OK with that. Songwriting became one of my hobbies.

Last summer, I was laid up in bed for a month and decided to drop some of my oldest lyrics (written back in high school) into an AI music app. A few of the songs turned out OK, but were nothing to write home about. I wondered if I could get it to spit out something I actually liked. After a week of dialing shit in, to my surprise, it started cranking out some amazing blues songs. I mean, I really dug them. And so, I began writing fresh lyrics and made some more. It was fun and helped me pass the time. On a lark, and with no ill will toward some of my musician friends who are pissed off about AI, I uploaded them to streaming platforms as a test. I’ve gotten well over a million plays in the past few months.

I know, I know… some of you think I should die.

The surge in AI-generated music is actually reinvigorating DIY home-recorded “bedroom pop,” folk, jazz, punk, rock, and more in response. The live jazz scene in LA is jumpin’ (who knew?).

Since then, I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching and debating with some fellow artists and musicians. Where do I think all of this is heading? Is technology going to destroy the world as we know it? Yes, I believe it will. I actually think we’re doomed, but maybe not in the same way you imagine. We’re at a turning point not unlike the Industrial Revolution. I could be wrong, but to mix metaphors, Pandora’s box has been opened and we’re not changing course to avoid the iceberg. It’s full-steam ahead!

As Ice-T said recently, “Hey… I’m just a realist. I don’t love AI. I just understand it’s here to stay. You wanna lose a fight? Fight the future.”

Now that I’ve come out as an unrepentant reprobate, I might as well go all in. I’m not going to stop experimenting. I could be on the wrong side of history on this, but that’s my gamble. I know it’s extremely selfish and very American to care only about myself and my immediate gratification, but I’ve got the “I’m Having Fun, Fuck What You Think Blues.”

Remember, just because you might think it’s wrong, for whatever reason, doesn’t mean you get to decide for everyone else. No matter how moving you believe your argument is, not everyone is going to be persuaded. We can always agree to disagree, can’t we?

I am a lifelong student of art and history. At the end of the day, debates about AI being used in art and music come down to one thing: what the audience thinks (you know, those fucking morons). And I think that’s the reality that worries some of you the most.

There’s no accounting for taste—never has been. History is full of “good” art and “bad” art, with plenty of people insisting that certain kinds don’t qualify as art at all. We could dive into examples from every major art movement, but the pattern is clear: when a new style or tool gains traction, established creators often feel threatened, especially those who make a living from it (or dream of it). They worry that their work is being cheapened or that their livelihoods are at risk.

Think about Andy Warhol. When he first emerged with his pop art—replicating soup cans and celebrity portraits—other artists and critics dismissed him as a hack, not a real artist. Critics said he was just exploiting commercial imagery without “true” skill or depth. Yet audiences loved it, and today he’s iconic.

The same thing happens in music. Historical examples abound: classical purists once scorned jazz as chaotic and unrefined; jazz aficionados later looked down on rock ‘n’ roll as simplistic; and rock fans, in turn, dismissed disco or electronic music as soulless, machine-made noise. Popular music is simply what resonates with the masses, and there’s always a niche or emerging style that hasn’t caught on yet, and sometimes it never does.

Ultimately, I believe it will increase the value of human-made and human-performed music. People will always want to see and hear others play music and to marvel at exceptionally gifted artists.

When you think about it, one could argue that recording artists are hacks. Studio-produced recordings that layer tracks, add effects, punch in fixes, and endlessly edit, tweak, mix, and then master, are not pure or authentic music. A song might sound perfect in the studio but be impossible to recreate live. Doesn’t that make it manufactured or fake? If I were a true purist, I might say yes, if you can’t record a song live in one take, it’s fake. But the reality is that the listeners don’t care—they simply enjoy the final product.

Art is subjective. One person’s profound expression is another’s meaningless doodle that should be destroyed. For any artist to declare someone else’s work “isn’t art” is presumptuous and elitist. The creator gets to decide first; if they made it as an expression, it’s art to them. When they share it, others decide whether it speaks to them. If it does, great. If someone buys it, even better. But money or popularity doesn’t make something art; personal expression does.

Many artists create because they can’t help it—it’s about the need to express themselves, it’s not about business. Others aim to make a living from it or to get rich. Does chasing money make it less “real” art? The line between pure and commercial has always been blurry.

Anytime an artist has some commercial success, they’re suspect. Nirvana was accused of “selling out” when they blew up. Bobby Zimmerman went electric and some people demonized him as a “Judas.” In both cases, I don’t believe they sold out. I believe the changes were a natural progression of their art.

The Dada movement in the early 1900s rejected traditional art values, logic, beauty, and craftsmanship in favor of absurdity, nonsense, chance, irony, provocation, and anti-art attitudes. Later, Conceptual Art emerged, emphasizing the concept or idea over the physical object, its visual beauty, or technical skill. The point was the intellectual content, the questions it raises, or the mental process it provokes. Traditional notions of craftsmanship, originality, and aesthetic pleasure shifted the focus to “what art means” rather than “how it looks.” In essence, the idea itself is the art.

Producer Rick Rubin compares AI-generated music to the punk rock movement because it democratizes creation, removing the need for years of technical training and for highly skilled studio musicians/producers, and allowing anyone with an idea to create immediately.

AI is opening the floodgates right now. Suddenly, everyone and their mother can generate images, music, or video with simple prompts. It’s a bit like the folk music boom in the late 1950s and early 1960s: grab an acoustic guitar, write a simple song, play it somewhere, and you might get famous. The overwhelming majority of people vying for stardom never went far, but those who could actually connect with people rose to the top.

Punk started the same exact way. Legendary music producer Rick Rubin has famously characterized AI “vibe coding” (using natural language to generate software/content) as the “punk rock of software”. He compares AI-generated music to the punk rock movement because it democratizes creation, removing the need for years of technical training and the hiring of highly skilled studio musicians/producers, allowing anyone with an idea to create immediately.

The same principle applies here. If AI-generated pieces resonate with audiences—if people like them, share them, buy them, or keep coming back—they’ll thrive, no matter what critics say. If they’re seen as shallow or low-effort, they’ll fade. Audiences are fickle and sometimes shallow, but over time, they sort things out. They discard the weakest stuff and keep what moves them.

If you’re creating art to make money, your job is to appeal to people and earn their support. The pot isn’t fixed—there are billions of people and tons of money out there. Competition has always existed, and AI just added more players. Resentment toward the new competition won’t help; focusing on what you can offer uniquely will.

No one—not you, not me, not a group of like-minded critics—gets to dictate what counts as art for everyone else. If a piece speaks to even one person (or a million), that’s its validation. Live and let live. Let audiences have their say—they always do in the end.

And honestly? You can usually spot real creative spark or talent behind a piece, AI or not. The best work stands out, and the rest... well, it will be buried in slop. Come at me.

P.S. The surge in AI-generated music is reinvigorating DIY home-recorded "bedroom pop," folk, jazz, punk, rock, and more in response. The live jazz scene in LA is jumpin' (who knew?). This is right in line with what I predicted would happen. Ultimately, I believe it will increase the value of human-made and human-performed music. People will always want to see and hear others play music and to marvel at exceptionally gifted artists. IMHO

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I am an avid reader of mob and true crime novels. This is one of the best I have ever read.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “What a page turner! This story is an amazing piece of investigative work—both compelling and heartbreaking.” - Amazon review

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “I’d seen the author’s work in OZY but was blown away by this book. It’s SUCH a great read, written from the heart! Full of interest for those historians of the hippie generation, North Beach, corrupt cops, mobbed up pols, and San Francisco in general. Very well written and paced up to the last pages. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Buy this book now!” - Amazon review

At 15, I wrote my first song—a raw dopehead blues—singing it straight into a cassette deck. I was a full-time stoner by 9th grade, as well as a…

Read more

IN MARCH 1965, my dad, Andy, printed a large run of a mini-poster he designed, which made him famous for a short minute in certain circles. It was an ad…

Read more

I WAS SCROLLING through emails, half-dead and sipping on my morning coffee, when one jumped out at me: “Hey, I’m with [company name withheld]. I read your True Crime book, and we want to turn it into…

Read more

It is okay that I…

• Never got married

• Never had kids

• Never bought a house

• Never stopped chasing daydreams

• Never impressed anyone but my mom

• Never forgave my dad’s killer

• Walked away from a high-paying care…

Read more