Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, as a child he imagined he would be a brain surgeon, until a spirit-crushing experience convinced him that in order to be a brain surgeon he would have to actually attend school, work hard, and master basic mathematics. After a severe head trauma, he chose instead to write stories and learn the high art of cocktail mixing, and spent the next twenty years in a pleasant haze of fiction and booze. He is the creator of the zine The Inner Swine, and the author of the books Lifers, The Freaks are Winning, The Electric Church, and The Digital Plague, not to mention numerous short stories.