My Story to Date
Years ago I took leave from highfalutin literary pursuits to try sports columns and general features for a weekly alternative paper in my adopted hometown of Portland, Oregon. In winning a few minor Society of Professional Journalists awards I drew the attention of the esteemed Oregon author Cameron Stauth, who recommended me to his NYC agent in case I had any bright ideas for a book. I had none off-hand, but I was a basketball junkie and it was 1992 and things were happening, including the USA’s iconic Olympic “Dream Team.” From Mychal Thompson, a longtime NBA player who’d spent that season in the Italian lega, I heard about crazy European ball, some familiar names over there, and on a whim I sent the agent my top-ten Willamette Week columns and a notion about Americans playing pro ball in Europe, specifically Italy. Next thing I knew, Simon & Schuster called offering me a contract. Not much dough, but by supplementing it slightly (all I could do) and meeting splendid people I managed to spend eight solid months in freakin bell’Italia—what can I say? The book appeared in 1994: Il Basket d’Italia: A Season in Italy with Great Food, Good Friends, and some Very Tall Americans. (See Published Work section.)
It led to my take on Michael Jordan’s stab at minor-league baseball, Rookie: When Michael Jordan Came to the Minor Leagues (1995), an experience that wore me out on jocks.
Still aspiring to fiction, I went there. My long-awaited lit’ry novel, however, would have to wait; I’d fallen in with some Portland cops, prosecutors, judges, and a crime novel seemed like a place to start. Eventually two were published, well-received if only minimally remunerative: The Shake (2000) and Dying for Dana (2003).
On request, I contributed a story, “Capitol of the World,” to the DC Noir anthology (2006).
Eventually, not so long ago, I met an allegedly retired, reformed pimp, reviving my longtime interest in trafficking. Thirty hours of interviews with him led me to the FBI agent who’d sent this fellow and several other pimps to federal prison some years earlier, the result of some wild undercover operation.
The agent was a Black-Japanese woman named Masayo Halpin, retired from the Bureau after a stellar twenty-year run, who hoped to see a book out there sometime about her personal story and, more importantly, the matter of domestic sex trafficking.---in particular CSEC, the commercial sexual exploitation of children, aka the pimping of minors. I had a long-time interest in the subject, I knew a little, and we agreed to collaborate on a book. All she had to do was answer every single question forever and let me write it up however I wanted.
