The “war,” the Vietnam War that is, became the defining event of my generation of the 1960s. “Winter Kept Us Warm,” the title from the fifth line of The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot, is my homage to those days of the ever-receding past. We came of age at a time of youth rebellion against the draft and the war, free love, and occasional pot smoking. Like Bob, the narrator of my novel, I was born in a suburb of LA and won a scholarship to the Chouinard Art Institute. Following the assassination of JFK, I gave up art to go east to Washington, DC to study economics at university. I wanted to follow in the late president’s footsteps and help suffering humanity. Instead, I got a draft notice. But “once an artist, always an artist.” I returned to my first love and now reside in San Diego working a full-time visual artist.