I was walking down West 15th in Manhattan when I saw the street fair, and a sign caught my eye: Psychic Readings, $5. The sign was old and maroon and marked by excessive cursive, like a laminated menu that hasn’t been updated since the 80s. The woman in the fold-out chair waved me toward her. . . . Read More

My brother’s friend spotted the dog in the park. Shivering, starving, skin pocked with flea bites. “Someone needs to take this dog home,” the guy said, and my brother — perhaps even surprising himself — got an idea. My brother and I never had a dog growing up. Our family rented a modest home, and . . . Read More

A couple years ago I started taking pictures while I was driving. This is a terrible habit, one I would never endorse, and completely borne of the social media age, with its tug toward performing rather than experiencing your life, trying to pin down exhilaration for later consumption as opposed to enjoying it in the . . . Read More

I wish I could remember how she came to me, what detail opened the door that I would walk through to meet her. Did we have a friend in common? Did she name-drop some magazine? This would have been 2011, or thereabouts, and my inbox was a game of whack-a-mole, where the moles were always . . . Read More

Years ago, when I was finishing my first book, I got a solid piece of advice. Write your second book while waiting for the first to publish. A book often takes a year to go from final draft to bookshelf, and in that lag time, anxiety blossoms. Writing a second one fast, soon, now would . . . Read More

Five and a half years ago, I started thinking I could write a book. Actually, I’d been thinking I could write a book since I learned it was a Thing You Could Do. A decent montage of my 20s and early 30s would be me, doing different things, wondering if they might become books. This . . . Read More

Last night I ran into an old friend, and she was like: Where can I find all the things you’ve written lately? I asked if she was on Facebook, and she was like, no I don’t do that, and I was like, YOU ARE SO SMART, and then I was like, but wait, where CAN you . . . Read More

It’s a little more than a month from the paperback release of “Blackout.” I’m updating this site with paperback tour dates, although the “tour” will be less of a direct hit and more of a rolling wave. Dates have been set in June for Dallas, Austin and San Francisco, with dates in LA, NY, and DC . . . Read More

My twentysomething social life was one long drink special. Margaritas with a crust of salt on the rim, a frosty pint spilling foam, and the always regrettable “Who wants shots?” I had always assumed my drinking would calm down after I graduated college. Instead, it ramped up. The bars opened their pearly gates to me, . . . Read More

“Men can reform. Society welcomes them back to the path of virtue; a vail is cast over their conduct, and their vows of amendments are accepted, and their promises to reform are hailed with great delight. But, Alas! For poor women who have been tempted to sin by rum. For them there are not calls . . . Read More