BACKGROUND

A friend recently told me that no one cares what it took to get this book published, people only care if the book’s good or not. But it matters to me, so I’m going to tell you about it.

I didn’t set out to write a book. I just wrote, because I love writing. I wrote stories at times when I felt compelled to put life on hold in order to reflect, vent and/or search for humor in otherwise difficult situations. Publication was never the goal. I wrote for me.

When I write, I feel free to express and expose myself in ways I don’t always dare to in real life. Writing these stories was cathartic; reading them after the fact was occasionally disturbing, but almost always enlightening. Writing has taught me a lot about myself. It has helped me see myself, (hopefully) improve myself, and ultimately, knock myself out of my own way.

The stories in this book begin at a time when it seemed that everyone around me was being promoted, coupling off, getting married, and having children; I had a cat and a severance check. It’s hard not to wonder what the #$@! is going on at a time like that. I wasn’t jealous; I didn’t want what anyone else had. But I didn’t know what I wanted either. I’d never really given it much thought. So I decided it was time to figure things out, and I wrote about it along the way. And in many ways, I think it was the writing process itself, all the things that it revealed to me, that gave me the confidence to do what eventually seemed to be the only possible course of action.

I sent some of my stories to an agent, she signed me, and a book proposal went out shortly thereafter. It will never cease to amaze me that this thing I did for no other reason than because I loved doing it – while working so much harder on so many things that never came to fruition – is the first thing I’ve done that has ever truly paid off. My book sold within 24 hours. But it took me 41 years of life and 16 years of clandestine writing before I dared put that writing, my feelings, my flaws, my opinions, my shenanigans, myself up for judgment. I still don’t feel like I wrote a book, but I know I sold one. And while selling a book was thrilling, for me, the real accomplishment is not that I now hold a book with my name on it in my hands – it still looks like a fake book to me, and probably always will – but that I was finally able to put it all out there and take that chance. To a reader that may mean nothing, but to me, it’s everything.

As for the book itself…

While it probably sounds girly, and does include stuff about guys, no doubt because I’ve focused way too much of my time and energy on them (only to find myself a spinster, as my darling brother likes to point out), I don’t think the book is as girly as the title might suggest. My alternate title was THANKS FOR SHARING, but that was vetoed. The point is, this book is not just about guys (check out the excerpt); it’s about life and relationships (of all kinds) and American culture. And if you look a little deeper, you might see other things. Or you might just think it’s funny. Or you might not. But I hope you’ll find something relate to, and I don’t think doing so requires that you be single, female, or even American.