Like you need another reason!

Well, just in case you do need more encouragement to vote for Sherm here is a small selection of the quotes I've received from Shermanators:

"Vote for Sherm 'cause nerds have feelings, too!" (Bill)

"Tina was wrong: we DO need another hero. Vote for Sherm." (Meaghan)

"Nothing says integrity like Sherman Mack." (Jen)

"Sherm: He won't stop for Brooklyn." (Kristine)

"Sherman: He's a tank for you." (Brooke)

There has even been a haiku committed to the cause!
Sherm the detective
Defiled's a big mystery
While getting the girl (Jeff)

On a side note, Jeff is also a filmmaker and his first film, Tumaini, will soon be touring to a city near you. Check it out!

We're in the Finals Now!

Don't forget to send me your "Why Sherm Should Win the Whole Thing" quote and possibly win a fabulous custom Vote for Sherm T-shirt with genuine camouflage lettering!

Also, don't forget to vote! You could win 64 books or a trip to the Bahamas! That's nearly as good as a Tshirt. Be a winner: Vote for Sherm.

P.S. James and I learned Highwayman on the drive back from Mount Washington. We are going to hire ourselves out to parties. I should probably tell you that I'm especially good at the Waylon Jennings part.

A Total Shirt Show!

Sherm, that young miracle in pants, appears to be hanging onto his lead in his March Madness runoff against To Kill A Mockingbird. I know, incredible!!

Here's the thing: I'm all out of "cajolies" (words of coaxing encouragement to get people voting, not the other thing that word sounds like).

What to do? What to do? I KNOW! Have a contest! A contest behind the contest, like Survivor, only lazy.

Here's the idea: You tell me in a sentence or two why people should vote for Sherm in the finals (provided he doesn't get knocked out of the competition today). The top entries (you can give me more than one) will win one of THESE bad boys:





(Adorable cat not included).

I will post your exhortations on facebook, twitter and my website and you will be famous. Well, you'll be famous to me.

The new round of voting starts on Monday. Give me something to work with people!

xox

P.S. These shirts are brought to you courtesy of AQ, who went above and beyond to make them happen. I'm totally voting to keep her on the Island.

How to Tell the World You are a Former Drinky Pants

Two blogs in one day. A first here on Rare Birds!!

The reaction to Nice Recovery has been really gratifying so far. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your emails and notes and thank you to those who’ve reviewed the book.

This subject touches a lot of people’s lives. Maybe someone in your family or a friend has trouble with substances. Maybe you do. I wrote the book partly to honour where I came from and partly to show that sobering up isn’t the end of life, but the beginning. I also wanted to take a look at the different options available for people entering recovery and to interview young people about what it's like for them now. I don’t pretend to have the answers for everyone, I only know what's worked for me. For the past twenty years, as I noted in an earlier post (February 1), I’ve been kind of cagey about my recovery. Like a lot of people, I got clean and sober so I could function properly. I didn’t want to spend my whole life being the drunkest one at the (increasingly depressing) party. I wanted to be treated like everyone else. And I have been. Telling everyone that I couldn’t handle my drink has meant giving up the pretense that I’m Mrs. Well-Adjusted and always have been. That has been a little scary, but I figure it will be worth it if the book is useful to even one person.

I tried to be careful not to talk about myself as a member of any specific recovery organization. In many programs there is a tradition of anonymity which states that people may talk about being in recovery from addiction, but should not announce their membership in any particular organization (even if people can infer that information).

Here’s why the principle of anonymity exists in twelve step programs: 1) the person who is announcing her/his membership in a program might get loaded and thereby become a bad advertisement, and 2) many people might be discouraged from trying to get help if they thought everyone would find out, and 3) a person shouldn’t go around thinking he/she’s all that because he/she’s in a program. You know, just for instance.

So, for anyone who is interested and who has not read the book, I am sober thanks to the help of many people, programs and therapists and the odd circus trainer. I am not in any way holding myself out as a poster child for any organization. (Well, I wouldn't mind putting my face on a poster for a cupcake shop, but that's different. That might mean free cupcakes.)

To quote my own preface, as all the classy writers do: “Most twelve step programs are based on a principle of anonymity. That means that members do not break their anonymity at the level of press, radio and film. Or books. My discussion about my (or others’) membership in any self-help programs will be kept general to respect these traditions. This book touches on twelve step programs and what they entail, but if you want more information, each program has its own literature. It’s very useful stuff. I encourage you to read it.”

xoxox

Drinky P.

Sweet jumps!

I was having breakfast yesterday with a couple of girlfriends. We were talking about movies and naturally the conversation came around to Napoleon Dynamite and tater tots and all things sweet.

My friend told us about the time she was on vacation with her whole family and decided to show them how she could do "sweet jumps" on her bike. With everyone watching, she proceeded to have a massive wipe out. Now her husband won't let her get a motorcycle because he says "You can't even handle a bike without a motor."

It occurs to me that publishing a book is a bit like doing sweet jumps at the family vacation. Only the family is the whole reading public. If you are crazy enough to write a memoir, as I have done, the bike feels more like a motorcycle with a couple of jet engines attached to the back, similar to what you see in those Spike TV shows about the myriad dumb ways people find to kill themselves. Maybe you'll make the sweet jump and no one will notice but you'll feel quiet satisfaction. Maybe you'll make the sweet jump and become a family legend. But just as likely you won't make the sweet jump and will end up with road rash all over yourself and your family will laugh about your failed attempt every time they see you for the rest of your life and the story will be featured in bold in the Christmas letter. Or worse, maybe the sweet jump will go terribly wrong and you'll crash into Aunt Pat and break her leg and give yourself a head injury and a collapsed lung. Then no one will laugh, especially not Aunt Pat and her new boyfriend, and you'll be banished from family vacations forever.

Publishing a book, like attempting a sweet jump, involves an element of risk. I admire everyone who tries it. I just wish authors, like stunt riders, were allowed to wear helmets. (Do you think people would wonder if I wore one to my public events? hmmm. Maybe wrist guards and elbow pads, too...)

Nice Recovery is officially out tomorrow, March 16. Thanks to all of you who've already read it and been so nice.

There are several public events/readings coming up across Canada, including the Ottawa Writer's Festival (April 25-26) and an event with SmallPrint/TINARS on April 28th in Toronto. I will be speaking with CBC's lovely Shelagh Rogers on Wed. for her show, The Next Chapter and will let you know when that's due to air. There will be a full list of events and their dates on the sidebar of this blog as soon as I have them. We also have extremely sweet plans for a book launch, which I will reveal as soon as they're finalized.

Until then, try the sweet jumps but make sure to keep your pads on.



xox


P.S. Don't forget to Vote for Sherm. The semifinals are two weeks long. He's holding strong at 60%. Stay tuned for news about Vote for Sherm swag!

P.P.S. I have a several sweet jump books I want to talk about but I have to wait until my schedule clears a bit. For now, let me say that Lauren Mechling's Dream Life, Chevy Steven's Still Missing and Jay Ruzesky's Wolsenburg Clock are three jumps you don't want to miss! I don't even think their authors need helmets. More on them next month...

Holy Doodle!

I can scarcely believe it! Getting the Girl, the book even my publisher referred to as "an unlikely opponent" (which made me laugh quite a bit), won over Lord of the Rings! Alice would be so proud. Or upset. I can't decide which.

Victory is bittersweet because Lord of the Rings is one of my all time favourite series and the movies gave good value in terms of minutes per dollar. But the Lord voters can comfort themselves with the fact that their candidate has sold several tens of millions more books than Sherm. So there's that.

And now, we're in the semi-finals. I know I said we were in the semis last week. I don't follow sports and I'm a bit short on logic, so I got it wrong. Last week must have been the quarter finals. The important piece is that we got 62% out of 1076 votes!

The bad news is that we're up against, gulp, Scout in To Kill a Mocking Bird! Why is this going to be a tense contest? Well, Mockingbird won a Pulitzer Prize. Getting the Girl has not. Yet. Mockingbird is one of the best-loved books in American literature. Getting is not. Yet. Worst of all, Scout is Sherm's kind of girl. To Kill a Mockingbird is his kind of book (what with the injustice and the mystery and all). Sherm's going to be torn up about this match. But not me. I say, Vote For Sherm! He's short! He's a giver of backrubs! He hates crime and cruelty! He loves girls with bangs! Plus, you've gone this far with him!

I hear that some of you have enlisted your friends to vote for Sherm. For that and for your effort on behalf of a most unlikely competitor, I say forever thanks. (And Sherm wants to know if you want a massage later.)

P.S. Last Thursday I got my advance hardcover of Nice Recovery. It looks great and it should be hitting the shelves any day now. Let's keep this love going!

xoxo

David and a very short Goliath

As noted on today's facebook post, the impossible has happened.

Sherman has made it to the semifinals! That's right. My little mack daddy has come through. I realize I have been hectoring you for several weeks now. It's been all Please Vote this and Won't You Please Vote that.

This is more of the same.

Only this time, I really, really mean it even more than I did the past few weeks.

Now Sherman is up against LORD OF THE RINGS! I'm talking Orcs and Gandalf and Gollum and that attractive blonde elf and those perniciously appealing hobbits! Could there be a more lopsided matchup?

In an effort to keep you all motivated to vote for Sherm (in the last match-up we had almost twice as many votes as any of the other categories), I'm going to throw a few Olympic terms at you to get your competitive blood pumping:

Norwegian curling pants!



Vancouver flash mob!


Alex Bilodeau!


Team Canada Hockey (men and women)!!




Enormous inflated beavers (please see closing ceremonies )!


Avatar's box office!

Other things that make you think of triumph! Win! Win! Win!

(Thanks for voting!)

xox