Round Three!

Shermy made it to Round Three!

Now he's up against The Fionavar Tapestry, which, according to the information I've uncovered using the techniques of corporate-style espionage (and by Googling) is another tremendously popular book. In fact, in her blurb on the front Marion Zimmer Bradley said that it is "one of those rare books that could change your perception of the world forever afterward." What if a person doesn't want their perceptions changed? What if a person just wants to learn to cook a half decent meal and to maybe get a girl (or two) and also wants a little justice for the bullied to make it all go down smoothly? In other words, what about Sherm!?

For Sherm and all young justice-seekers like him who are totally neglected in our culture that prizes perception changes over poor-to-moderate detecting skills and the ability to create a decent bowl of soup and craft a good pick-up line, (and for all those who don't have any movies named after them), I say, VOTE FOR SHERM.

Oh, and supreme thanks for those who have been so diligent in voting. I'm hoping one of you gets the 64 books and/or the trip to Bermuda. Because you deserve it.

Dedication and Competition

remember that competition between Getting the Girl and that other book? Well, Getting the Girl won! Yes. Thanks to you, Sherman had increased self-esteem, if not increased self-awareness, for one week.

The bad news? My mother has informed me that we've been set against Wicked. Yes, the immensely popular book by Gregory Maguire. And we are getting whupped. At last count we had 160 and the Maguire juggernaut had 263 or some nonsense like that. My mom can't do it alone! She's been voting as often as she can, but she's only one (super) woman! Please consider voting (many, many times). What's in it for you? If you visit the Polls page and vote for your favourite book in every matchup you have a chance to win ALL 64 books entered in the tournament AND a 7-Day vacation to the Bahamas. Shall I bold that last part for you? AND a 7-Day vacation to the Bahamas! A vacation you'll enjoy even more if you know you did right by Sherman Mack. Also, voting for Sherman is your chance to see Getting triumph over Wicked.

Vote for Sherm!

In other news, I told my husband I'm dedicating the new novel, due out next winter, to him and asked him if he had any special instructions for the wording. He became very serious for a moment.

"How about 'For James, Samurai Husband'?" he proposed.

"Uh..." I said.

He thought some more.

"Or what about 'For James, the greatest man who ever lived'?"

"It's got a certain something," I replied.

He trained another long gaze into the middle distance.

"I know. 'For James. A good husband. A great steelheader.'"

"That's the one," I said.

Thank you all for your continued attention to keeping Sherm in the race.

xox

Ten Easy Steps for Managing Pre-Publication Stress

Do you have a book coming out soon? Are your nerves messing with your personal equilibrium? Here are ten simple techniques I’ve found to ease the pain.

#1. Go to drug store and buy not one, not two, but three beginner workout videos (pilates, yoga and something to do with jumping up and down and eating right). Watch one, find it a bit tough and quit ten minutes in, explaining that it’s stressing you out. Take a nap.

#2. Download Stephen King’s Under the Dome from Audible. At 34 hours long, it’s a good investment. Start listening to it on your iPod while walking the dog. At night. In the woods. When you emerge alive to find that there is no dome covering your town and no pigdog of a second selectman bent on your destruction, feel grateful. Listen compulsively to the book (at least three hours per day, preferably more) until the unforgiving pace of the horror gives you nightmares and upset stomach and you find that you’ve forgotten the imminent release of your book.

#3. When Barbara’s Jalapeno Cheese Puffs go on sale, buy them all. Then eat them. Feel overwhelmed at the quantities of cheese dust left behind on your oversized hoody and by your severe case of what’s technically referred to as “Doodle Bloat”. Remember that you have those three new workout videos and figure that works out to a draw.

#4. Buy a pair of black waxed skinny jeans. Just do it. No, it doesn’t matter that they don’t go with anything you own and that because you never do your exercise videos you are not in any condition to wear low waisted pants. The important thing is that the discomfort of wearing them will be a major distraction from all else that ails you, including blood sugar trouble from the cheese puffs and an anxiety disorder caused by listening to Under the Dome for several hours each day.

#5. Mail off multiple advance copies of your work. One hour later, start worrying that people didn’t like it. Let the fear ramp up for twelve to twenty-four hours. Then give up all your hopes for the book you ripped your heart out to write. Because hell with it. You just fell into this writing thing. You never expected it to work out. And anyway, you don’t care. You could be perfectly happy working for the cable company as a… cable company worker. Those lucky ducks have pensions and benefits and all sorts of things. Not like writers. All writers get is spittle in the eye.

#6. Get some nice feedback. Feel all will be well and that the year or two or four you spent writing the book was well worth it. One person likes it and that's all that matters. Maybe it will be useful. Start to feel nearly ebullient at the prospects for your book. Lots of people will like it. There will be film deals! About the Author documentaries! Maybe it will take up near permanent residence on bestseller lists! You may end up purchasing an estate near Lake Cuomo. No, that’s not right. Wasn’t that the name of a governor of New York? You won’t fit in with George and his friends if you can’t even get the name of the lake right. Also, will they expect you to speak French? What’s that? Johnny Depp lives in the south of France and George lives in Italy? Is Italian easier to learn than French? Go to library and take out instructional CDs to help you learn both languages, just in case.

#7. Get some feedback that feels a little lukewarm. FREAK OUT. What exactly did she mean by “It was pretty good.”??? Rip off the waxed skinny jeans that you’ve been wearing around the house in an attempt to look more like someone Bono might talk to if you met him at George or Johnny’s place. Put on track pants. Old ones with bagged out seat and knees. Write a screed of some kind. Send it to newspaper in response to a completely unrelated article.

#8. Go online and print off application forms for farrier college.

#9. Try to volunteer for an NGO working in war-torn, poverty-stricken country. Get turned away by the person on the other end of the phone with the comment that “we’ve got enough problems on our hands”. Decide that next time you won’t talk so much about what you’ve learned about what happens when New England towns get trapped under invisible domes and how you hope to bring that knowledge to your work with Crisis Doctors Internationale even though you are pretty freaked out about the imminent release of your new book and just generally have a lot on your mind.

#10. Finally, having listened to all 34 hours of Under the Dome and unable to eat any more cheese puffs or fit into your waxed skinnys, start a new book. One that you know will not give you as much trouble as the last one. Remember that, in the immortal words of Meg Cabot: You are not a hundred dollar bill. Not everyone is going to like you. The book is done and the response is out of your hands. Decide Somerset Maugham had the right idea when he left on year long round the world voyages upon publication of any new book.

P.S. If you are a contest winner, please note that the above was intended to be tongue-in-cheek. You are under no obligation to tell me what you thought of the book. Unless you enjoyed it. In that case, please contact George and Johnny's realtors and ask them about properties suitable for a thirty-five year old thirteen foot Trillium travel trailer (electrical hook-up and running water a must!) that are within walking-to-brunch distance of Depp or Clooney's place. Not both obviously. I do know that much about Europe.

Vote for Pedro... I mean

vote for Getting the Girl!

Getting the Girl is apparently embroiled in some sort of publisher-sponsored death match. Getting the Girl (and Sherman) are probably getting pulverized by their fierce competitor: A Fistful of Charms. (Why do we have to go up against the book with "fist" in the title. Yeesh.) If you scroll down the list, Sherm and I are on Team "Off The Shelf" which is probably a bad sign. I think I'd rather be on "Team Number One Bestseller" or "Team End Caps". But never mind.

Please vote for Getting. Sherman has enough complexes without getting knocked out in the first round like one of those depressing Jeopardy contestants whom you just know will never get over the humiliation.

Oh, and thanks everyone for your notes and facebook comments about Nice Recovery. I ended up sending out 15 ARCs and have a list of people for if I get any extras to give away.

xox

About the New Book

A couple of weeks ago a friend called and asked if I was on drugs.

“Excuse me?” I said, somewhat offended.

“My friend said she heard you were on drugs.”

“Uh, no,” I replied.

And then it dawned on me. The new book. There had been a write-up in a book news magazine.

I tried to explain. “I am not on drugs. At least, not any more. Anyway, I was more of a drinker, really.”

I could sense my friend trying to come up with a polite response and I could understand her difficulty. You see, I’m a clean-living unit. I haven’t had a drink or done any drugs since I was twenty years old. That’s twenty years ago now. Sometimes I forget that I ever had a drinking problem.
But I did. I had a serious problem. That's what the new book is about.

Here is the cover:



Isn't it cool? Please note that is not a photo of me. I was never that well dressed or composed while drinking. I was, however, usually quite colour-coordinated, so that part is true.

This morning I gave a semi-incoherent introduction to the book at the BC Booksellers Breakfast. "Coming out" in public as a recovering alcoholic felt awkward. I'm not sure I've quite figured out how to talk about it yet.

I never set out to write about myself. A couple of years ago my agent asked if I had any ideas for a non-fiction book. I said I thought a lighter side of recovery book for young people could be good. You know: what to expect when you’re in detox, Treatment Center 101, interviews with young people in recovery, etc. I would write a little bit of my own experiences in there to flesh it out.

Well, the book found a great publisher, and I was asked to write more of my story and then a little more. Before I knew it, the book contained nearly 200 pages of the Susan Juby Drinky Pants Chronicles as well as another 100 or so pages about recovery and other people’s experiences. (I wanted to call the book: Drinky Pants: A Quitters Tale, but was talked out of it by more sensible people).

As I wrote I got more and more anxious. Was I really going to tell people this stuff? I’d kept my history as a drinker and drug user private. I have friends that I’ve known for nearly twenty years who have no idea why I don’t drink. Was I really the right person to write a book like this? It’s not like I had some spectacular drinking history that involves dead people, trips to Betty Ford or a habit of turning tricks in truck stop bathrooms.

Upon reflection I'd have to say that one of the reasons I wrote it is that the majority of the people entering recovery (i.e. treatment, twelve step programs, addictions counseling) are young now. The average age of people seeking treatment for addiction has dropped by nearly thirty years in the last thirty years. People are hitting bottom early and, if they’re anything like me, they equate being sober with being bored, and being bored as only marginally preferable to being dead.

The truth is that being sober isn't bad (in fact, it's wonderful), but it takes some getting used to. That was a part that seemed to be missing in a lot of the books about addiction. Many books seemed to end with a sort of "sober ever after" conclusion or they focused on relapses. Both kinds of stories are important and the emphasis on the addiction part makes sense. Lots of addicts and alcoholics describe their “love affairs” with their substance of choice. When one party leaves the relationship, the story is over.

But it’s not, really. Much to my chagrin, I didn’t disappear or get instantly normal or well-adjusted when I quit drinking at twenty. I just got left with my very, very uncomfortable and immature self. Then I had to begin the journey of growing up without drugs and alcohol. I’d been using them as my main coping mechanism since I was thirteen years old. I hadn’t gone a week in seven years without having at least one blackout, or, as I thought of them "personal holiday time". Relentless reality was a bit of an adjustment.

The book is about what it’s like to sober up when you are young and most people your age are just starting to experience drugs and alcohol. I was never of legal drinking age in the U.S. and could only drink in bars in Canada for just over a year.

Young people who are faced with the prospect of sobering up may not have lost all that much "stuff" in the traditional sense because they never had it to begin with. Losing your crappy job at the pet food store is not the same as losing your house and kids. That said, even though teenaged drinkers and druggers don’t get a chance to accumulate much materially, our losses are as real as any others. Passions, self-respect, friends, relationships, trust, hopes for the future. All of it gets damaged or lost.

Nice Recovery is the story of why I started drinking at thirteen, what I loved about it, what it did for me, and ultimately, what it took away. Drugs are part of my story, but for me they were a bit like the bacon-wrapped scallop appetizer before a steak dinner. They made everything a little fancier and more fun, but booze was always my main course.

After I sobered up I slowly discovered that life outside of the bottle is full of possibilities. One thing sobriety gives those of us who pursue it is the opportunity to get back some of what we've lost. Sometimes we also get things we never dared to hope for. For example, I could never have become a writer if I hadn't sobered up. If you ever read any of the deathsuckingly awful poetry I wrote while loaded, you'd agree.

The final third (and my favourite part) of Nice Recovery is based on research and dozens of interviews I did with young people in recovery. The final part of the book explores a variety of recovery options such as treatment centers, twelve step and other programs, as well as therapeutic methods. Those chapters alternate with longer profiles of young people in recovery, all of whom float my inspirational boat. The people I interviewed come from a variety of backgrounds and are recovering from addictions to crystal meth, pot, heroin, ecstasy, pharmaceuticals of all descriptions, as well as alcohol. What I learned from them is that the underlying issues are the same, no matter what you've been into or where it has taken you.

For anyone worried about their role in my memoir (which I’ve begun to pronounce the French way so as to seem more sophisticated) set your mind at ease. I’ve changed all names and combined identities and changed chronologies. The book is not intended to be an expose of anyone other than me. It’s intended to track one person’s journey through adolescent addiction into recovery in the hopes that it might offer solace or at least entertainment to people who are struggling or people who know people who are struggling with addiction. I hope it will also be interesting for people who want to know what recovery's about. (Be forewarned: I was kind of a screw-up in the early days. The title "Nice Recovery" refers to the people I interviewed and the larger goal we seek as opposed to me and how awesome I am.)

I hope the book will be useful. Even though it has given me many a sleepless night (Oh my god, did I really write that? Am I crazy? What will people think? Holy god, my left eye has been twitching for three months!) it has also reminded me that I came from a dark and deeply undignified place. There’s a reason I have continued to be active in recovery for twenty years, a reason I celebrate every person, young or old, who decides to tackle the beast and sober up. It’s because I believe that there’s a nice recovery available for every one of us who genuinely wants one. At least, that's my hope.

Nice Recovery will be out at the end of March and I'll be touring around Canada in late April to promote it.

For anyone who is interested, I have five advance reader's copies to give away to the first five people who email me at andfurthermore@shaw.ca. (Please include your address!) If you are very young you should be advised that the book contains some material that might freak out your parents. You, I suspect, will be able to handle it.

xox

P.S. Other new books I learned about (and can't wait to read) at the BC Bookseller's Breakfast: Kristin butcher's The Last Superhero, Adam Lewis Schroeder's In the Fabled East, Chevy Stevens' Still Missing and Peter Darbyshire's The Warhol Gang.