Well, fears # 4 and 5 below (”the book getting bad reviews” and “the book getting no reviews”) have been alleviated, thanks to Kirkus Reviews. Kirkus reviews pre-publication approximately 5,000 titles per year and is a sort of “Bible” in the bookselling field. They started off their review by describing my book as “Horatio Alger meets Dorothy Allison in this debut memoir about growing up and coming out.” To my surprise the reviewer wrote, “The most affecting passages here describe his experiences teaching at elite private schools in New England” (I thought my childhood was more interesting than my teaching years). They closed by describing the book as “generous and illuminating” and making it one of their “starred” titles (from their web site: “a star is assigned to books of remarkable merit, determined by the editors of Kirkus Reviews.”) Not only a review, but also a very positive one! Insert sigh of relief here.

At this point I just want the book to come out. Folks who have been hearing em talk about it ad nauseum keep asking me for copies and I don’t have any. My poor niece Charis even went to the book store and asked for one (like I wouldn’t have given her one if I had it…). Print, damn you!

Kevin Says... | No Comments »

This is fairly obvious: I am about to bare my and my family’s lives, warts and all, for the entire world to see. I am afraid of…

• People reading it and saying, “Well, his life wasn’t so interesting, now, was it?”
• People reading it and saying “Boy, he’s not much of a writer”
• People reading say, Augusten Burroughs or Joan Didion, then picking up my book next, and making the obviously-unflattering comparison between my work and theirs
• People not reading it at all.
• The book getting bad reviews
• The book getting no reviews
• Distant, gun-toting relatives driving up to New York from North Carolina or Tennessee (this is not as far-fetched as you might think, as you will understand, should you read the book)
• Errors in the printed copy I can’t correct (like the fact that I say a school I taught at was on the West Side of Providence when it is actually on the East Side, an error kindly pointed out to me by my friend Gara LaMarche — sorry, Moses Brown)

One thing I am not afraid of is having told outright lies, like the multimillionaire “writer” James Frey (why, oh, why, is his book still on the best seller list when everyone knows it’s a fraud? Someone PLEASE explain this to me). Readers, should there be any, may find my prose turgid or my story boring, but at least it’s all true.

Pre-order your copy now and tell me as soon as you read it if my fears were groundless or justified. On second thought, just tell me they were groundless.

Kevin Says... | 1 Comment »