The End Of The World: Introduction by Jutka Mandoki, MA.

Let me make this short and sweet, (though bitter would suit as well). The usual. Ed Willard was born and grew up in a small village outside of Troy NY. It was called Pleasantdale, (not necessarily, another story). He was most certainly the ‘black sheep’ of his family. His friends and Ed were the vanguard of the hippy movement there. They experimented with LSD and every other drug they could get their hands on. This is another story, which will perhaps be in Ed’s third novel. His first trip out to San Francisco was in 1969, and to get there, he and three friends stole the car of a nark they knew, (actually his mother’s ’67 Impala), and made the trip through the deep South, eventually selling the car in Nuevo Laredo for a couple of kilos of good weed which they sold, giving them the bread to get out here, via LA. Ed then and still, calls that Summer ‘The Summer of Speed’, (as distinguished from ’67, ‘Summer of Love’). After more lurid adventures over the course of the next few years, Ed moved to San Francisco to stay in 1974 and has lived there ever since. Ed wants to travel. He has been stuck there like glue in amber for too many years and this shall soon change. End of Story.