The road to publication for my first novel was not only long and winding, but also booby-trapped, and in places there was no road, just long empty gaps that could only be filled by time.
I started L.A. Breakdown as a junior at UC Santa Cruz, in 1972. I was old for a junior at 24. Married at 19, a kid at 21, I’d been working as a warehouseman, and college was delayed a few years.
The novel was about street racing, my obsession in high school and for a few years after. The street racing scene in the mid-60s was a nightly carnival, hundreds of races across the 80-mile L.A. basin, from Watts, Compton, Gardena, and Long Beach, north to San Fernando and Pacoima, Burbank, Glendale, and Eagle Rock into the San Gabriel Valley and Downey and Santa Fe Springs. Sometimes for money, sometimes for kicks, or to defend the imaginary honor of your home drive-in. It was a loud nightly drama and a world I thought should be remembered.
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