Writing Samples

Retail Copy

Cost Plus World Market,
run date 4/22/95, Chronicle

Position at Cost Plus: Copy Chief

Headline: Chairs: From Bali to Brazil Cost Plus Fisherman's Wharf Grand Re-Opening

Copy: (subhead) Chairs from all over the Globe
Exotic chairs, classic chairs, chairs for the dining table, accent chairs for the hall or living room. Big comfortable cozy chairs. Chairs from all over the globe. All of them amazingly affordable. And chairs aren't all--Cost Plus offers an ever-changing mix of more than 20,000 products from over 40 countries: exotic collectibles, aisles full of dinner and glassware, delicious gourmet items, wine and beer, 60 different gourmet coffees, unique clothing and accessories, and of course, our huge selection of furniture. We've spent over a year remodeling our historic location at Taylor and Bay and are excited to show off our new prototype store. There will be free gourmet tastings all weekend. So come down to Cost Plus. Where you can STILL afford to be different.

Sample price point: Rajah Stick Chair
Rajah means Ôking,' and you'll feel like royalty when you sit in this stylish cane-seat chair. Handcrafted in Bali using recycled wood, it features a rounded back crafted of vertical wood slats. $129

Food copy (Holiday insert): Cost Plus Panache Hot Chocolate
Inspired by the rich and elegant taste of European chocolates, Panache Gourmet Cocoas combine the finest, purest ingredients to create exquisite cocoas of unparalleled aroma and flavor. Serve Panache Gourmet Cocoas hot for a thrilling taste treat on a chilly day, or serve cold for a delicious and refreshing warm-weather smoothie. 99.9% caffeine free. $6.99 1 lb. canister.

Promotional Writing

Comedyworld.com
Ken Ober Radio Hour

Position: Managing Editor

Bio sample: 2 of 18

Ken Ober Radio Hour
Rip it up with a scathing dose of no-nonsense attitude from the man who spent years preparing for radio-domination by toiling as the host of MTV's Remote Control. Ober and his crew go balls-out every afternoon with a freewheeling show which includes raucous interviews with stars like James Brown, and regular features such as Embarrassing Drinking Stories and Sex Tricks. As Ober describes it himself: "We touch the things that touch you. Then we wash our hands."

Drastic Radio (with Mark Ebner)
Aggressive, unrelenting, fearless and funny, Mark Ebner brings us his extreme brand of journalism. Exposing a little of himself and a lot of the truth, Ebner and his Clubhouse regulars huddle up each weekend to bring you a potpourri of tasty topics. From underbelly Hollywood news and personalities to drugs, sports studs, racist hatemongers and state-of-the-art pornography, Ebner constantly straddles the thin line between love and hate. You don't want to miss a minute.

Business Writing - web

Extension11.com -- a web development company

Business page: Expertise Business
Every business solution must ensure that ideas give rise to results. An intelligent interface will produce results, whether augmented sales, brand recognition or successful product rollout. Whether your medium is web or wireless, your solution demands an intelligent interface. At extension11, this intelligence leads to innovation. We are currently developing an "individual intranet" which will allow our clients to better support their most valuable asset -- human capital. Employees will be able to easily participate in online training and stay up-do-date on corporate communications while managers will be able to track accountability and other pertinent human resource issues.

Fiction

From my published novel, The Patricidal Bedside Companion, St. Martin's Press, 1994

(Riley, the protagonist, is at a metal club in Southern California waiting for a girl he met at a cafe the previous evening. He's bored, and his mind wanders off into an absurd anthropology fantasy.)

I enter the worship hall at 22:00 PST. Many of the tribespeople have already arrived, adorned in their ritualistic garb of black-dyed steer hide, skintight leggings, thick canvaslike trousers, and assorted varieties of leather boots and athletic shoes. The males and females have no standard dress code in respect to their sex. The adornments of face paints, jewelry, and hairstyle are not delimited by sexual boundaries.

The imagery of the ritual revolves around death and sex, both strongly associated with violence. At one end of the hall is the raised pulpit or alter. I have been educated as to what to expect by my native informant: the high priest screams his incantations (his sermons of aggression) to the congregation in the pit below the dais; the worshipers dance a ritualistic, violent, and sexual dance that symbolizes their disillusionment with and furor toward the god of putrescence and decay, Establishment. The dance is also a fertility rite, designed to sexually stimulate and enhance all those who participate. The music is a rhythmic incantation that, when performed correctly, appeases the surly rock and roll god, Metal. If the rite is performed with exceptional skill, Metal will bless the Temple with holiness, the congregation with sex, drugs, and money, and the shamans with immortality.

Now is the time of reckoning; the ritual begins. Immediately the tribespeople have begun to writhe in an aggressive, chaotic dance that is drawing blood from their fellow worshipers. Many of these primitives are dropping from exhaustion, some are vomiting from the potions ingested prior to the ceremony, and many are standing around and observing their fellows jump wildly in front of the dais....