About

Richard Lewis Mater was born in England and grew up in California, New Jersey, and Munich, Germany. Profoundly influenced as a teenager by the works of Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, and Ernest Hemingway, he aspired to someday become a writer.

Mater entered college in the 1960s, but his academic pursuits were soon interrupted by his embrace of sex, drugs, and revolution. A committed anti-Vietnam War activist, he served as a college chapter chairman of National Student Mobe; was suspended from school for his role in actions by SDS (Students for a Democratic Society); and spent time in jail with his hero, Chicago Seven defendant Abbie Hoffman.

Following college, Mater travelled the U.S. extensively, living out of his VW bus. He supported himself with factory jobs, restaurant employment, pumping gas, manning retail counters, serving as a U.S. Census Worker, and doing freelance writing for various publications.

After living for a time in the San Francisco Bay Area, he moved to Hollywood, where he re-invented himself, working in local television news and programming, and earning an Emmy nomination. That was followed by a multi-decade career in network television, which continues to this day.

Beat

It’s 1976, and the counterculture has taken a dark turn in San Francisco, where former ‘60s revolutionary Billy, now a 27-year-old aspiring writer and small-time drug dealer, sells T-shirts at a Haight-Ashbury shop by day, while reading Camus and Kerouac behind the counter. By night, he sells cocaine and Quaaludes at bars, cafes, and clubs around town.

Billy and his best friend Manny—a quick-witted rock journalist—hang out in North Beach coffee houses, hit the nightlife, pursue women, and otherwise compete in an escalating match of one-upmanship. Along the way, they interact with a colorful parade of sexually liberated artists, musicians, scene makers, and hangers-on, led by a vivid cast of female characters: Ti, brash, young, and in over her head; Lannie, a secretive self-destructive beauty; Constantina, a sharp-tongued intellectual who holds more than a few secrets of her own; and Delaney, who earns big-time cash acting out sexual fantasies and fetishes for middle-aged men at a high-priced S&M club.

But medicated kicks meet sober reality when a shocking suicide triggers a series of events leading Billy to a personal reckoning, as he tries to redefine himself in the face of spiritual dissolution, lost love, and the scrutiny of his own conscience.