Bev and I both liked LA. It was the modern concept of a city, for better or worse, spread out over something like a hundred mile radius, automobile dependent. In the middle sixties it was a big attraction for people involved in the dramatically growing counterculture movement. I had business with movie producers, and I wanted to add writing original screenplays to novel writing. One New Yorker warned, “You can't write in California—your brain will turn to mush under the hot sun.”
        We found a place in Malibu, a house that hovered over the beach on pilings—Pacific Coast Highway on one side, the Pacific Ocean on the other side. It was one of a group of houses around a small half-moon bay across the highway from Latigo Canyon Road. At high tide, surf swashed up under the house.
        I became friends with two long-time Malibu writers: Lou Shaw and Curtis Zahn. Curtis held writers workshops at his home periodically and I attended a few. Lou was writing TV shows such as “Raw Hide,” and preparing to mount an LA production of the satirical stage play “MacBird” by Barbara Garson; I became one of his investors.
        Although Herb Alexander had urged me to find a place to call home, he was dubious about Malibu. “Do they have police, firemen, schools?” I assured him Malibu was a functioning municipality as well as a storied hotspot. “It feels like home to me,” I said. “Well,” he said, “buy a house and plant yourself, get ready. The cover of your next novel is going to be featured on the cover of Publishers Weekly Magazine.”


        The notation that One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding sold 840,000 copies signaled that Poorboy at the Party—on the wings of a major promotion campaign—was expected to sell many more times that number.
        In Malibu, I became furiously busy, working on a novel that would become the third of the J.C. and Kitten series, fielding offers from a variety of movie producers interested in adapting The Maniac Responsible, talking about doing an original screenplay. I turned down an offer to do a script about Baby Face Nelson and other Mafia gangsters, though. I wasn't motivated to immerse myself in such characters, and besides, a director from Canada, Ron Kelly, came to Malibu to talk about collaborating on a screenplay of Maniac. He stayed at my house for about six weeks. The New York Times Sunday Magazine asked if I would go to Indianapolis and do an article (“Culture Comes to Indianapolis” Dec. 23, 1967) and when that was a success, they asked if I'd do another about the lead singer of The Doors, Jim Morrison.

                                7