News regarding the release of the memoir, Swollen Appetite

The Bellyachers staging a fake press interview circa 2005.

There’s been a riveting interview held in my mind since I was a kid. Yesterday, when I dropped by Clio’s on Grand in Oakland to leave a store copy of Swollen Appetite, I spoke to the owner, Timothy Don, about using his space for a book launch party. He said, “Have you spent much time in Clio’s?”

I said, no. 

I liked the look on his face - kind of weary, kind of rueful, graciously patient. 

I nattered him up on ideas for bringing business to Clio’s and that my book launch would include live, mostly acoustic music, along with a few readings from the memoir. I was surprised I wasn’t more scared about trying to impress him. He said he didn’t like having book readings and would be more inclined to book an interview with me about the book, followed by a Q&A with the audience. 

On my walk this morning, I schemed about who I could get to interview me—who would be entertaining and have a draw. In my fantasy-rich mind, I reached out to several celebrities I have no access to, then more reasonably landed on a friend who is super funny and smart and who writes. She’s a big deal to me. After I check with her, we’ll see where this lands.

Other ideas: Melodee Lounge karaoke party, 90s-style—Brian suggested I read a tat from the book over Blondie’s rap in Rapture. It's not the 90s, but have we ever been period-strict?

The Audible version of Swollen Appetite is available now, and the paperback will be available on June 6th! Here is a new audiobook preview featuring the beautiful and anonymous 1990s doppelganger, produced, edited, and filmed by multi-talented and right cute, Brian Mello.

Several folks who have listened to it have asked, “How did you remember so many itty-bitty details from so long ago?” The answer is addressed in the back of the paperback book:

The inspiration for Swollen Appetite 

 Since 1996, I have been telling a 15-minute version of this memoir in a setting with others like me who seek support for alcohol use disorder. We tend to have attention and anxiety issues as well, and once upon a time, in the 1940s, when this support group came into existence, those 15 minutes were called a pitch. Uniquely qualified, we break down our personal stories into bite-sized pieces: what it was like when we were using, what happened, and what it’s like now that we’re sober. 

I needed more time. I needed to pull the corners of my page across a parking lot and cover it with story after story. Not having to convince anyone of anything other than reading the next page. The brave woman I was in the 1990s needed more attention than I could give her. She took a lot of chances and risked her life to get me to where I am now: alive and creative. Swollen Appetite is my amends to her - a woman out of her depth and mind - but damn, wasn’t she something?

Disclaimers 

I changed the names of some folks but not others. For those with whom I had serious relationships or anyone I thought might want their identity protected, I gave a pseudonym. It’s tricky talking about the past. There’s no factual way to describe a perspective or a memory. I rendered from old journals written by a drunk and emotionally distraught narrator, my first 4th Step, a mountain of out-of-focus photographs, and a few precious letters. There are actual recordings of poems I wrote in the ‘90s from old cassette tapes that I transferred to digital and loaded onto my website, even though they make me cringe. I owed the reader/listener the real deal. There are no videos, no transcripts, no documented proof that I felt like what I said I felt like. Or that you said what I said you said. There’s just me telling the reader what I know about myself way back when. I hope it makes you think about yourself when you were on the cusp of becoming whoever you became.

Many people who were a part of my life, sometimes a big part of my life, did not make it into this book. It wasn’t because I didn’t remember them, or they weren’t important. I chose whom to include based on keeping the story moving. Several folks don’t look too good in this telling, especially me. Whatever category you fall into, know that I love you or, at the very least, want to thank you for being in my life. The light that flared when you set your souls on fire lit my way home.