Cody Barstow is a contributing editor to The Mojo City News. No one knows what a contributing editor is supposed to do, so he wanders around the shop a lot, drinks too much coffee, and can become quite a nuisance. However, he is also one hell of a writer when we can get him interested in something.

He's got several novels done, a shitload of screenplays, and he's done some remarkable advertising work as a copywriter in the past.

He lives with his wife, Amber, in downtown Mojo City. They throw very strange Halloween parties that involve yaks, and worry the neighbors with lavish frontyard barbeques that have no food involved. Once in a while, an ambulance will pull up to the house with lights flashing and siren wailing its mournful sound just to get the neighbors interested in the two people in the house; Cody behind the wheel. Cody's a volunteer EMT, and one hell of a good one. Something to do with the war, he says.

Cody did Vietnam. Volunteered. Wanted to learn about the thing the country was puking all over itself about in the late sixties and early seventies. He came back, whole in body. He never got spat on, but half of his old friends wouldn't talk to him again. He fell in love with the ones who would. He won't tell you if he killed someone there. He says you shouldn't ask the question. He wrote a screenplay about it but no one ever made it into a movie.

Cody's also written several novels. One's kind of autobiographical, but not. The other's pretty much science fiction.

He's got two BA degrees (one in English, the other in psychology), one Master's in Journalism, and a Ph.D. in Mass Communication. There's an incredible number of journalists and government officials who come to see him off-the-record for the perspective he has to offer ... because Cody's become a pro at conducting unconventional war (he leans heavily on his Vietnam experience in understanding the enemy, and pure creativity in approaching war-making), at public opinion, and at nearly any event-oriented situation. The feds are now consulting him about the anti-terrorism/Afghanistan involvement. A lot of conversation is now moving to discussions about the Sudan and Syria. Iran and Iraq are on the radar, but Cody's not saying much about it.

He moved to Oregon in the late nineties when Scott MacGregor bought The Mojo City News, and having happened on sample chapters from Cody's first novel posted on the Net, determined that he was the proper writer for the paper.

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