My Dear Butterflies,
The new memoir has arrived! Did you know if you order a new book during pre-sale before its publishing date, local bookstores take notice and also order the book to place on their bookshelves in actual physical shops that smell like coffee and heaven because they see lots of readers are interested in that new title? All I want for Christmas is for you fine people to order my new memoir THE GODS OF CLOWN ALLEY on Amazon before its January release date. Even if you haven't read a book in twenty years, please order mine and gift it to a friend who loves reading and loves you. And then I'll love you too, and we can celebrate this love fest when Oprah interviews me about how I helped make the world a more lovable place.
Here's the link to order on Amazon, and below I've included a little preview of the prologue. May the Force be with you all during this magical season of light and love!
Prologue
What if I were to tell you we are all gods? Would you crucify me? Would you tie me up to a stake and burn me alive? Would you banish me from your village or shoot me outside my New York City apartment?
There once was a boy from Liverpool who sang songs about love. All you need is love, he said. Love. That’s all we need. Someone shot him outside his apartment in Manhattan on December 8, 1980. That’s the day I began writing in my diary. I was eight. My inner voice had something to say back then, but even more so now.
I didn’t watch the news that day and didn’t know about the murder of the famous musician from Liverpool who sang about love, all you need is love. I didn’t read the book the murderer was carrying until I had been accepted into St. Francis Preparatory High School, and even then no one told me that particular book was in the pocket of the murderer, or in the pocket of the man who attempted to assassinate our president three months later. They censor books like that, banning them in schools and libraries across the country, but they also use them to teach.
I carried my 1951 first edition copy of The Catcher in the Rye to my English class every day of eleventh grade. No one noticed or cared. All the other students had newly purchased paperbacks. I borrowed my dad’s copy, the one he read when he was in high school. Its book jacket was missing. Only the black hard cover remained. Its pages were brown and smelled like musty old libraries supervised by crabby old librarians. I even found a bookworm in it as I turned the delicate pages that revealed a rebellious character who wanted to preserve the innocence of children. My English teacher, Sister Louise, said this was one of the most famous coming of age books of all time. The name Louise is of Old German origin, meaning famous warrior. I give the nun credit for being brave enough to put Catcher on the curriculum that year. Imagine, as the young man from Liverpool sang, if more people were brave.
My diaries are my coming of age books. They reveal my awakening, the realization that we are all divine beings, as sacred as the sycamore trees and butterflies that share this planet. But most of us have forgotten that. I even forgot for a while.
We are all gods and goddesses co-creating with the Universe, and more importantly, we have the power to heal. You don’t believe me? Let me tell you what I believe, what I have experienced, and then you can decide if any of my story rings true to that inner voice, the child within you, the one who speaks to you at night when you are in bed dreaming your dreams and imagining your future, the one who remembers.
I believe in Star Wars...