I want to tell you a little bit about a book called Klonopin Lunch. I imported it here in London from New York. I did it because I knew that Stevie Nicks blames her lost 1990s decade on Klonopin. It is not available or known in England. Since Stephen Fry, Carrie Fisher and Jon Ronson’s Psychopath Test I have been researching DSM and bipolar disorder.
It’s not my kind of book. But I loved it. My wife loves it. It’s honest. And truthful.
As I’m a writer, I wrote the book’s author a letter. I do this a lot. And I do mean a lot. Sorry.
Almost never do my targets write back. Jessica did. It turned out we had a shared love of the Mitfords, amongst other things. Not music, I admit.
One letter began a very odd friendship. That was several years ago. Now, she’s just shooting out the lights. She has a YouTube channel called Nice Girls Don’t Say That. She makes movies and stuff. She’s very New York. And not in a bad way at all. She put me onto Paddy Fermor, DSO, OBE, the hero of Cretans everywhere. She is very funny.
A couple of weeks ago, for the first time, and to my horror, she phoned me up. I accompanied her to a shop that might have been the CVS. No, I didn’t ask and don’t want to know.
She told me not to chuck the day job. She told me it would take 2 years to make any money. She told me some other things too.
Since that call, here is what I have done. I have chatted on Twitter with a hero, Maria McKee. I have met (and hugged) Katherine Ryan. I have become an Experience Host for Airbnb. I have re-started my music publisher in the US, Patchouli BMI. I have got a job in Switzerland doing something I believe in, which is making drugs cheaper for everyone if you want to know. I have published a novel, Ernest Zevon, which is doing well, and re-published my 1990s air crash thriller Kicking Tin. It was written before 2001. I have chatted to another hero, a saxophonist who is famous and tours the world with a major band. I might be going to see the band later this year, in the US. I am definitely going to see Tom Petty and Stevie Nicks in London. I contacted an actor friend of mine to see about making her biopic, a topic we first discussed in 2008 when I stayed with her in Laurel Canyon, California, and blasted around Hollywood in her BMW convertible. That was the week I spent at the Mondrian on Sunset, a favourite with Bret Easton Ellis and Zadie Smith. That was the same week that I stood outside Record Plant Sausalito with Amber Valletta and told her that Rumours was made there. I am making a book into a stage play and TV pilot for a streaming service. Tomorrow I am meeting Jeff Banks in London. Sunday I fly to Switzerland.
But this is not about me.
Have I forgotten anything? Just one thing. Thanks, Jessica.