I was born in the city of Philadelphia. When I was 13, my parents moved to California and, upon reflection, I decided to accompany them. It was a lucky thing I did, too; otherwise, the commute to UCLA would have been quite difficult. I eventually graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor's degree in Astronomy.

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My first short story appeared in 1965, when I was 18 and still in college. Over the next few years more stories appeared. My first job out of college was as a civilian space scientist for the U.S. Navy, but after several years I left to try writing full time. I only regretted the move every other Thursday, when I would have gotten paid.

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After several years of genteel poverty, I took a job as writer/editor for a pornographic humor paper, the San Francisco Ball. In retrospect, this was a great crucible; deadline pressure forced me to learn to make my writing dirty, funny, and one draft. Nowadays the dirty is no longer a priority, the funny is more occasional, and I do more drafts, but that great practice taught me invaluable lessons.

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At about this time, too, I began selling novels on a regular basis. While I have, from time to time, held down other full-time employment (I helped design the Star Trek: The Next Generation computer game "A Final Unity" for Spectrum HoloByte and have also written manuals and game design documents for Maxis), my real love is fiction writing.

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My first wife was fellow author Kathleen Sky. Our medieval-style wedding was a Saturday morning program item at the 1972 World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles. In the 10+ years of our marriage, in addition to our individual works, we collaborated on a pair of stories ("Painting the Roses Red" and "The Devil Behind the Leaves") about the diMedicis, a family of interstellar swindlers. We also co-authored the first edition of the highly successful nonfiction book, The Business of Being a Writer, based on a class we'd taught at California State University at Northridge.

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My current wife is fellow author Mary Mason. Our wedding took place the night before EclectiCon 1 in Sacramento, at which I was the Guest of Honor. We currently live east of Oakland, California. So far we've co-authored two books in the Rehumanization of Jade Darcy series: Jade Darcy and the Affair of Honor and Jade Darcy and the Zen Pirates. More books in this series are planned.

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I've lived with cats all my adult life. Intellectually, I enjoy Broadway musical albums and surrealist art. I'm also proud to declare myself an atheist.

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I served the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as editor of the SFWA Bulletin and as SFWA's Western Regional Director.