It's a Paperback!

Readers! The AKOMP paperback is imminent! I got to hold one yesterday!

I fell on the floor and I cried.

How I love it:

Here's its back:

The image is a painting by William Kurelek; it hangs in the Bethlem Museum of the Mind south of London. I encourage everyone who can to visit it in person. I'm writing something soon about my experience seeing the painting, and what it means to me to have Kurelek's work featured on the cover.

Long story short, Ishmall had won!!!

The paperback goes on sale 1/15/19. I'll be reading that night at Iowa City's Prairie Lights, the very bookstore where I wrote the book for the first few years of its life. I'm probably gonna cry. I hope if you're in Iowa City you will join.

January 25 I'll be at Brooklyn's estimable Books Are Magic with the one and only Ashley Ford. I'm very much looking forward to that.

I have dates coming up as well in Chapel Hill, NC and St. Paul, MN and hopefully more cities; all info will be here.

Here is a cool bit of news: I've signed with the incredible speaking agent Leslie Shipman of the Shipman Agency. If you are someone who's interested in having me come speak, here's the rad page she put together

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In recent years I've stopped celebrating the Global Yule Conspiracy. To all who celebrate it and other holidays, please enjoy the season. I'll be hibernating with books by my fire, avoiding public spaces else I hear that infectious music.

See you in 2019, friends. What a year this has been here on planet AKOMP. It's just the beginning I think.

Love,

Sandy

p.s. I can't stop listening to the new Rosalía album

p.p.s. Here's this morning's butt bread:

I got a new "lame" as you can probably tell from my VERY DEEP SCORING.

p.p.p.s. Everyone should read Valeria Luiselli's Tell Me How It Ends

The Courage to Open the Suitcase

Sunday Content #46

Me before my 30th (I think?) and final event for the AKOMP hardcover, at the Miami Book Fair

A year ago, when A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise was on the verge of publishing, I don't know what I thought this year was going to be. I thought all sorts of stuff would happen that hasn't. Likewise I didn't predict many amazing things that have come to pass. Having the book out has been unexpectedly hard in ways I didn't foresee and also amazing beyond imagination.

Particularly I have been surprised and struck by the people — strangers — who've gone out of their way this year to write me to tell me what AKOMP has meant to them. These messages have come steadily, a steady drip. A few messages come a week, sometimes a few in a day. They come from people with lived experience, and people with family in the mental health system, and people who do jobs relating to these issues. Very frankly, sometimes they keep me afloat.

Like the other morning, I had sunk, and this shot me back to the surface:

Or this message, which came recently:

This fall I received an email from a man about his brother "a disabled veteran living with schizophrenia," whom he described as "a center of our lives. Your piece is sensitive and recognizes the person behind the diagnosis. It meant much to me personally."

Or another email I received, one that came during what for me was a very tough weekend:

My father, diagnosed bi-polar, was writing a book. He had all his material arranged around on shelves he had built in the basement. When I helped my parents move to a retirement community - he died there not long after from complications of depression - I gathered all his book things in order from around the room and put them in a suitcase. That was 1991. I have never opened that suitcase, though I have often thought of working on his book for him. Maybe your book will give me the courage to open the suitcase.

AKOMP readers will recall I didn't have the courage to open the proverbial suitcase — not right away anyway. In a sense, the book is the story of me getting the confidence to open it, and then reckoning with what I found inside. In my case I opened a drawer with an envelope. I found the courage only gradually and only because, I think, of a mix of curiosity, and the power of Bob's messages themselves.

So as I finish up this first year of AKOMP''s existence on this here planet earth, I want to say thank you to my readers. Thanks to those of you who've taken the time to write. If you're not the writing type, that's chill too. I am not the writing type myself.

But I cannot tell you what a thrill it is that Bob's story really seems to be reaching the people it needs to reach. After my final event a few weekends ago at the Miami Book Fair, I went down to the pool. I ordered a hamburger. I looked up, as happens sometimes, at the sky and thought about Bob. Palms overhead fluttered in the wind. I said a few thoughts in mind to Bob, in case he is listening. I thanked him as ever for the gift he's given me, how he's utterly changed my life. And now how his story is hopefully, even in a small part, changing the real world.

Riding to the airport, my driver asked why I was in town, and asked about the book, and said she's going to buy a copy for herself and her friend. She asked if Bob was still alive. I told her he is not. "Ah, he watches from upstairs," she said, and I said sometimes I suspect so. I gave her a guitar pick and she said she plays guitar. Honestly one of the best parts of my year has been handing people guitar picks and watching them remember that they or someone they know is a musician. That alone, I think, Bob would have found cool.

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My big news is I got a puppy. His name is Saturn and he's perfect:

Saturn bounding in snow

And he's best friends one of my cats:

Love,

Sandy

p.s. The AKOMP paperbacks are printing soon and I'll be announcing some live dates. Excited to share more.

p.p.s. I don't participate in the Global Yule Conspiracy myself (I try to hibernate during the last few weeks of the year, avoid public spaces else I hear music, etc.), but if you participate in that or other year-end gift-giving type holidays, might I encourage you to give the gift of AKOMP. Remember it's an audiobook too!

p.p.p.s. If you want a free, glow-in-the-dark AKOMP guitar pick, write mirraculas at gmail dot com and my assistant Alex will send you one :)

p.p.p.p.s. For Not Thanksgiving, amongst many other things, I improvised a vegetarian slab pie that was rad as hell; it had mushrooms, leeks, collards, and gruyere. If you like pie, try making a pie like that. (Here's an essay I wrote about baking pie)

p.p.p.p.p.s. I filed a big piece the other day and ever since basically all I do is watch Star Trek: The Next Generation and figure out how to keep the puppy from eating my entire house. It's fun.

p.p.p.p.p.p.s. Sarah Smarsh's Heartland is an important book all Americans should read

p.p.p.p.p.p.p.s. Many of the things said during this conversation interested me greatly, but Ta-Nehisi Coates' thoughts about writing at the end especially resonated so much

I Gave a Speech for Some Doctors

Sunday Content #45

Selfie taken at the Eastern Iowa Airport 😎

I gave a speech for some doctors. Yes, doctors. A whole auditorium of doctors assembled to listen to me. I said yes to giving the speech back in the spring and dreaded it for months after. I was worried about not only the 50 minutes or so I'd be speaking but also what came afterward, the q&a. What would doctors ask me, I feared? A friend gave me some good advice the day before, which was "Have fun."

The morning of the speech I felt sick. I arrived at the venue. The space reminded me of the big classrooms I'd do improv shows in back in college.

Have fun.

My name was said and I went on to begin my speech, but first grinned, made a joke.

"Hello, doctors," I began, and they laughed. Then I began what I'd come to say, which had great humor, but is also very grave. I could feel them really hearing it.

It went in a flash and I loved every second. (So it always goes with performance, for me.)

My audience seemed to have a great time too. Some rushed up to me after. They asked questions and spoke of their careers and people they've known but mostly they seemed stirred, enthused. People said kind things. My favorite: A man said he had a son "with a diagnosis" and held up his fingers as if he were measuring two inches. "Today you've made me this much better of an advocate." He smiled and walked away.

I hope to speak to many more groups of professionals in months and years to come.

My extremely Iowa City Iowa City hotel room #gohawks #herkeyforlyfe

I've got a new lil essay up on Bon Appétit's Healthyish about how I've celebrated Thanksgiving in recent years. Like most everything I write it's actually about 'mental health,' so to speak.

My final live event of the year will be this Sunday afternoon at the Miami Book Fair. More info here. I'll have more events early in 2019; the paperback will publish January 15. More soon.

If you're looking for something yummy to bake this winter, I highly recommend these muffins and subbing fresh cranberries.

Bran cranberry muffins

Love 🖖🏻,

Sandy

p.s. Happy early Not Thanksgiving

p.p.s. Look at this gorgeous loaf of butt bread I baked:

p.p.p.s. Look at this one: