I have been a closet writer since high school. At a time when I wanted validation from my teachers, I almost failed the writing class and was forced into the closet. Writing at night by candlelight without setting my school uniform on fire was a skill that I had mastered, but it was otherwise utterly useless in my life.

After decades of honing my anti-pyretic skills in the dark, the voices of my long-gone English teachers faded. It helped that several of them had passed away (resting in peace without the torture of grading any more poor papers). I gained confidence and tossed a few written pages out from behind my collection of ugly Christmas sweaters.

And so, here we have my first book. Luckily for me, there was a whole team of editors who caught every grammatical error and my defiance of using commas. I just hate commas. They look like incompetent little sperm chasing their own tails. And, see, I can write an entire, somewhat coherent sentence that goes on unnecessarily without the use of any commas, and you can pretty much keep track of where my mind is going or, actually, for that matter, the lack of my mind’s direction. See, no commas are necessary!

My kids told me my logo looks like an artichoke on top of a mustache. That’s not exactly the aesthetic I was aspiring to. My interpretation of the logo is a lotus flower growing out of a book. It signifies writing as a way to overcome adversity and that beauty can grow from challenging stories. Or an artichoke growing out of my mustache works too.

Laughter is medicine. May giggling heal your heartache and belly laugh your way to heaven.