Today is a monumental day for me. My new book, Master of Ceremonies: A True Story of Love, Murder, Roller Skates and Chippendales, was reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle. The official publication date is I believe August 14th but I will take today to celebrate. It took me two years to live this book, twenty years of being pregnant with it and then about nine months to actually give birth, which any way you slice I is a long time to be in labor. I worked very, very hard on this book, and it was pleasing when I read the quotes in the Chronicle review to not be mortified and embarrassed by how horrible they were. I will be doing a sixteen event tour in conjunction with the book, in New York, New Jersey, San Francisco, LA, Miami and St Louis. Those events will occur in September and October. The event I concocted is called Art of the Memoir, and I will be doing it with other memoirists and publishing experts. We will be talking about the joys and perils, triumphs and tragedies, pratfalls and pitfalls that inevitably occur when you write and sell your own life story. More of this as the events approach. I have also made seven short movies of me, myself, and I performing sections of the book intercut with cheeseball 80’s music and cheeseballier pictures of large men with very little clothes on. I will be posting those movies on the world wide web soon, but if anyone wants a crisp clean beautiful DVD, I would be happy to send you one.

I am also happy to announce that Showtime is making a TV series out of Chicken, my first memoir. David Janollari, who among many other things produced the brilliant HBO hit Six Feet Under, is producing. Scott Buck, who wrote for Six Feet Under and currently works on Dexter, has written a breathtaking script which truly captures the delicate balance of dark and light, comedy and tragedy which fill Chicken.

I am also proud to announce that my co-editor Richard Martin “a brilliant and hardworking fellow” and I just sold a book to Soft Skull. We are incredible excited to be in partnership with one of America’s leading independent publishers and count ourselves fortunate indeed to be among the ranks of their esteemed authors. The book is entitled: Ho’s, Hustler’s, Rentboys and Callgirls: Prostitutes Writing on Sex, Love, Work & Money. The publication date is set for Spring 2009.