Bourbon Cowboy

The adventures of an urbane bar-hopping transplant to New York.

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Location: New York, New York, United States

I'm a storyteller in the New York area who is a regular on NPR's "This American Life" and at shows around the city. Moved to New York in 2006 and am working on selling a memoir of my years as a greeting card writer, and (as a personal, noncommercial obsession) a nonfiction book called "How to Love God Without Being a Jerk." My agent is Adam Chromy at Artists and Artisans. If you came here after hearing about my book on "This American Life" and Googling my name, the "How to Love God" book itself isn't in print yet, and may not even see print in its current form (I'm focusing on humorous memoir), but here's a sample I've posted in case you're curious anyway: Sample How To Love God Introduction, Pt. 1 of 3. Or just look through the archives for September 18, 2007.) The book you should be expecting is the greeting card book, about which more information is pending. Keep checking back!

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

An Experiment in Money Flushing

I came back from New York City late on Monday (because it's a two hour train ride PLUS another hour by car from the station), and woke up to remember that the house I'm staying in has been rented out for the upcoming weekend.  So this is the one time in my tenure here that I really do have to find alternative lodgings.  In light of this, I packed up everything and moved it to another house my host owns 12 miles away in an actual town. 

Why am I not in THAT house this whole time, you may ask, since it's near a coffee shop with wi-fi and a supermarket and the other usual amenities that I complain about lacking?  Because it's a fixer-upper.  No refrigerator.  No washer or dryer.  No hot water.  And, as I discovered last night, no heat at all.  (Also, no pots or pans or other stuff to cook with.)  So my plan has changed a little.  While free rent is an admirable thing to be able to pull off, the fact is that because of the generous free rent I've been enjoying thus far, I've got more than enough money saved up now to live on until the contract comes (if the free rent continues)--so much so that I might just try to live in a hotel for the next several days, say, Thursday to Monday.   There'd be less shuttling my stuff around, less disruption in my schedule...and, more importantly perhaps, hotel rooms have always been terrifically productive for me.  I wrote the bulk of my book "Travels With Ritalin" in hotel rooms; about 200 pages in 30 days.  After Memorial Day I could come back here and everything would be normal again because there are no more holidays threatening my peace. Just a tentative idea at this point, but I can feel it growing warmly inside me like some lovely hothouse flytrap.  

There should be photos from New York City shortly.

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