An unhealthy dose of skepticism

AKA a sneak preview of my new novel.

I have some exciting news to share. Earlier this week Aaron Burch’s online literacy project HAD published a work of short fiction I wrote called “Evergreen.”

The rest of today’s newsletter is going to be about this piece so if you didn’t clink on the link here’s another one.

Bookstore in CDMX

No, seriously.

“Evergreen” is a rehab story and is excerpted from my new novel, Make It Stop, which will be published by Rare Bird Books in April 2023. (Cover reveal coming soon.) It’s about a dysfunctional vigilante group and is set in a near-future LA. In this world, if you don’t pay your hospital bills you don’t leave. The protagonist is a woman named Melanie who breaks people out of these prison hospitals.

In the excerpt, Melanie has infiltrated Evergreen Medical Center and is working undercover. As you can tell from the tone of the piece, Melanie has a lot of experience in rehab facilities: sometimes she’s an operative, sometimes she’s a patient, and sometimes she’s something in between.

I started Make It Stop a few years after I got sober and a few years before the publication of my first novel Forest of Fortune. I remember writing some of the earliest scenes during the summer I quit my job at the casino and went to Lisbon and Vilnius, two cities at the opposite ends of Europe.

I was working on the novel during a writing marathon at San Diego Writers, Inc. in 2012. While I was fundraising for the marathon, I offered to name characters after people who pledged a certain amount of money. (I think it was $50.) Several of my friends took me up on this offer and their names are sprinkled throughout the book. Three of them are in this excerpt. (Yes, I paid back my friends’ generosity by lending their names to drunks and drug addicts.) One character (Hi Lauren!) is named after a former co-worker and regular reader of MFTU.

Sadly, the other two characters are named for people who are no longer with us. Their names are Jeremy Richman and Shanna Mahin. They were kind, generous people who were exceptionally smart and supportive. The world is worse off without them and I selfishly wish they were here so they could read Make It Stop. I know they’d give me a hard time about putting them in rehab.

“Thanks a lot, Jim,” I can hear Jeremy say.

“Tell us how you really feel,” Shanna would say.

Of course, I had no inkling what the future had in store for them. I don’t know what the future has in store for any of us. I’ve never been to an inpatient rehab facility like the one Melanie infiltrates. I’ve been to plenty of places that offer outpatient services and a shitload of AA meetings and they all have similar vibes. They are in-between places where people straddle two worlds: the one they want to leave behind and the one they seek to inhabit. Now Jeremy and Shanna will always be in this place where they are trying, really trying, to make things better.

I’ve been reading a lot of stories and novels where the characters are trapped in the torment of addiction. They are lonely, desperate people doing drastic things. These make for interesting stories, but sad lives. While reading these stories, I found myself thinking, “Thank goodness that’s all behind me,” which is a very dangerous thing for an alcoholic to think.

The other night I spoke with a friend who had relapsed after a period of sobriety. I hope that call helped my friend because I know it helped me. It snapped me out of a peculiar stasis, a spiritual skepticism that I didn’t realize had taken hold. The call reminded me that my disease, like death, is always waiting for me. My relapse is sitting in the treetops with a sniper rifle. I am powerless to shape this future. All I can do is get through today.

But guess what?

That’s more than enough because today the air is cool and brisk. Food tastes amazing. The love I have for my family and friends is the engine that sustains their memories long after they’re gone.

In “Evergreen,” Melanie affirms over and over again that she won’t be at the rehab facility for long, but this is wishful thinking. She is an agent of chaos who uses her energy for the greater good, but she cannot see the future. She doesn’t know how long she’ll be sticking around. None of us do. We don’t need to know how many todays we’ll need to face as long as we get through this one.

That’s it.

Just make it through the day.

If you are struggling with your sobriety you can reach out to me at any time. If you don’t know if you are ready to stop, don’t worry, you’ll find out soon enough. If you can’t wait to read more about Melanie and Lauren and Jeremy and Shanna, I’m sorry but you’re just going to have to wait a little longer.