Promise Not to Tell

Still feeling like utter crap. I am going to lay down again, but not before a toot a little horn for someone, I am immensely happy for.

I went to a funky free-for-all tiny college in Vermont. Unless you went there, you've never heard of it. Even if it sounds "vaguely familiar" I can assure you, it isn't.

A lot of people at this funky college wrote. I was among them, but in truth, I was clueless. Like so many others on that campus, I was flailing around on paper a lot of the time. I'd write things like "I am the diamond, who smears like milk." (Actually, that's too good.) I was reading a lot of Sylvia Plath poetry, but not really GETTING the poetry. It was, of course, not a bad way to go for someone in college finding herself, but sometimes I wish I could write apology letters to my English teachers. Then again, my fellow classmates weren't much different. I can't tell you the amount of poems I heard with words like "Big Wheels" and "Masturbation", not to mention "My name is Womyn or Wimmin or Wombmn".

And then there was a student named Jennifer McMahon. The first time I heard her read, something in me GOT IT. It was like I had a blank box that finally got checked off. I not only knew that she could write, but I LIKED her writing, the way you like writing you find in a "published" book. Right away I knew she had something. There are phrases in her poems from back then that I STILL can remember. She was my first writing IDOL, and although it might embarrass her to know this, she was my first real writing teacher by example.

I got to know Jennifer better a couple of years later, when we formed a writing group with another friend, Seth Knapp (come back to the five and dime, Seth Knapp, Seth Knapp!). I still adored her work, and found a lot of inspiration from her, but it was a different dynamic. For one, I was writing better, and with Seth we formed a supportive group of equals.

Through the years, the three of us lost touch, but I always thought of those two, and in particular, Jennifer, because her writing and her example meant so much to me. So you can imagine my delight when she found me through that weird labyrinth of nudie girls and networking, called myspace. I was SO HAPPY to hear from her and when I found out that she had a debut novel coming out, I was BESIDE myself.

I cannot tell you the amount of talented people I have met through the years, who eventually just gave up or didn't have time, or forgot that some art form meant something to them. To know that through the years, Jennifer not only kept writing, but that some of that writing was MAKING IT out into the world, felt like JUSTICE. It felt like a big old stamp of HOPE that said YES WORLD.

On Tuesday, her debut novel, Promise Not to Tell hit the bookstores. I am SO HAPPY for her. When I went to go pick it up, I was going to take a picture of it on the table of "New Fiction," but it was right next to a book titled Is The Bitch Dead Or What?, and I couldn't stop LAUGHING to save my life. Oh, the GLORY of being a published author!

Please buy this book. She deserves it and so do you--it's good. Also, all the old manuscripts I own of hers will become VALUABLE. Hey, a girl's got to eat.