So let’s see. I grew up on a cattle ranch in Montana, and then lived in the bustling cowtown metropolis of Miles City. Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was also the hometown of both New Age pianist George Winston, and one of the irritating little girls in the film Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. This was followed by a very hazy (it was the 70s, what can I say) two years at Montana State University, where I studied film and creative writing and worked as a radio DJ, and realized that writing came easier to me than a lot of other things, especially working on a cattle ranch. I had no clue about how to be a writer, or even if it was possible to do such a thing for a living. I transferred schools to the University of Oregon, took more writing classes, and worked at television and radio stations. After college, I was fairly certain my future didn’t involve what I was doing at the time, so I quit my jobs and moved to San Francisco and washed dishes in exchange for room and board. I started a small magazine with some improvisational theater friends, which promptly folded, and then started another magazine called The Nose which was more fun than publishing really ought to be, and lasted six years, but also folded promptly. Luckily, I was asked to start writing for the San Francisco Weekly, and that opportunity allowed me to poke around the city and write about people and subjects that hadn’t been written about before. I wrote for Playboy and Salon and the New York Times Magazine and some other magazines, and started work on my first book, Sex, American Style. After it was published in 1997, I began San Francisco Bizarro. During the dot-com silliness I was able to travel more, and wrote for several publications including Wired, Business 2.0, Travelocity (based on the travel website), and Salon, where I contributed a daily column called Naked World. In 1999 I was one of the founders of San Francisco’s Litstock literary festival, which became Litquake, and continues to grow each year. These days I write for magazines and newspapers—among them, San Francisco Chronicle, London Independent, CNN Traveller, American and Southwest airlines—help produce Litquake, do an occasional reading, and work on books. It’s a big world out there.