44 Chapters About 4 Men: A Memoir (36 page)

To Jay Crownover—Thank you for writing the men who inspired me to write about my own men, for always answering my questions, for greeting me with a genuine smile and an appreciative hug every time I came to one of your events even though you had no idea who I was, and for using your platform to promote other authors. You are a true badass.

To E L James, Olivia Cunning, Jamie McGuire, Abbi Glines, Colleen Hoover, Tillie Cole, Katy Evans, Jamie Shaw, and the countless other romance writers whose books ignited something in me, something feral, something forgotten, that simply would not be denied.

And to my little Instagram community of book bloggers, authors, and readers—You ladies are my greatest support system. You are the first ones to wish me a good morning every day and often the last ones to bid me a good night. Considering that most people in my real life don’t know this book exists, your enthusiasm, exuberance, and encouragement has meant more to me than you can imagine. To those of you who read my words—Thank you for your time. To those of you who made teasers—Thank you for your talent. To those of you who tagged me on your posts, whether they were dick pics or kittens riding unicorns—Thank you for your friendship. I love you beautiful book whores to the moon and back.

I believe that in order to tell you who I am, I must first tell you who I want to be.

And what I really want to be is the steaming, twitching pile of flesh and teeth that would result if science ever made it genetically possible for Jenny Lawson and Kelly Ripa to have a baby—with a generous sprinkling of Megan Fox on top.

That’s the dream, at least.

The reality is that I’m a school psychologist (or I was before they fired me for gross moral turpitude. If you’re reading this, it has probably already happened.), and I live in the soul-stifling southeastern suburbs with my husband and our two darling little cherubs (or I
did
before he divorced me and/or had me committed).

Though my punk-rock days might be behind me, I still dye my hair pink on the first day of summer break every year and pray that it washes out by August. It doesn’t completely scratch my rebellious itch, but those judgmental stares in the grocery store do feel pretty damn good.

I also want to be the type of person who stays up until two a.m., writing smutty romance novels, but instead, I stay up until three a.m., writing about my own deviant sexual history because I have no imagination.

After one tiny REM cycle, I’m bitch-slapped back into consciousness by the sound of my alarm and rush off to work with my hair still wet and a travel mug emblazoned with some inspirational quote about the universe still on the roof of my car, my lunch still tucked away in the refrigerator where my long-suffering husband placed it the night before, and the belt of my coat vigorously slapping the pavement as I speed away. I’m what doctors like to call
chronically sleep-deprived
—or as Ken pronounces it, “depraved.”

To be honest, I don’t even remember writing this book.

No, seriously.

If that sounds like the kind of person you want to go around being friends with, then by all means, feel free to drop me a line. Just don’t be surprised if you get a reply at two a.m. with an inexplicable Shia LaBeouf meme and then another message at 7:05 a.m. that was meant for my husband, asking if he would please put my lunch bag in the mailbox so that I could swing back by and grab it without having to get out of my car.

You can find me…

On email:
[email protected]

On my website:
www.authorbbeaston.com

On Facebook:
www.facebook.com/bbeaston

On Instagram:
www.instagram.com/author.bb.easton

On Pinterest:
www.pinterest.com/artbyeaston

And on Etsy:
www.etsy.com/shop/artbyeaston