Hello.
I am Rick Rice, legally Ricky Alan Rice, and also known as Rick Alan Rice, or simply RAR.
I am a writer, in all kinds of ways. I began my professional life as a journalist – a beat reporter on a small daily newspaper in Indiana, and a weekend feature editor. I once considered Colorado my home state, so when I got the opportunity, I left Indiana – I had been there, initially, as a graduate student at Ball State University, in Muncie – and returned to Colorado. For several years I worked as a reporter, feature writer, and columnist on weekly publications in Boulder, Colorado.
After seven years in Boulder, I moved again, to San Francisco by way of Juneau, Alaska. I had a friend who was teaching at the University of Alaska-Juneau, and for eight months I worked on the first of my ATWOOD trilogy, while paying my way with work in a furniture store, and doing desktop publishing through the university.
I moved to San Francisco in 1984, couldn’t land a full-time writing job, so took a job with Viacom, which was building out the cable TV system in San Francisco. I also freelanced articles for small film-focused magazines, and traveled coast-to-coast developing case studies for communities considering bond issues for hospital projects.
I worked in the corporate training industry, developing training materials in negotiations and conflict resolution for Fortune 100 companies, and then began developing proposals for land planning and environmental engineering projects.
I became a certified technical writer in 1998, which opened doors for me in the software industry. I have worked with many of the large tech companies, including Meta, Cisco Systems, NTT Data, Teradata, Dell Technologies, OSIsoft (AVEVA) and other.
I worked for the Bechtel corporation for a number of years, working with all their divisions, developing proposals and writing work and safety plans, and feasibility studies. Then I spent years developing proposals for other national AEC firms, including extensive work with defense industry contractors (federal government work). I worked on contract with numerous California state agencies. Working with KPMG, I developed the initial feasibility study for California’s historic greenhouse gas (cap and trade) trading system.
During all that time, I was busy writing novels and screenplays, and writing hundreds of musical compositions. I am primarily a guitar player, but I play piano and sax and other instruments, and I sing. I maintain a home recording studio and regularly publish new material. That which is available on Soundcloud can be accessed from this website (see the RAR music link in the header).
While I have a lot of interests, telling stories is my favorite thing to do. Almost all of my songs are story songs. I seem to like stories about outsiders, or people who feel they are outside of the mainstream, disadvantaged in some way. I am pretty political, a classic bleeding-heart liberal, though these days I would be classified a Democratic-Socialist.
Being old, I am naturally “old school” in my writing preferences. I am a big fan of the big breath writers. I have loved Richard Ford, Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, and John Irving. Going further back, I really loved Mark Twain and Zane Grey and Sinclair Lewis and Mickey Spillane and Thomas Wolfe and Faulkner. (You ever notice that nobody ever seems to reference him using his first name. He is just “Faulkner”, like “Elvis” or “Madonna”). I enjoy the old writing style from Ayn Rand. I have enjoyed Pynchon, another guy who can get by on his last name. I have loved Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and many others if I really thought about it. Writers from this century that I have enjoyed include Rachel Kushner and Paul Beatty.
My own writing would be impossible to classify. I have never been particularly interested in genre fiction. In fact, I think I suspect that it is formulaic factory output, like the kind of thing you get from Richard Patterson, and his type of operations. I really hate that whole publishing concept. I’m pretty judgmental, hate anyone I perceive to be a “hack”.
I like stories about ordinary humans who struggle with ordinary things, though in many of my tales very unordinary things tend to complicate their worlds. I love occult tales and science fiction narratives. I have a soft spot for sentimental yarns. I love pioneers and cowboys, but I am also very interested in modern calamity. I enjoy office intrigue, and crime.
I love baseball as much as I love anything. Haven’t written much about it, but I’m young, stuff could happen.
– RAR