Combat Love Book Club

Reinvention

Good morning, Sanity Squad!

It’s Day One of our mini-book club for the month of March. My memoir Combat Love was released this month one year ago. It came out as my husband was battling incurable cancer. There were times I thought I might have to cancel the book release or book tour. But Tim’s life philosophy was that you keep going; you keep living through the toughest challenges, you rely on your routines, keep making plans, and keep showing up.

I’m struck by how much this current era demands that we do that same thing: keep living our lives and keep doing the hard work of preserving our principles, even as our leaders try to destroy all we stand for.

So in this challenging moment, I offer you some Combat Love. It’s my own survival story, complete with love and loss, family secrets, feelings of despair and abandonment, all woven with the 1980’s staples of sex, drugs and punk rock (and the risks those can present). I’ll put out a couple chapters a week on Substack until March 26th, the anniversary of its release, when we can do a live book club chat.

If you haven’t yet read Combat Love, (spoiler alert!) I survive. I also manage to achieve my dreams of becoming a news anchor and having a happy family. None of it was easy (as you’ll read, I often made shit harder for myself). But this is not a story of unrelenting struggle. It’s a step into a time machine, back to the hot sunny beach days on the Jersey Shore of the 80s, complete with keg parties, killer music, and that intoxicating feeling of youth when anything is possible.

So let’s get the band back together and raise your fists for some good ole punk rock that tells the authorities to f-off. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and answering your questions!