Now that my memoir Float On is officially for sale, I’ve gone from feeling like a mother with a newborn baby to a mother with a kid graduating from college. It needed so much to get to this point – brutal honesty, sustained discipline, and constant editing. Now it’s about to go out into the world of readers to interact without my supervision. In the blink of an eye, I’ve gone from holding a hand to an escorted playdate to being invited for a rare Sunday dinner.

So it seems fitting to mark this graduation of sorts for Float On to enter the big world with a party. Hope you can come Friday December 1st at 7PM at Van Go Mobile Arts in East Lawrence. We’ll toast to its future, have a snack and a short reading, and sign books. It would mean so much to have you there if you can make it. If not and you would like a copy of the book, it is available on Amazon now (and was an Amazon ‘Hot New Release’ yesterday!) and I will also be in Topeka on Saturday, December 9th at the Great Writers Right Here author fair, sponsored by the Public Library.

I chose World AIDS Day to launch my memoir to bring awareness to the disease that killed my dad (pictured above with me lounging in Key West in 1992). People still contract HIV, still die from AIDS complications, and are still dealing with the shame attached to this disease. I attended the World AIDS Day 2017 Community Luncheon in Kansas City yesterday and was left with a swirl of conflicting  emotions. Gratitude for how far the medical advances have come; grief for the huge swaths of communities hit; bewilderment at the groups still so affected (like heterosexual black women) and hope for a changed future. If you hear or read about World AIDS Day tomorrow, or even see a red ribbon, I hope that you’ll think of me and remember that HIV/AIDS continues to affect all sorts of people who are probably more like you than not.

Love, Molly