Crazy Beautiful Life

How do our childhood choices lead us to our adult lives? Is there such a thing as destiny? Are there soulmates, or only people who come into your life and change it forever? A journey through teenage love, the beginnings of mental illness, and the push-and-pull of addiction, Crazy Beautiful Life explores these questions through nonfiction as part biography, part autobiography, part eulogy, and one hundred percent love letter. Written over the course of a decade, it is a symphony of poetry, letters, journal entries, and other small objects that create a life, assembled together in the wake of a death, to celebrate a friendship. - - - - - Frequently Asked Questions HOW LONG IS THE BOOK? Just over 250 pages HAVE I READ ANY OF IT BEFORE? If you have followed my writing online at all over the past ten years, you have almost definitely seen some of this writing appear. However, this is the first time all of my writing about Joe has been put into one place, and there are definitely pieces that are either no longer online or have never appeared on the internet, including sections written just for the book. IS IT A NOVEL? It's a nonfiction collection of writing including journal entries, poetry, blog posts, letters, and photographs. There are some sections that read like a novel and others that do not. HAVE NAMES BEEN CHANGED? If you are in the story, you will know. However, only mine and Joe's last names appear, and there is no reference to school or city names beyond states. WHAT IS NAMI? That's the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Five dollars from every preorder gets donated to my local chapter of NAMI in my friend Joe's memory. The charity was chosen by his family. WAIT, MEMORY? MENTAL ILLNESS? ...IS THIS A SAD BOOK? Yes. Sorry. WHAT IS A DONATION COPY? Donation copies are bought in advance for people who need them. I hold onto them until I find someone or some place that needs them, like a youth program or a friend struggling with addiction. Then I am able to hand them a copy at no cost. If you order a donation copy, you WILL NOT receive it with your order--it lives with me and gets passed to someone on my donation list. But you WILL get an extra thank-you gift from me!