Self-indulgent; please skip. I’m super cereal.
At least in my (highly-biased) memory, my first book was, at least for a while, the publisher’s best-selling book of all time. Not only did they do an audiobook version, they did an audiobook version of my second book, which, coming after my first firing and excommunication, sold exactly diddly-squat. Yet I still get royalty checks for 2009’s The Animal Activist’s Handbook.
Given my ever-decreasing popularity and relative saturation of the vegan advocacy market, I wanted to do something different with my third - and last! I promise! - book. There’s no point in saying the same thing to the same people, right? Right?
What other hook(s) could I use? Sex, drugs, (soft) rock-’n-roll, religion, conflict, betrayal, suffering, failure, success, basketball, philosophy, photography, almost dying, evolutionary biology, more failure, more almost dying, depression, suicide, humor (? and see the bottom of this post), travel, money, success, yet more failure, yet more almost dying, true love (for realz), and a non-cliched conclusion.
After I failed to find an agent or mainstream publisher (shock!) I was freed to do what I wanted (well, up to whatever Anne would allow). Links, funky formats, busted grammar, color photos, essays and extremely unpopular opinions intermixed with self-indulgent memoir, no ugly m-dashes, extended quotes from other books w/o buying the rights (I did ask Bob Wright if I should fear his publisher).
And thus, after an intense five months, the indulgence of the long-suffering Dr. Green (who penned some of the funniest lines), and the design brilliance of Mandy Tucker, on October 1, 2022, Losing My Religions was loosed upon the world. For free! Exactly what it’s worth!
And I’ve not talked about anything else since.
Sorry.
“I can’t remember the last time I LOLed this much from a book.”
“What is true and what is important”
“Wow, what a ride! This book isn’t like anything else I’ve come across.”
“A tour de force! It’s really unlike anything I’ve read before.”
“This is a book no artificial intelligence could ever have written.”
“Hilarious, sometimes sad, and always interesting and entertaining”
“I couldn’t put it down”
“A wily, at times even serious irreverence.”
“The book is often hilarious, with hints of David Sedaris’s style.”
[I didn’t write this! I wouldn’t risk Sedaris’ wrath!]
“Mixes humor with thoughtful insight ... a fast and entertaining read that still has me thinking.”
“The Book I Wish I Read Sooner”
None of these selected quotes are from any of these people. Only two of that entire list would review Losing. (And don’t think I don’t know who hasn’t reviewed it. Oh, I know.)
Want humor? This is not fake - I couldn’t make this up. Amazon’s best-selling “basketball” books in October 2022:
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