Dead Star Twilight

I've hyped it enough over the past few weeks, if not the past year or so, and now it's finally here.

Above my profile to the right, you'll find the link to purchase and download Dead Star Twilight -- a full-length memoir detailing my descent into drug addiction while working as a news producer in Los Angeles; my time in a brutal public rehab facility in Miami; and my fight for a measure of redemption while living out of a hotel and covering the immediate aftermath of 9/11 in New York City.

I won't delve any further than I already have into the details of the story -- I hope you'll want to read it all for yourself.

I do want to make a few things clear, however, in the interest of full disclosure and in an effort to head off any of the inevitable nagging questions that plague the release of a memoir these days.

As this story is told from my point of view and relays the events I experienced as best I remember them, I have no illusions about the fact that it may not necessarily jibe with the perspectives of the very real people with whom I interacted during the period described in the book. There was a time when such disclaimers weren't necessary, but that was before memoirists began stepping over the line and creating fabulist fantasies out of their pasts. I did my level best to ensure that the story I told was as factual as I could make it, but I offer no apologies for having a unique perspective.

Included in the story, you'll find quite a bit of detailed dialogue, which any reasonable person would question the veracity of. The fact is that the conversations were transcribed from nothing more than my own memory, and I hope that where I may have been forced to "fill in the gaps" here and there, I stayed true to the spirit of what was actually said.

There are a few things within the story that have been changed outright from the events as I remember them, mostly for the sake of hiding the identities of those people and places who likely don't want to see themselves identified in a public forum such as this. Certain names and physical characteristics have been altered; the chronology of one or two events depicted in the story have been adjusted to make them fit along the timeline and to avoid having the manuscript clock in at 600 pages. Once again, I won't apologize for this as it in no way adversely affects the spirit of the story. That said, I want to make it clear that all the "characters" depicted in Dead Star Twilight are real; they aren't "composites." Likewise, the events detailed in the story are true. It all really happpened. I'm not James Frey. I'm not a wanna-be screenwriter. I've spent 16 years as a journalist, and although I appreciate the power of good drama, I can't and won't sacrifice the truth in favor of it -- not if I'm claiming that a story is non-fiction. As I said, I have no doubt that my memory of the events of Dead Star Twilight will differ from that of others who lived through the same situations.

But that's their story to tell.

This is mine.

I hope you like it.