Cochran originally founded the
publishing house Conlan Press in
Montara, California in 2005 to market and publish the works of
Peter Beagle; in 2011, it was expanding to additional authors. By 2016, Cochran's self-published bio at Conlan Press also listed him as "an award-winning writer, artist, musician, producer, and performer [...] comic book writer-artist [...] and a graduate of the
Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College".
Creative work Credited as Freff, Cochran designed the
cover art for
Galaxy Science Fiction January and March 1975 issues.
Non-fiction In 1984, Cochran was a US-based
correspondent for
BBC2's TV series
Micro Live (credited as "Freff"), reporting on
telephony and computing in the United States. By 1993 and through at least 2000, Cochran wrote
opinion pieces in a series called
Creative Options; entrants were published in
Keyboard magazine and the bulletin of the
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Cochran wrote the
owner's manuals for
Alesis' NanoPiano and NanoBass, and while the style of their prose was praised in 1998 by
Electronic Musician, they were also found lacking in a technical sense.
Peter S. Beagle By 2011, Cochran was the publisher for
Peter S. Beagle, author of the 1968 novel
The Last Unicorn. Cochran himself was featured on the
audio commentary for
The Last Unicorn Blu-ray, noted for "repeatedly plugging of a
Last Unicorn comic". In early 2016, Cochran was listed as a publisher and executive editor for
Conlan Press, a publishing house he founded that described itself as "launched in 2005 as a way to help author Peter S. Beagle". In 2015, Beagle
sued Cochran for (equivalent to about $M in ), "disgorgement of illegal gains and restitution, and dissolution of two corporations he co-owns with Cochran, Avicenna Development Corporation, and Conlan Press, Inc." On June 21, 2019, Judge Michael M. Markman of the
Alameda County Superior Court found in favor of Beagle, awarding attorneys' fees plus for "
financial elder abuse,
fraud,
breach of fiduciary duty, and
defamation." In his decision, Markman said of Cochran, "[he] presents as an extremely intelligent, articular, overly-aggressive hustler and pitch-man. Cochran's written work product attempting to promote Beagle's work is written as Cochran speaks – with a flair for the dramatic that is at best loosely based in truth." On March 23, 2021, Beagle regained from Cochran the
intellectual property rights to his works. Despite
discharging his debts to Beagle via
bankruptcy, Cochran appealed his sentence "as a means of disputing Beagle's claims of financial elder abuse, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and defamation." In December 2021, a
California Court of Appeal did not rule on the matter, dismissing his appeal as moot.
Published works • • • • • ==References==