The deadline for Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail was nearly upon us and we had reserved press time at a cheap printer in Reno to rush out the book in time for Nixon’s second inauguration. (Look here for part one of this series.) Ruby red grapefruit and a Nagra tape recorder I was [...]

Writers sometimes suffer bouts of major paralysis. They want to write, are desperate to get down something great, but it’s just not coming easily, in fact not at all. No one had a worse case of writer’s block than Hunter S. Thompson. After the presidential election of November, 1972, his contractual deadline for Fear and [...]

Hunter S. Thompson The first time I met Hunter Thompson he handed me a quiver of four-foot roman candles and said “Hold this.” I did and he lit them. We were in Palm Springs, standing poolside at an ultra private estate, there for a Rolling Stone Magazine board meeting. Hunter had just secretly spiked the [...]