Wild West Village is One Month Old?!

and my parents have *almost* forgiven me

Dear you—

It’s hard for me believe that it has already been one whole month since an IV nurse pumped magical fluids into my arm (the end of a horrid cold) so I’d be well enough to wear the greatest outfit of all time (see below—the curtains match the drapes. I mean the Mugler matches the book!) and pass a banner evening in my life: my book launch at the legendary Strand in New York City.

Not even video evidence that my skirt was indeed short enough for any innocent attendee to see right up it can taint the evening’s memory. It was so special. Not least of all because I had the singular

AMT

by my side.

In fact, one of the most unexpected parts of publishing my first book has been seeing how willing other authors (mostly women now that I think of it?

Emma Forrest

, Marissa Moss of

Don't Rock The Inbox

and

Alice Carrière

to name a few… but do men even write these days?) have been to offer guidance, kindness and encouragement.

One of the other surprises has been how many of them and YOU have actually enjoyed reading my book, sharing your own stories with me as a result. I don’t always believe in myself and while I know it’s risky to rest your self-esteem on the esteem of others, I get lazy sometimes and can’t help it. But when I hear people say my work resonates with their own experiences, the feeling I get is bigger than the sheer relief that people don’t think I’m a loser. Instead, it’s a wonderful affirmation of the power of personal storytelling. (Responses have included things like “I called my brother for the first time in years.” “My dad did those things too.” “I always thought I envied you but I actually don’t!”)

Taking the risk to find the art in my life was terrifying (see the piece I wrote for Vogue on the subject). But choosing to remain blind to its possibility was much scarier. Without writing, I was just a girl who spent her spring breaks at her sisters’ rehabs. Who talked to their dad’s mistresses on the phone and off of ledges. Who spent too much time with her legs spread on either side of the shower faucet. “I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means,” Joan Didion (who makes a cameo in my book) says. And I relate: through writing, all that chaos could become beautiful. Meaningful. A gift I could share with others, instead of a burden to bare alone. A reminder to whoever may need to hear it that their shadows are just as worthy as their light. For it is our darkest times that make us resilient enough to weather life’s inevitable weather storms, hold us over til the next bout of brightness.

All this is to say, the risk has been well worth the reward. As the great Mary Karr wrote of her seminole memoir Liars’ Club: it “began as a love letter to my less-than- perfect clan,” but its “publication constructed… what I’d hankered for so desperately as a dreamy kid… that mythic village of like-minded souls who bloom together by sharing old tales—the kind that fire you up and you loose.”

My deepest gratitude for those of you who have dared to meet me in the mythic village.

Love,

Lola

ps: here’s a clip of me reading the audiobook! (Morgan Freeman was unavailable…)