Every morning I get up and work on the second memoir. Even work days; the moment I am semi coherent I’m editing. Part of me is proud of my diligence, part of me wonders if it’s wasted effort— What’s the point in turning out the second memoir when you’re not promoting the first one? I should be marketing, making connections, winning people over…I understand that. So, I feel accomplished and a failure at the same time. I’m sure many of you writers out there understand. Perhaps

I write books as well as songs. I play the word processor, I play the guitar. I’ve been doing what I call “art shit” since I was a teenager— (This story will be told in the second memoir, which comes out in late June). Cleaning out an external drive, I came upon songs I recorded when I was 19. What I lacked in skill, I made up for in pretentiousness: I took myself far too seriously back then. Honestly, I cringed as I listened to those old recordings. I was an insecure child p

The Hill I grew up around sociopaths and low rent conmen. I grew up around wealthy people in the third richest county in the United States. The house I lived in recently sold for two million dollars. If you saw it you’d think I grew up with money and privilege. No, we had old cars, normal clothes, struggled to pay bills. The house on the Hill was an illusion. My father lived in Sausalito on a houseboat. His neighbors were genuinely wealthy, had nice cars and clothes— They we

This is an outtake from my memoir The Bad Kids. I couldn’t find a good place for it in the book and wasn’t completely happy with the ending. It was a disappointment; I really wanted this chapter to be included, I just couldn’t make it work. Hope you enjoy it. IDD. TEXAS By the time I got to Holly Heights, my shirt was sticking to my back. How was it so hot in April? Even the birds seemed to be hiding from the heat. A car came up behind me as I trudged up the street; it was No

"Time, memory, and the long consequences of living." I do not speak with an English accent because I am pretentious or a pretentious Anglophile. I speak this way because I smoked too much weed when I was a kid. Let me explain. In my memoir The Bad Kids , I tell stories about the misadventures of my friends and me—misadventures fueled by copious amounts of marijuana. By the time I graduated eighth grade, I had stopped smoking. Before starting high school, I reinvented myself a

Dear Monica, I write. This is my calling. If a good story insinuates its way in my head I feel obligated to follow it wherever it leads. My father had a stroke a year ago. Thankfully, he had a nearly full recovery but it got me thinking about the past, about things I’d mostly forgotten, people and events I’d blocked out because the memories were impossible to face. Not because they are awful memories, but because they were beautiful and beauty is fleeting. We touch beauty whe

Time, Memory, and the Long Consequences of Living…. I’ve had people explain to me how allowing Jesus Christ into their lives opened the world up for them. Other friends have attempted to elucidate how becoming parents caused them to look at the world in a completely different way. I have had neither experience, but still I understood. I’ve explained how the art stuff I do makes me aware of a connection to something much larger than myself— This is not about that; that is a c

My father had a stroke in early 2025. Luckily, he made a nearly complete recovery but the event caused me to think about the past and our relationship over the years. Memories returned of my childhood, the person I had been and the things I had done. These recollections reminded me of a few rough chapters I had written two years earlier about a boy and the misdeeds he committed with three friends. I had typed those chapters and forgotten about them—until Dad had his stroke. L