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I would like to give special acknowledgement to Barnaby and Mary Conrad, the founders of the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference, as well as Paul Lazarus, Charles (Chuck) Champlin, Jonathan Winters, Gayle and Dennis Lynds, Charles (Sparky) Schulz, Sid Stebel, Abe Polsky, Phyllis Gebauer, Walter Halsey Davis, Cork Milner, Shelley and Anne Lowenkopf, and especially Joan Oppenheimer, who took me under her wing at a critical time in my career. All of these caring souls started off as my mentors, and soon became beloved colleagues.
I also want to give thanks to Michael Steven Gregory, otherwise known as MSG, and Wes Albers, not only solid friends, but as the driving forces behind the Southern California Writer’s Conference where I have been teaching writing workshops for as long as I have been teaching at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference.
Thank you too, to Monte Schulz for saving and resurrecting the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference and to Nicole Starczak for running the show, and for keeping the SBWC vital and alive.
In a very short period of time, I became the youngest workshop leader at the SBWC and remained so for fifteen years, adopted into a wonderful extended writing family, treated like a son and a favored nephew by such amazing, legendary, nurturing talents.
I found myself in this position in a large part due to the envelopes I pushed with my writing and the otherworldly themes and elements I embraced following the trail blazed by Ray Bradbury, a major influence in my writing and in my life.
Ray was one of the best short stories writers who ever lived.
Thanks to my friend, colleague, and mentor Sid Stebel, I was lucky and blessed to get to know Ray as a friend and mentor through the SBWC, which Ray kicked off for thirty five years.
A few years before he left us, I was honored to be asked to write a piece for a limited edition hard cover tribute to Ray, so in honor of the inspiration, blessing, and support I received from him as well as everyone else in my extended writing family to carry on the storytelling tradition, I am reprinting the original essay here and publishing this eclectic collection as a tribute to Ray Bradbury, short story writer extraordinaire.
