short night, it's gonna be a long, long day

sunrise will be at 6:40, sunset will be at 7:45.

it's quiet at 4 in the morning. few cars out there on i-90, no one walking their dogs, and you wonder what's going on in the houses with lit windows. the radio holds the dulcet tones of BBC reporters. their voices are strange, the news is strange.

i can't sleep and i'm really tired. i woke up hot and sweaty, worried about work, worried about money, worried about everything so i just got up. figured i might as well get a couple of hours of reading in before the day breaks and it all starts over.

i finished nic sheff's we all fall down last night which has left me feeling a little creeped out and weird. it's hard to believe that people can ingest such vast quantities of alcohol and drugs and still be able to function. i get to that third beer on a weekend night and that's it for me; i'm pretty thankful i can read my personal warning signals.

he's coming by the store to do a "drop-by", an on-the-run stock signing. he's not speaking at our store so this gives us a chance to meet him, get some books signed, and offer local educators and counselors a moment with him. he's got some powerful things to say, he's got experiences that most of us will never have, stuff that could change lives in ways we will never know.

drug use is such a private thing that when someone steps up and says, i do it, i did it, you do, too, what do i know that will help you, giving you the chance to tell your story, to share such a moment is life-changing. knowing you aren't the only one is a powerful thing.

as hard as his books are to read, as wickedly brutal and train-wreck-like as they are, they are important to have available to the people who need them, when they need them. they are, of course, full of drug use, full of sex, full of lies; reading along, you can see how he lies to himself, justifying what he does. As much talk of sex as there is, it isn't pretty or prurient - it's ugly and torturous, it's sex, not love, even though the word love is used to describe it. all part of the lie.

fascinating, horrible, icky, anyone who has ever known anyone living a life like this will find themselves more empathetic, more forgiving, after the reading than before. definitely a book for older teens, unless you are a user or know a user. if you are or do, you need to know what that life is like. (Little Brown. $17.99. available now.)