In addition to my love of reading, I have long been fascinated by books as Object d'Art; more than just the words and pictures they contain. beyond their content,  included producing them. As a young teenager into comic books I created my own. Unfortunately I was greatly hampered by my lack of drawing ability; this resulted in my making a boxy-looking robot as my protagonist. I also took a printing course in 8th grade which involved using a hand-typeset letterpress. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I no longer have any of the items I printed for that class, but the experience stayed with me.

Later in college a friend who was an art student, Don Rash, introduced me to the publications produced by Roy Squires . Roy was an interesting individual and a long time member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, founded in 1934. As such he was a good friend to many classic writers, and was the literary executor of the estate of Clark Ashton Smith. Roy started a small press in the 60's with which he would publish hand-typeset pamphlets on handmade paper of short work by many of the great fantasy writers; H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber and Ray Bradbury to name just a few. Don and I both subscribed to his press. By this time I had left school and joined the Navy; I was stationed on a destroyer escort USS Richard L. Page (DEG/FFG-5) working as an electronic technician. As it turns out Roy was one of the first ETs in the Navy, joining at the end of World War II. We corresponded off and on for years but only met on two occasions; both were at science fiction/fantasy conventions.

It became an aspiration of mine and Don to publish similar works. Alas, my publishing life went in other directions. But Don became a fine bookbinder and has recently founded Boss Dog Press; his first published book is Rules for Bookbinders by Fritz Eberhardt.

It was also during this time that I became acutely aware of how poorly many trade books were manufactured. The shoddy binding of Ray Bradbury's Long After Midnight led me to write to him about it, and I received a very nice letter in return. (Ray later gave me permission to adapt some of his work for a one-act play.) This quality issue became more important to me when I started to seriously collect books.

When I left the Navy in 1978 I went back to college. It was during this time that an opportunity to become a publisher presented itself. Another friend, Mark Rogers, was an artist and a writer and he had a novella of his that begged to be published. Realizing that as a student there was no way I could go the artistic route as a publisher, I went the other direction. So the Burning Bush Press was born. I went on to publish two other books and a short-lived academic journal before leaving school for the corporate world.

Current Interests

The last 5 or 6 years I have gotten involved with the mystery writing community; I'm currently one of the moderators for Wicked Company, run by the multi-talented D. L. Browne, aka Diana Killian et al.. So I'm now looking at the publishing world from the perspective of an author... and it's ugly. Corporate publishers seem to be more interested in profits than quality, and like the rest of Corporate America don't seem to have any loyalty to their people. As a result we are beginning to see more alternative presses springing up. Aiding this are some dramatic changes in publishing technology, of particular interest to me as it combines several of my interests. I was an early advocate of electronic publishing and still think it will be a key factor in shaping the future of publishing.