From an early age, I sensed a mysterious intangible in San Francisco, an intertwining of East and West, romance and reality, cool gray fog and warm golden sunshine. This led me to begin my writing career by exploring the nooks and alleyways where the soul of the city dwelt. Inspired by echoes of the Gold Rush found in Jackson Square and tales of the city told by generations of writers, I wrote Walking San Francisco on the Barbary Coast Trail, a guide to a walking trail I designed and an early history of the city. A few years later, the trail of my imagination became a path marked with bronze medallions and arrows, and now the Barbary Coast Trail connects twenty of the city’s most important historic sites.

Since then, my writing has expanded to far off places and ancient eras. I’ve conjured a sea voyage to Shanghai in the 1930s, a family in peril during the Great Recession, and a puzzling mystery of Biblical proportions set in ancient Jerusalem.

Still, my heart still resides in the City by the Bay . . .