Hi. You have found my Usta page. For that, I thank you.
Perhaps you remember my Heartbeat Reggae Show on KCSB-FM in Santa Barbara. I usta do that.
Or my Bluebeat Blues Show, which went from KBLS in Santa Barbara to KOTR in Cambria and stayed there for ten years. I usta do that, too.
Perhaps my bilingual half-hour German Alternative News in SB? Hardly anyone listened, but I did that for a couple of years.
The overnight years at KIST? When the Highway Patrol called in at midnight to request “Ventura Highway” by America? EVERY midnight, I swear. I usta play that for them. Gonna say no to a cop?
The Jazz at KMGQ? The great years as a pirate on Excellent Radio, somewhere along California´s Central Coast. Yup. Usta do that.
Wrote lots of articles about music and musicians for music rags, wrote ad copy for radio ads, wrote lots of letters explaining why the check has been in the mail for a while.
And for the past sixteen or seventeen years, I have been working for German radio and sometimes TV as a correspondent, a reporter-at-large, the go-to guy for those many occasions when the salaried reporter is not on the job because it´s after quitting time, the weekend or he just does not want to be bothered.
Plus, for many years I have been writing magazine articles and illustrating them with my photos, and I have been writing books. In German. Fiction and non-fiction. The three non-fiction books in what the prestigious German weekly "Die Zeit" called the "Rock-n-Road series" deal with American music along American highways. Geier, my first foray into fiction, earned a nomination as Best Debut by the renowned German association of mystery writers, Das Syndikat. More, as they say, is to come. Three new manuscripts are making the rounds, a project (in English!) is in the works. Today Germany, tomorrow ze vorld? Hopefully.
The books are on the following pages. In German.Why in the world would a person living (very happily) in California´s coastal region go and write stuff in German?
Because I want to. So dust off the German you learned at school and turn the page. Willkommen!
Peter J. Kraus
Santa Maria, California
Peter J. Kraus, p.j.kraus@verizon.net
Webdesign by Michael T. Kraus 2003