THE SELF-HELP, SCOTTISH BALLS & MURDER TOUR

An All-Star Who’s Who of memoirists will be rocking the Bay Area in October. Ex-track star best-selling fashion icon Beth Lisick, ex-pat Glaswegian literati kingpin Alan Black, and ex-industrial sex technician Disney screenwriter David Henry Sterry star in Art of the Memoir: Telling and Selling Your Life Stories. There will be performances revealing shocking intimate details about Richard Simmons, southern TV evangelists, and the greatest male stripping empire the world has ever known. Then the authors will reveal why they all felt compelled to spill their guts all over the page.

THE ART OF THE MEMOIR:

TELLING & SELLING YOUR LIFE STORIES

“Everybody wants to make their mark. Nowadays, that means everybody is writing a memoir.” – CNN, April 18, 2008

Find out what it takes to write and sell your life story from trained professionals who’ve actually done just that. David Henry Sterry, best-selling memoirist, book doctor and literary talent scout will emcee and read from a Master of Ceremonies: A True Story of Love, Murder, Roller Skates and Chippendales. Alan Black will brogue his way through Kick the Balls: and Offensive Suburban Odyssey. Beth Lisick will regale you with tales from Helping Me Hell Myself: 1 Skeptic, 10 Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone. And then they’ll tell you how they did it. Is memoir the new 15 minutes of fame? What makes a good memoir? What makes a bad memoir? And how does a memoirist know when to shut up? All questions will be answered.

October 13 Book Passage, Corte Madera 7 PM

October 14 City Lights, San Francisco 7 PM

October 15 1st Congregational Church Berkeley, Berkeley Arts and Letters, 7:30 p.m.

October 18 Barnes & Noble Jack London Square, Oakland 10-12

October 20 Kepler’s, Palo Alto 7 PM

October 21 Lyon’s Books, Chico, 7 p.m.

You will laugh, you may cry, but you will never be the same.

Alan Black, Beth Lisick and David Henry Sterry are available for interviews together or alone.

DAVID HENRY STERRY

MASTER OF CEREMONIES: A TRUE STORY OF LOVE, MURDER, ROLLER SKATES AND CHIPPENDALES*

Smack dab in the middle of the cash happy/coke crazy 80s, when it was raining men and girls just wanted to have fun, David Henry Sterry became the MC at Chippendales. Find out what it was like working for Nick de Noia, who dreamed of a safe place where women could fondle, ogle and sexualize hot man flesh. And got assassinated for his trouble. Find out what it was like to find true love in the strangest place. Find out what it was like to be the ugliest man at Chippendale’s. Sterry’s first memoir, Chicken, is being made into a TV series by Showtime. “‘Master of Ceremonies’ is a dizzying, tender story resplendent with seedy glamour, hilarious backstage madness, and unflinching honesty… There are two underlying love stories, one between Sterry and a coworker, and one between Sterry and his craft..” – Library Journal “Sterry writes with comic brio…” – NY Times “Sterry’s prose fizzes like a firework. Every page crackles… laconic as Dashiell Hammett, viscerally hallucinogenic as Hunter S Thompson.” – Irish Times *anyone who buys this book will get a free consultation from a publishing expert.

BETH LISICK

HELPING ME HELP MYSELF: 1 SKEPTIC, 10 SELF-HELP GURUS, AND A YEAR ON THE BRINK OF THE COMFORT ZONE

Grappling with her lifelong phobia of anything slick, cheesy, or remotely claiming to provide self-empowerment, Beth Lisick wakes up on New Year’s Day finally able to admit to herself that she’s tired of having no savings account, feeling unorganized and chaotic, and realizing she last exercised regularly as a member of her high school track team twenty years ago. Beth decides to consult the multimillion-dollar-earning pros and national experts, not only reading their bestselling books but also attending their seminars and classes. Beth doesn’t think of herself as the typical self-help victim. But is she? “Lisick has created a hilarious, knowing tale of a year of willing ridiculousness.” — San Francisco Chronicle “Her accounts of everything…are not only hilarious but enlightening. Finding useful tips amidst the bunk, she distills the best from thousands of pages of self-help books. Readers will be inspired: If a woman in a banana suit can clean her closet and pay off her credit card debt, surely you can, too.” – People

ALAN BLACK

KICK THE BALLS: AN OFFENSIVE SUBURBAN ODYSSEY

An uproarious, fish-out-of-water account of a season in the life of a pee wee soccer team — introducing a laugh-out-loud new voice in American writing. A transplanted Scot living and working in California, Black commits to a season coaching the Dragons, a team of 8- and 9-year olds. For the parents of the players, fun is all that matters. But Black follows the words of Bill Shankly, the other legendary Scottish soccer coach, who once said, “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.” It doesn’t help, of course, that the Dragons display absolutely no skill at the game. Well, it’s a recipe for disaster. In the tradition of Trainspotting and Fever Pitch, KICK THE BALLS is a side-splitting memoir of grass stains and free kicks, and of a security-obsessed, late-night America few get to see, all delivered in a prose so sharp it could cut a soccer ball in half.