Shortly after my first divorce, I started therapy to work on anger issues I'd spent years carefully cultivating. Part of the process was journaling. I won't pretend it was a clean, healthy practice — there was usually a half-empty bottle of Johnnie Walker Black in the passenger seat. Therapy surfaced things I'd buried. Scotch provided the nerve to face them and wrestle them onto a page.

Then life moved on. I put the pen down and didn't think about that journal for over a decade.

In the summer of 2018, I reconnected with an old friend and mentor who happened to be an author. She read what I'd written and told me I needed to finish it. I didn't know it at the time, but my personal and professional life were about to come apart. A few months later I was back — feelings going onto the page, Scotch going into a glass — taking 77 disjointed pages and turning them into a 400-page memoir.

The book is about 80% true. I had to construct dialogue and take certain liberties for reasons I can only explain after you've read the final chapter.

I published it under a pen name. Changed every name in it. I told myself it was to protect people — but honestly, I didn't want anyone connecting it back to me. When it came out, I waited for the cathartic release everyone talks about. It didn't come. I felt empty. I'd poured my life onto those pages and felt nothing.

I sat with that for weeks. Then I decided to come clean.

The moment I did, it was like pressure that had been building for years finally had somewhere to go. I dealt with some fallout — ghosts have long memories — but for the most part, it's been fine.

I never really marketed the book. Until now.

So let's see where this goes.