Twice a year my publisher sends me a royalty check. It’s always exciting, like getting a scratch-off lottery ticket that’s guaranteed to win. You just don’t know how much is waiting for you. It can vary by thousands of dollars from statement to statement, so I have no idea how much I’m going to get each time. I’m just glad I’ve been able to eek out a bit of a living from my writing and I never cease to be amazed by it. As a freelancer, I consider these checks to be like my Christmas bonus.

I am really grateful that my book Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir continues to sell even four and a half years after its initial publication. I watch what I spend my money on rather carefully, so it’s humbling to know someone (or multiple someones) decided my writing was worth their cash. If you’ve ever bought a copy of the book, thank you! I truly appreciate it. It does directly affect me and my ability to do things like fly home for [...]

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Whenever I receive a package I’m not expecting I assume it’s a bomb. Or anthrax. Or a pig’s heart. (You won’t think I’m so silly when I’m killed one day by an anthrax bomb hidden in a pig’s heart!) So when I opened the package that had been left under my welcome mat I was deliriously happy and surprised to discover that it was the Chinese version of my book, Chocolate & Vicodin. I started hollering, “Yes, yes, yes!” to myself so loudly that my downstairs neighbors must have thought I was getting some Valentine’s Day lovin’. Ever since the translation rights sold last year I’ve been curious to see what my book would look like printed in Chinese characters. How they would translate “Angerballz” in my acknowledgements section? I started to flip through the book to see, and that’s when I noticed it.

This book was illustrated!

The beginning of each chapter includes an image depicting the content of that chapter in hilarious, overly-literal fashion! The story of my life had been illustrated! I do believe [...]

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Susan Orlean’s new book about Rin Tin Tin comes out this week and I feel proud. This is odd because I had absolutely nothing to do with it. I doubt Susan Orlean even knows I exist, although she’s retweeted me twice. (Not that I’m counting or anything.) Twitter is actually the reason why I feel so proud of her. She’s been tweeting about the book process for at least a year now, updating her followers throughout as if she were sending us ultrasound photos of her baby as it headed toward birth.

I felt reassured about my own writing habits when she tweeted about avoiding her writing for the day. I shared her excitement when she reported a high word count the next day. I was relieved to learn she didn’t know the proper usage of “toward” or “towards” either. I totally related when she realized something brilliant she wrote yesterday seemed like crap the next day. I was happy for her when she turned in the manuscript, when she finished proofing, and when she first [...]

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