I know. Me again, asking you to pre-order. I’ll keep asking every day for the next couple of weeks, so it’s probably a good idea to just go ahead and pre-order.

Pre-orders are super important for so many reasons, but the benefits for YOU are vast! You’ll get a bunch of free shit. Yes. Bribes.

Submit your preorder receipt here and you’ll receive1:

• a digital advanced copy

• a signed bookplate

• a sticker sheet

• a waterless "tattoo”

• an entry to win one of 10 sprayed-edge copies

• an entry to win accommodations for a murder mystery party at my LA book tour stop!2

Speaking of Book Tour - I’d love to see you!

May 12: Seattle, WA, in conversation with Andrea Dunlop at Third Place Books, Seward Park

May 14: Bend, Oregon, in conversation with Joey Roddy, at Roundabout Bookshop

May 19: Los Angeles, CA in conversation with Reema Zaman at the Palihouse

June 15: Bedford, NY, in conversation with Katie Sise at Bedford Books

June 16: NYC, NY, in conversation with Alix Strauss- TBD! Stay tuned for more.

June 17: Boston, MA, in conversation with Laura McKowen at Hummingbird Books!

Other ways you can help? Shelve it or mark it as “want to read” on Goodreads and then leave a rating/review when you’re finished with it. Share it with your friends or on social media. Share this article here on Substack, or share my posts on Instagram or TikTok. Buy copies for yourself and a friend. Invite me on your podcast. Send a carrier pigeon, IDK.3

That’s all for now! Thank you!

xo Emily

Our cat died this week. I’m not going to sugarcoat, I am sad. He was fourteen, so we weren’t naive to the fact that his years were numbered, but we really thought we had more time. When my oldest daughter went away to college in the fall, her biggest worry was that Cheddar would die while she was gone. Mercifully, she was home when this happened.1

A couple of weeks ago, Cheddar had stopped eating and drinking, which was NOT like him. The dude loved food, so I knew that wasn’t good. Long story short, after a jillion dollars of tests and veterinary visits, he was diagnosed with heart failure, so we made the decision to put him down before he suffered further. It sucked.

I don’t know if I believe in an afterlife for people, but I do believe in one for animals. Even if it resides in the confines of my own delusion, I don’t care. The past few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about previous pets and how they all might be chilling together in kitty heaven.

I love cats. I would have told you, without a doubt, that I was a cat person before we adopted our dog during COVID, but now I refuse to choose sides.

My first real pet as an adult was a grey, furry kitten I adopted from a coworker when I was in college.

Her name was Sammi. Her nickname was little bitch.

I don’t have many pictures of Sammi, partly because back then we didn’t have phones in our cameras, partly because they are in an album in storage somewhere, but mainly because she was an absolute menace. I loved her dearly, spoiled the crap out of her, but she happened to hate everyone who wasn’t me, though she hated me sometimes, too.

She had the weirdest habits. She’d take my underwear out of the laundry and leave it all over the house. She would somehow get into the cabinets and chew through boxes, not to eat anything, just to be a terror and make my food stale.

When I graduated from college and got my first job, she started tearing up my apartment when I was gone all day. So, the vet suggested I get Sammi a friend. I thought this was a terrible idea: you have one cat who destroys your house, so get another? But I went along with it, and my brother and I went to the humane society in Portland, where we found the world’s most amazing cat, Big Boy.

We had no background on him, but my guess was that he was surrendered by an elderly person or someone who died, because I cannot imagine ANYONE getting rid of this cat. To this day, I consider him the best cat I’ve ever met in my life, no offense to my late Cheddar. He was smart, sweet, cuddly, and loved everyone. People who hated cats liked him. I can’t tell you the number of times someone would meet him and say, “You know, I’m not a cat person, but I’d totally take this one.”

Anyway, the vet’s plan worked. Though it took a few days for Sammi to tolerate Big Boy, she eventually came around and totally mellowed out. Don’t get me wrong, she was still a huge bitch, but she stopped destroying things. Win, win!

Then I got married, moved in with my husband, and we had a baby. Big Boy cuddled with the baby the way he’d cuddled with my pregnant belly, not in a smothery way, but in a “oh, thank you for making this baby for me” way. He loved babies and kids more than anything.

Sammi, on the other hand, gave the baby one sniff, vomited, then ran away and hid. She wasn’t violent toward kids, but it was painfully clear she didn’t like them.

When our first baby was one, both cats made the trek from Portland to Pennsylvania with us, which, if you’ve ever traveled with two cats, is a whole logistical thing that I can’t believe we pulled off.

As more kids came along… three more little girls over as many years…Big Boy was in heaven.

And Sammi was in hell. She HATED her life. She would pee on the kids’ stuff and hiss at them. We put her on prozac. Didn’t help. And she started to full-on attack my mom and mother-in-law when they visited. Specifically them. So odd.

Not Big Boy, he loved them:

When it came time for us to move across the country again, to Seattle, we knew that Sammi could not tolerate the trip with us. She was 13 at that point, older and more frail, so we decided the kindest thing to do would be to surrender her.2

This is going to make me sound like a terrible person, but it was such a relief to leave her behind. I probably should have rehomed her years before; she was stressed around kids, but I had so much guilt, even cleaning up cat pee for years, and force-feeding her antidepressants. In the end, she probably made a great cat for someone, or lived the rest of her days with more fuel for her hate fire.

In Seattle, Big Boy thrived. He was an indoor-outdoor cat, and I know, you’re not supposed to do that, but since he’d always been that way, it felt cruel to restrict him. Plus, everyone loved him,3 and he was very street smart. He visited the local elementary school during recess. We frequently got calls from the neighborhood PCC market that he’d gone into the store to visit the patrons. They were happy to see him, but sadly, cats weren’t allowed.

He was as thrilled as you can imagine he was when we had our fifth baby.

But being an indoor-outdoor cat came back to bite, literally. A few weeks after Rowan was born, Big Boy went on an adventure and didn’t return. He was 13, but in good health. We put up posters. I dragged my five children under 7 (including a newborn) to the humane society to look through the surrendered cats every single day. And one day, flipping through the “deceased animal” binder, I came across his photo. He’d obviously been in a fight with a raccoon or maybe a coyote. It was horrible.

If you didn’t catch the 6-week postpartum with five kids under seven, note, let’s just say, in general, I wasn’t doing well at this point. My cat died due to my own negligence (at least that’s what I told myself), and I was still dealing with the loss of my best friend a few months prior.4 So, in a stunning act of good judgment, in my postpartum grieving fog, I drove to a cat rescue facility and adopted two orange kittens.5

I would tell anyone who just had a baby, let alone their FIFTH baby, DO NOT ADOPT KITTENS YOU ABSOLUTE MANIAC! PLEASE SEE A THERAPIST PRONTO!

What was my point?

Oh, right.

Sammi was terrible, but she led to Big Boy, and Big Boy’s death led to Cheddar, and as sad as many bad decisions were folded in there, I’m so happy that they were all a part of my life.

I’ve thought many times over the years about how much Cheddar would have loved Big Boy. So it gives me peace to think that they are up in kitty heaven right now raising hell together.6

I’m not one of those “everything happens for a reason” people, but I guess I’m clinging to silver linings right now.

Rest easy, sweet kitty.

xo Emily

At least you know that when you receive an email from me, it’s for a good reason!

First of all, I hope 2026 is off to a great start for everyone, despite (waves around at the world) everything going on!

As you may or may not know, my debut thriller, The Revenge Party, comes out on May 12!

It’s only four months away, which means I’ll be insufferable about book promotion. Apologies in advance.

Ready to see the cover?

….drum roll…

…more drum roll…

…anticipation…

…suspenseful music…

Isn’t she pretty?1 Here’s what she’s all about:

A fun early review:

The Revenge Party begs the question: What if women conspired to take down the smallest man who ever lived? Any woman who has felt trapped, angry, scared or helpless over the last 10 years will find solace in this book where toxic men get what’s coming for them. In stilettos, no less.

And now comes my least favorite part of being an author: begging for your pre-order!

I’ve mentioned this before, and I’ll say it again: pre-orders are one of the most important metrics for books.

Other ways you can help? Shelve it or mark it as “want to read” on Goodreads. Share it with your friends or on social media. Buy copies for yourself and a friend!

I’ll sweeten the deal for you: If you send me your proof of purchase HERE, I’ll email you a digital link so you can read early on Kindle or computer or phone or whatever e-reader you use.

Another fun perk? You’ll be invited to my virtual book club for early readers in early May (date TBD).

You’ll also get an upgrade to a free lifetime paid subscription to my Substack, which, let’s be honest, isn’t THAT much of a bonus since I hardly ever post, but hey, a freebie is a freebie!

That’s all I have for today, other than an obligatory picture of Buddy, who will stare into your soul and ask you to purchase my book.

xo Emily

Alright, I know, I know. I am not meant to be a regular newsletter person; I know this about myself. Honestly, I keep the “paid” option available because not everything I write is suitable for everyone, and I don’t want everyone under the sun to have unfettered access to everything I write. Maybe Substack isn’t the ideal platform, maybe it is, but I have zero interest in moving my entire email list again.

Next point: Paris. I just got back last night after 9 days, and when I tell you I could have stayed the rest of my life, I am not joking. I was entirely not prepared to love Paris so much. I expletive expletive expletive loved it.

I’ve been fortunate enough to travel quite a bit, both with and without my kids. Though there are plenty of places left on my travel bucket list (Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Australia—specifically to hug a koala), my expectations have always been fairly realistic. I research heavily and plan trips thoroughly, so I know what I’m getting into.

Paris wasn’t on my list since I’ve visited Cannes and Marseille before, and while I loved those cities, I kinda thought I’d “done” France. Also, my husband goes to Paris every other year for an air show, so it hasn't been at the top of his list when we have the opportunity to travel together, since he’s seen it numerous times. Lastly, I am neither a foodie nor an art enthusiast. I love food, I love to eat, but I don’t have a sophisticated palate by any means. I’ve had carnival corn dogs that make me just as happy as Michelin-star meals. And art is pretty and fun to look at, but I’m not into art if you know what I mean.

ANYWAY, his air show has always fallen on the kids’ last week of school, and it was entirely too inconvenient for me to go with him. But this year, miraculously, it didn’t. And our kids are all teenagers and adults. Since Kale already had a hotel room, all we needed to do was book my ticket, and he has ten bajillion airline miles because he travels so frequently. It would have been silly for me to turn down a basically free trip! So I went.

I. Loved. Everything.

I loved the food, the people, the art, the architecture, the lifestyle, the shopping...everything! I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF ALL OF IT. I could move there in a heartbeat. Also, the people were really lovely! I didn’t meet one person who was snooty to me, even with my extremely basic high-school-level French conversational skills. I also found tons of non alcoholic options on every menu, and nobody was weird about me being sober.

The ONLY THING I didn’t like was all the smoking, like the 90’s in the US before they banned it everywhere, but I could overlook it, and by the end of the trip, I’d gotten entirely used to it. I’d possibly become a smoker1 to live there, that’s how much I loved Paris.

So, please, do yourself a favor and visit Paris sometime! Also, take me with you if you do.

Ok, drumroll, the final and most exciting point - Book three! My debut novel - The Revenge Party - will be in the world on May 12, 2026! More to come (probably in two months, at the current rate of sending newsletters), but I’m super excited!2.

That’s it for now!

xo Emily

I'm currently sitting in a hotel in LA for a few days1. I had a meeting yesterday2 and dropped off my youngest with my oldest while I participate in a one-person retreat (aka a writing hole, writing cave) where I can write without distraction3. It’s working, I guess, since I’m finally publishing a Substack post after over two months.

This week, I shut down the group I founded five years ago during the pandemic: Sober Mom Squad.4 This was a very bittersweet decision that was multi-layered. I am sad about it, and it’s also an enormous weight off my shoulders. SMS wasn’t on my 5-year plan or any plan. It emerged from the pandemic: a desire to help and a need for community. It was an incredible experience, but for many reasons, it had to come to an end.

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I went to the ER on Valentine's Day a year ago. I’d been fighting a nasty case of COVID and couldn’t keep anything down, so I became severely dehydrated. I thought I’d get some fluids and be on my way. Two hours after triage, I was in the ICU with septic shock. My blood pressure was 70/45. My heart rate was nearly 200 bpm. My fever was over 103 and would not come down. I ended up having a blood transfusion.

Spoiler alert: I lived.

I know ER interactions can be rough (’s recent experience reminded me of a few terrible ones of my own), but thankfully, this time, the system worked, and it worked well.

But I have not been the same since.

I don’t mean that in the sense that I haven’t recovered because I am pretty sure I have. Other than some weight, hair, and muscle loss (and let’s be honest, at almost 46, the muscles and hair may never come back), I don’t seem to have any residual effects. I’m healthy. I’m fortunate.

And I’m not the same.

It’s not that I haven’t had brushes with death or health scares. I was a feral teen in the 90s who did every risky thing you can imagine. I’ve been in a few pretty serious car accidents. I had cancer not once, not twice, but three times. I’ve had a dozen surgeries and a failed suicide attempt. I’m no stranger to illness, pain, or tragedy.

What terrified me wasn’t nearly dying. It was coming home and realizing how much the family had fallen apart in my absence. The wheels on the collective family unit screeched to a halt.

Please know this isn’t a diss on my husband or my kids because these things don’t happen in a vacuum. My kids are 12 and over and pretty independent and self-sufficient. My husband, while helpful, has always been the breadwinner and sometimes travels a week or more, so our lives have to work without him and often do. But me? I was irreplaceable as the primary caregiver. That’s not a flex. It’s scary as hell. Nobody wants the secrets they take to the grave to be passwords, medication doses, and carpool email logistics. What a shitty legacy.

I can’t say I was utterly naive to being in a prison of my own making. Anytime I went out of town, I had to make a detailed checklist. I thought I was helpful, but I enabled everyone to expect me to run the show even when I was gone. But what if I’m not around to make the list? And honestly? I shouldn’t have to do this. I no longer wanted to, so I decided I wouldn’t.

So, I decided to make myself as replaceable as possible. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t want to disappear, but I also don’t want everyone I love to be incapable of surviving without me.

For starters, my husband and I shared information. I know this sounds stupid and simple, but we controlled many accounts the other didn’t know about. It wasn’t nefarious; when I opened the account with the electricity company and connected our payment info, I never logged in again! We found this to be true with dozens of accounts. So we used LastPass to share passwords for everything: banking, pharmacy, Mychart accounts, health platforms, school payment portals, utilities, hotel and airline points, internet providers, mortgage accounts, etc. Anything that had anything to do with our family, we put it in there.

We also created a shared doc called “If One Of Us Dies” because we have wildly fucked up senses of humor. We listed every account name, where to find it, and every doctor and medication with frequency. When something changes, we update it in real-time.

We made each other legacy contacts through our email, phones, and social media accounts (we also added our eldest son and daughter because they are adults), and all of our kids know where our living will is.

In doing all this, we realized there were some things that we hadn’t authorized each other for: his name wasn’t on one of the car titles, mine wasn’t on another, and one of our retirement accounts didn’t have me listed as a beneficiary. There were a few other seemingly minor things that would have been a royal pain in the ass in the instance that anything happened to one of us. And we wouldn’t have known any of this if we hadn’t taken the time to check them.

Make no mistake: This was time-consuming, but not THAT time-consuming. Now, it’s easy to update, and it’s done. Hopefully, we never need to rely on it, but we have it just in case.

Maybe this seems like a dramatic reaction to a hospital stay. But last year reminded me how so much can change instantly and that nothing is permanent. I plan on staying alive, but accidents and disease happen! I also plan on staying married, but who plans for divorce? I don’t see it as reactive but proactive.

Also, when things are fucked, action helps. What if the president takes away women’s rights to have a bank account or vote? This made me feel a little more control over the general sense of **waves around** the dumpster fire we are in.

Have any other tips for making yourself replaceable? I’d love to hear them.

xo Emily

As you may have read in my book, I was chronically online while deep in an MLM and still very online during COVID. Over the past four years, I’ve been less so, but the phone is still taking up more space in my brain than I’d like. I thought I’d give you a peek at my day and how the phone fits into it.

This isn’t meant to be prescriptive, though if it helps you, great. Keep in mind that I don’t have a job that requires me to leave the house, and all my kids are over twelve, so your mileage may vary.

I’m a big believer in not keeping my phone by my bed. When you wake up to a glowing rectangle in your face, you’re putting everyone else’s day in front of yours. If you do this, I strongly encourage you to quit the habit. Get an alarm clock instead of using your phone alarm. Put your phone somewhere where you’ll hear it in an emergency (though we know that’s why you’re not keeping it in your bedroom; come on). I am telling you if you want to reduce your anxiety, screen time, and mindless scroll and be more present, that one thing will help.

*off soapbox*

I’m generally the first person up in the morning, so after I get coffee, feed the dog, empty the dishwasher, etc., I head into my office and open my computer, not my phone. I start with my email and look for significant things, such as emails from the school, teachers, check-in for a medical appointment, after-school activities, and anything I need to do now. I also unsubscribe from anything I don’t want. My inbox is pretty pared down at this point, but something always sneaks its way in.

Depending on the time, if the kids still aren’t up, I MIGHT check my phone at that point. If there aren’t any text alerts or phone calls on the notifications center that I need to attend to immediately, I don’t unlock it. Otherwise, I know I’ll get lost in it. Without an Instagram or Facebook icon to click (I know this is profound), I don’t.

By then, the kids are up, and I try to interact with them as much as they let me (remember, all teenagers). My youngest is on a waffle kick right now, so I usually make a batch of those, take him to school, come home, and THEN…then I open my phone.

If you’re keeping track, my whole morning is (mostly) free from my phone screen, save from returning an urgent call or text, which is pretty rare.

When I’m working (writing), I adjust my focus settings so that the only people who can contact me are family members. And when I‘m out and about, I try to keep my phone in my purse so I’m not glued to it. In the evening, I usually read a book or watch a show (on the actual TV) and keep my phone in my office. If it’s not with me, it’s a bit out of sight, out of mind.

And guess what? So far, I haven’t (not once, not ever) missed anything.

So, what am I using my phone for? I’m glad you asked:

NYT GAMES

Holy shit. This is my new Instagram. I never did these because I didn’t think I had time, well lo and behold without Instagram, I’m a gamer. Wordle, connections, the mini, and strands. I open one of these when I need a break during the day. They work my brain and are self-limiting; when the game is over, I take my dopamine hit back to whatever else I need to do.

NEWS

Right now, I have no news apps on my phone. I just can’t. So I check in once a day here with and . It’s distilled to what I can handle because I can’t take the continuous onslaught from traditional media at the moment. And that brings me to:

SUBSTACK

If I’m mindlessly scrolling anything, it’s this app. However, I give myself a 30-minute time limit on my phone (screen time settings) and only use it on my computer if I’m composing something (like right now). While I do enjoy Substack, the “notes” feature (or the main feed? The scroll? Home? What do we all call this?) draws so many comparisons to features of Instagram/TikTok that I hated: being served up content that I didn’t ask for, rage/clickbait, videos, though I find much less of it here, for now.

Coming from a platform where I had 100K+ followers to a platform where I’m a nobody is weird but good. The pressure is off, and I kinda dig it.

xoxo Emily

Now, I never made any money on any social media app. Never. So I understand the challenge of going cold turkey when it’s not part of your job isn’t any sort of big feat. I also realize that when I have another book to promote (hopefully sometime somewhere, please babyjesus) I will need to do the same social media promotion bullshit I’ve had to do the last two times because it’s just part of the gig. So please know none of this is a judgment of anyone other than myself.

I promise I won’t be one of those people who give up social media for five minutes and then tell you to do the same because it’s life-changing, and that’s saying a lot because I’m totally one of those people; I talked about it recently when discussing how I used to share sobriety content online:

All that to say, I will share how my social media break is impacting me at the moment:

I never want to go back into that goddamn hellhole.

Like, Ever.

I honestly haven’t spent a whole lot of time on Instagram in the past couple of years. I have a personal Instagram that I check maybe once a week, mostly to spy on my kids enjoy my kids’ photos. I also have a “business account,” and that’s where most of my screen time went, and even then, it wasn’t excessive.

Then election season happened, then the holidays, and it crept up a bit, but the amount of time wasn’t the problem; rather, the space it took in my brain. I would find myself thinking about responses, attitudes, actions, minor annoyances, and have to remind myself, ‘you don’t even fucking know that person!’ more times than not. Why was I spending so much time irritated at Hannah Neeleman and her stupid homemade mozzarella, for example?

I’ve known for a while that constant scrolling and app checking makes me more anxious—the knee-jerk reaction to click on the app with any downtime or boredom. I also know that isn’t great for my brain, and I’m trying to be good to my brain.

It’s wild how quickly I adjusted to not using Instagram. The first morning was a little odd, and then, I didn’t miss it, like it never existed in the first place. Instead of scrolling, I’m more focused on writing. I’m reading without ‘checking the socials’ first. I’m leaving my phone in my purse or my office so I can hear if someone calls, but there’s no temptation to pass the time by mindlessly scrolling.

I’ve felt an enormous weight lifted off this week, even amidst the vomit-inducing antics of TFG taking office. One could argue that Substack is social media, but so far, it isn’t the same for me. I log in once, maybe twice a day. I never find myself doomscrolling or arguing with randos. Bliss. And it’s the best of both worlds because I can read opinion pieces and keep up on current events. That said, Instagram used to feel that way for me, too, so time will tell.

Today, I started to feel guilty because it’s my son’s birthday tomorrow, and I won’t be able to post a happy birthday photo like usual. Then I thought, who gives a fuck? He doesn’t! Why should I? Anyone who cares KNOWS it’s his birthday and doesn’t need my social media declaration. Who am I posting it for? To get accolades for having a handsome son? Or have someone tell me, ‘Wow, you don’t look old enough to have a 20-year-old’?1 How did it become about me? Did I do that? Did society?

Fucking A.

Maybe I’ll never log back into Instagram. Maybe I’ll make a deal with myself and log in once a week or once a month, or maybe I’ll say fuck it and go back to the way I used it before. I don’t know. Right now, I’m done with it.

So. Bleh. That’s it. That’s where I’m at. Our country is a dumpster fire, and this is one bit of control I’m taking back. It’s all I’ve got.

If you follow me on Instagram and wonder where the fuck I’ve been, that’s where the fuck I’ve been.

And I’m here. Thanks for being here with me.

xoxo Emily

The horrid fires in California

Writing and rewriting and rewriting

The general hellscape of our political climate

Dissociating

Social media sucks

And then I realized, ooh! I made a list! I love lists. Easy, peasy.

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I spent New Year’s Day 20171 mostly in bed, hungover from my last series of drinks the night before. New Year’s Eve 2016 went much like any other uneventful night out with a few friends and drinks, ending just after midnight. Yet, I only have fragments of memories from that evening and the entire holiday season—more and more of my time dissolved into blackouts, even when I wasn’t drunk. Family memories and holiday traditions survived only through stories told back to me or captured in photographs.

One thing I recalled about NYE was sitting at the bar2 with my husband and my friends, once again retelling the story of how I’d gotten a DUI six months prior. I’d repeatedly told the story to other well-meaning friends to justify my actions because it usually worked. It’s something EVERYONE had done (right?), something that didn’t make me a bad person (right?), and certainly, it didn’t mean I had a problem or needed to change anything about myself (right? Please tell me I’m okay and please love me; I’m a good person!) Whenever I did this, there was almost always someone who could pat me on the back and say, “That sucks, we’ve all driven a little tipsy before.”

But this time, I don’t remember how my friends responded. Maybe they blew sunshine up my ass, or maybe they told me I sucked, though it was probably somewhere in the middle. The fact that I’d shared that damn DUI story—one of my darkest and most painful moments—AGAIN was a massive slap in my hungover face.

It was the only story I felt I deserved to tell about myself.

That brief moment of clarity, coupled with the lack of any other memories, and realizing that I was erasing myself from life, led to the final shame-inducing "OH FUCK, I can’t keep doing this." 

Later that day, I opened the heavy doors to the same church basement where I’d once toured preschool for my kids. The juxtaposition of happy children’s art and the circle of chairs was disconcerting. I didn’t feel as if I belonged there. I was a broken, terrible person tainting this innocent space.

I remember wearing a hat with FFS3 printed on it, clothes I’d worn to bed the night before, and crying (like, a lot4) while other people shared. I didn’t know any conventions, rituals, or things to repeat, so I just sat, cried, and listened.

Someone asked if I wanted to speak, and WOW, they were probably sorry they asked because I emotionally and verbally vomited for well over the time allotted. But instead of being horrified by what came out of my mouth, they nodded, told me they understood, and thanked me for sharing. When the meeting was over, someone handed me a booklet of phone numbers and told me to keep coming back. And I did.

The next day, I had lunch with my husband and told him I wasn’t going to drink anymore. He responded, “Are you sure?” which we both look back on now and laugh about because SERIOUSLY? But honestly, there is so much enabling that happens in addiction, and it was daunting to think about how much our relationship would need to change to accommodate it. It wasn’t easy, especially with five little kids under twelve!

I attended meetings, worked the steps every Sunday at a coffee shop with my sponsor, and started coming to life again. Sobriety also became…my whole personality for a while. I talked a bit about this in my post about my first book and how it can be a natural part of the process to share about sobriety ad nauseum because it’s so all-consuming at first.

Also, I’d always been one of those people. I didn’t have a super strong sense of self, so people, places, and things always became my entire personality. I wasn’t just passionate; I was BATSHIT passionate. It’s why I became such a successful queen supreme bossbabe in my MLM days.

As far back as I can remember, I absorbed the world around me to make myself more interesting or enjoyable. My boyfriends’ interests would become mine.5 The things my friends were into became the hobbies I pursued. I couldn’t do something half-assed, either; I had to go all in. Three kids? Ha! How about five? Back when I had a vegan phase, I was that vegan who wouldn’t shut the fuck up about being vegan. So, of course, I was the same way about quitting drinking.

I say all of this because I’m asked about it. Emily, Why don’t you post about sobriety anymore? You used to be so into it! What about all the articles you used to write? Why don’t I see you in meetings? What happened? And believe me, I get it; it’s a bit of a paradox, even to me.

It’s tough to explain how a significant part of my identity is also something I rarely think about anymore.

As time passed, and I figured out who I was, what I liked, and how I wanted to spend my time, being sober became less of a talking point and more of a truth, like my height or eye color. Sobriety wove itself into the fabric of the many things that make me who I am, not something I needed to post for likes, prove anything, or build a ‘brand.’ Activism can look many ways, and while it used to resemble a keyboard warrior sharing scary statistics and calling out problematic alcohol messaging, now it consists of walking through the world as an emotionally sober person.

I can tell you with 100 percent honesty that I couldn’t care less what anyone else’s relationship with alcohol looks like, aside from the people in my own family. That may sound like apathy, but it feels like freedom to me.

I’m a person who doesn’t drink alcohol. That’s it. I know people are reading this who probably think, “Oh, but your disease is doing pushups in the parking lot,” and if that’s helpful for you, great, but it’s not my jam. I know I don’t want to drink, I know I can’t drink, and I know I won’t drink. It’s pretty simple.

With all that said, today, I celebrate the one decision that made many other decisions in my life easier. I applaud myself for taking one step that allowed me to take all the others. I thank my friends, family, and the sobriety community for holding me up when I couldn’t or didn’t want to continue. Three-fifths of my kids have had me as a sober parent longer than a drunk one. In a few years, all five will have known me longer sober.

Inside, I’m grateful and proud as hell every day.

But don’t expect more than one cheesy reel about it each year.

xo Emily

As I mentioned last week, I’m querying my novel.

Woof!

Querying is the process of courting an agent, hoping they swipe right. I never used a dating app, so maybe that’s a terrible analogy. You email agents you wish to represent your book and hope they pick you. If you enjoy pitching something you’ve worked on for a year, with high odds that it will be rejected, querying may be for you!

Typically, agents receive 10-30 queries daily and only take on 1-3 new authors a year. Those are really shitty odds.

I may sound grim, but I’m less nervous about the querying process this time around since I’ve been through it once before. Also, listening to agent sessions at the Kauai Writers Conference set me at ease. I learned that the odds aren’t as terrible as they seem.

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This is a paid post in a series about my path to publishing. Go back to read part 1 if you haven’t already.

Last reminder: you have less than 24 hours to pre-order my paperback and get a year of this substack, FREE!

I know I have a broad audience of people who’ve been there and done that, as well as those who have never thought about how a book comes to be. Before I published, I loved seeing the behind-the-scenes details, so hopefully, this will help someone. Bear with me if you’re an old hat at this.

As I said last time, when I decided to leave my MLM, I knew I needed to write about it. Initially, I didn’t know if I’d write a book, but I knew I’d write something. I even toyed around writing something under a pen name, but decided against that. I’d been so LOUD about recruiting and pushing products on people against their will that I wanted to be just as loud in the other direction. But first, I wanted to talk to others who had been involved.

I began posting anonymous surveys and asking for personal interviews in my Instagram stories. Over six months or so, I talked to hundreds of people about their experiences. (If you’ve read the book, you’ll recognize those interviews as personal anecdotes from others at the beginning of each chapter.)

And I wrote—a lot. Like my recovery story, I wrote everything I remembered about my time being recruited, rising in the ranks, and eventually leaving. Once I did that, I realized I had (more than) enough for a book.

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Last week, I attended the Kauai Writers Conference, which was incredible. I’m currently trying to sell my third book, a novel, and it’s a whole new process compared to nonfiction. I had dozens of conversations with authors about our respective writing and publishing histories and backgrounds, and I thought I’d also peel back the curtain a bit for my lovely readers.

This is a paid post in a series about my path to publishing. For the full Scoop, remember that you can get a free year of The Outsider Scoop by pre-ordering my paperback (which comes out in a little over a week!), Pre-order here or anywhere, and email the receipt to me. More details are here:

When I was 5, I skipped a grade in school. I remember my Kindergarten teacher hugging me and telling me I’d be in first grade the next day, and I was like, “Ok, bye!” as if I wouldn’t see her in the hallways at the same school for the next five years. I’m sure there was a discussion about it between my parents and the administration, and my mom said she talked to me about it, but that’s all I remember. Long story short, I was one of those “gifted and talented” kids of the 80’s. It wasn’t until a decade or so later that educators and psychologists began realizing it wasn’t a good idea to place academic success over emotional maturity. By the time I was 16 and a senior in high school, it was a little too late to backtrack.

ANYWAY, I was praised for my writing skills throughout my schooling, but I didn’t pursue it as a career; there was enough writing throughout college, and I always kept personal journals. I also had a habit of writing letters to people to air my feelings and then throwing them away before sending them, and later, I would do the same with emails. Beyond that, I didn’t necessarily have an interest in being published.

Then, I got sober, and writing became therapy for me.

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My husband and I traveled to San Pedro, Belize, to celebrate our 20th anniversary. We planned it several months ago and picked the week based on the weather, the timing between my husband’s work travel, and the kids’ schedules. However, we didn’t realize it fell over election day until fairly recently.

Call me naive (I probably am) but I didn’t think the election would be as close as it was. Not going to go into a whole thing because, ugh, but we thought, hey, what a nice time to dissociate, leave our phones in our room, and enjoy each other’s company.

Ha!

The joke was on us because whenever locals asked where we were from, they inevitably asked, “So what do you think about Trump?” which led to more political discussions than we likely would have had if we’d stayed in the States. I wouldn’t say it was entirely a bad thing because it helped us put things in perspective and talk more about the future, blah blah blah. My husband and I are white upper-middle-class people in a very blue state, so we have more privilege than many do, I realize. Long story short, escaping the US wasn’t a solid plan for avoiding election talk.

That’s all I want to talk about politics today, m’kay? Let’s talk about drugs instead because HOLY FUCK.

Belize is the first country in Central America I’ve visited, so maybe this is the norm? I don’t want to stereotype, but I’ve been some places and seen some shit, and I’ve never in my life been offered drugs so many times! Every kind of drug I’d ever heard of, and some I hadn’t. I never felt unsafe, quite the contrary, since all the offers were kind and friendly. Kale got a kick out of me saying, ‘No, but thanks for asking’ on more than one occasion. Again, I’m probably naive. So, sober people, if this would trigger you, maybe avoid Belize!

Besides the consistent drug offers, it’s a great place to vacation sober. One note about n/a bevs: Bartenders were happy to make yummy mocktails, but none of the bars or restaurants had alcohol-free beer. We found one store in San Pedro with 0.0 Heineken and 0.0 Corona and bought all of them. Hopefully, they will stock up again before you visit if that’s your thing.

Other than the drugs and politics, the week was relaxing and restorative. It was SO relaxing that I almost threw away my manuscript!

I’ll try to keep this story short, but it’s a doozy.

A fellow author and I exchanged manuscripts to give each other notes. I also planned to do a full readthrough of my novel. So, I printed out our full manuscripts and arrived in Belize with a fat stack of paper.

I finished notes for my friend’s novel and threw away her pages since I needed the extra space in my bag. It wasn’t until I got home and opened the folder with my manuscript in it that I realized it was HERS, NOT MINE.

I THREW AWAY THE WRONG ONE.

Of course, I panicked and called the resort immediately. By a stroke of luck, they didn’t have anyone check in the day we left, so they hadn’t emptied the bin yet, and my manuscript was where I left it. SWEET RELIEF.

Here’s the part that makes me want to send the resort ten zillion dollars: Since they didn’t have a fax machine or a scanner, the sweet employee TOOK A PHOTO OF EVERY PAGE and sent it to me through Whatsapp. Over 300 pages. It took hours.

I left the best review on TripAdvisor and will send a gift basket of cash or something. They indeed went above and beyond! If you’re ever in Belize, please stay at Pur Resort Cabanas. They might just save your ass.1

Last thing, since I haven’t given Buddy an update in a while! My sweet dog had a TPLO (basically a knee replacement) yesterday, and he’s home and resting. He’s still the bestest and cutest boy, obviously.

That’s all. More next week.

xoxo Emily

I’ll write more about my path to publishing for November and December since it’s a frequently suggested topic. I’ll start with how I became an author, the difference between hybrid and traditional publishing (I’ve done both), and my switch from non-fiction to fiction. It might be a series; we shall see.

I also hope to share (soon!) about the wild ride of bringing a book to the screen. Cross your fingers!

But don’t worry! I’ll still bring you all the MLM/scam breaking news.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for a wild ride on FAKE MAKE wellness, take a gander at the highlights on this gal’s Instagram.

I wanted to remind you that you can support and enjoy my writing by pre-ordering my paperback, which will get you a 1-year subscription to this substack for free! Pre-order here or anywhere, and email the receipt to me. Details are here:

Now, back to your regularly scheduled culty programming.

One of the hallmarks of Multilevel Marketing, and why it is such a good moneymaker for the corporation but a terrible financial decision for 99.9 percent of the reps, is that reps recruit their competition.

There is no other industry where your ‘job’ is to get other people to sell the same thing as you in an already saturated market. Can you imagine going through a Starbucks line and having the barista suggest that you buy the store next door and sell coffee there?1

Standard companies and franchises do market research to know if a particular area has a demand for the products or services they sell. MLM’s do not do this, in fact, they thrive by not doing this do this. An MLM corporation benefits the more people sign up as reps, even if there is no market for them to sell products or recruit people themselves.

You might say, “Wait, you can’t sell or recruit into a system where everyone is already purchasing products from or recruited into that system, right?” But that doesn’t matter. Since MLMs are pay-to-play, the corporation already has your money as soon as you join. It doesn’t matter if you quit immediately or never sell a thing. They have zero interest in whether you make money because they make it regardless…from you. The longer you are unsuccessful (purchasing more than you sell, which 99.7 percent of reps do), the more the corporation makes2. THIS IS THE BUSINESS MODEL.

Now that I’ve explained that, Let me draw your attention to this.

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Ignorance is not bliss, but it certainly helps sell pseudoscience.

I receive hundreds of messages, screenshots, stories, and complaints about MLM reps and companies DAILY. I can’t respond to all of them, let alone share or distill them into articles, but I try to hit the top talking points in my inbox.

Today, as the news of another MLM shutting down hits the internet, panicked, disenfranchised reps will once again be targeted and recruited into the ones that are still (for now) standing: same shit, different day. And I’ll hear about it in my DM’s, as I always do. I’m pretty used to it by this point.

The messages I get that really bum me out are the ones that echo, “My friend joined the such-and-such company, and now she’s completely brainwashed, and I don’t know how to help her,” and same, honey, same.

It’s easy to “other” people and assume they are stupid or gullible, but the reality is that the overwhelming majority of women in MLM think they are helping others. I certainly did, for a very long time. And that is why the most relatable, down-to-earth girl next door can be even more harmful than the “Kimberlys” I’ve written about. How do I know? They were my buddies.

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Case in point1. The woman in the video below was in my upline, a few rungs up the pyramid. We were close friends, at least I believed we were. Our kids hung out, and we vacationed together. We had many conversations about the industry when I was getting up the courage to leave, and I was sure she felt the same way I did. She was one of the few people who still spoke to me (for a while) after I announced my book topic. She congratulated me on my sobriety milestones, etc., but eventually, that went away, too, once my book came out. I didn’t blame anyone who ghosted me because I understood why they had to. I always wished her well, no matter what.

When R+F went south, I assumed she’d wash her hands of MLM. But to my disappointment, no. She joined FAKE Make Wellness. You know, the company created by a known scammer that hasn’t launched to customers yet and relies on Mother Nature, the biochemist? Go back and refresh if you need to.

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As you may know, I originally wanted to keep my substack completely free, but folks, there are some jerks out there. I created a paywall for archives and specific posts to protect my peace.

BUT, I have a deal for you, my lovely subscribers! A YEAR-LONG SUBSCRIPTION to my substack, The Outsider Scoop, Free!

If you pre-order my paperback, I will gift you a free one-year subscription to my substack! Yay, you and me!

Here’s how to get your free lifetime subscription:

• STEP 1: Purchase the Hey, Hun Paperback! Ideally, from your local retailer to help keep small bookstores in business. You can support my local bookstore, too; they ship! Otherwise, it is on Barnes & Noble and the bad place.

• STEP 2: Email the receipt to me hi (at) emilylynnpaulson (dot) com. Make sure you email from the email address your substack account is connected to!

• STEP 3: Give yourself a pat on the back because that’s it!

xo Emily

P.S. If you need a reminder about why pre-orders are so helpful, I wrote about it here:

P.S. If you already have a paid subscription, it will add a free year to your current subscription, so if you’ve paid for a year, you will receive two. If you paid for a month, you’ll receive a month and a year. I'm sorry, but I cannot offer refunds. Please know that your payment supports my writing!

Twenty years is a long ass time, people! Both sets of our parents have been married for 50 years, which I know is rare.

Since 2004, we’ve had five children, numerous pets, moved across the country twice, resided in six houses (and two hotels), and lived 900 miles apart (Covid!) for 18 months.

Of course, people say, “Wow, congratulations! “While I understand the sentiment, I don’t know if the word ‘congratulations’ is correct. Is it? Maybe. I don’t have a suggestion for a better one but hear me out.

I’ve read many books (Liars, This American Ex-wife, as recent examples) that should be FUCK THIS MARRIAGE manifestos, and while they certainly didn’t make me leave my husband, of course, there were times I nodded my head while reading. You will never hear me say OH MY GOD, WHAT HAPPENED at the announcement of someone’s split, because after being married, one understands WHY people get divorced!

I’ve had close friends who’ve left marriages, and Congratulations were deserved. It was the right choice for them. I also know people in hellish, horrible situations who have openly admitted they are unhappy, waiting for kids to grow so they can get divorced, or suffering through other terrible things, and congratulating them for staying married doesn’t seem right. Does an anniversary of a wedding decide that a marriage is congratulations-worthy? I get that it’s a milestone, and maybe I don’t know what I’m trying to say here.

Let me try again.

We often look back at pictures of the kids when we were little because they were so goddamn adorable, and there were so many of them, all at once, everywhere.

Recently, Kale (my husband—yes, that’s his name, believe me, the jokes never end) looked at the above photo of our five children under seven years old and said, “Wow, I can’t believe we survived that.” To which I replied, “Well, I did become a raging alcoholic!” and we laughed and laughed because that’s the kind of weirdos we are. If we couldn’t laugh at what we’ve been through, it simply couldn’t work.

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Before I launch into former R+F's / current Shaklee Kimberly drama, there’s a new update in the MLM universe: Bodi (formerly Beachbody) has followed in R+F’s footsteps and dropped its MLM model. Yep, another one bites the dust, with many more on their way to meet the same fate. They debuted this news while their top earners were on a leadership cruise. Ooof. No surprise, Kimberly1 was prepped and ready to “support” all the displaced Beachbody/Bodi babes.

As I’ve said multiple times, we will continue to see more MLMs follow this trend because Multilevel Marketing revenue is declining, and the business model is outdated and shady as fuck. Read my book, my friends! Also, check out this reel from MLMEXIT on Instagram, based on the Beachbody CEO’s own words. It is TELLING:

Now, back to business as usual. I want to quit talking about these ladies at some point, I swear, but wow, the content sometimes makes itself.

As always, to refresh your memory, read the Kimberly series.

Today, I’m debunking Kimberly’s recent series of claims. Check out the video, and then I’ll explain.

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Full transparency, this is a pre-scheduled post because this week is full of many things, including out-of-town college visits and medical appointments, a colonoscopy (wheeeeee), our 20th anniversary, and a bunch of other shit that, for some reason, got crammed into the same week! So we are talking more about why my face is like this.

Make sure to go back and read Part 1!

Here are the more invasive things I’ve done for my skin!

Let me start by saying that you should do whatever you want for yourself. I know there’s a ton of pressure to stay looking young, and I could go into the whole patriarchal bullshit pressure placed on women, but I will avoid that rabbit hole. I’m a mix of pro-natural aging and a little help. If you want to throw your hands in the air and say FUCK IT and do nothing, or open your wallet and tell the plastic surgeon to go to town, YOU DO YOU!

With that, here are the rest of my more invasive go-to’s.

DEVICES

There are a plethora of at-home LED masks, radio frequency gadgets, and other facial improvement devices out there. I’ve tried some, returned some, relegated others to the back of the bathroom cabinet, and while I can’t speak for all of them, there’s one that is worth mentioning.

I impulse-bought this thing for myself last Christmas because I was heavily influenced by an Instagram ad, and then it sat in my closet for 6 months (I know, I know):

Turns out I love it! It’s the first FDA-cleared-at-home laser, which made my science geek heart skip a beat. It stimulates collagen and is totally painless. I use it on my face, neck, and chest. It takes about 10 minutes, and I use it 2-3 times weekly while I’m listening to a podcast or watching a show. It even has an app that tracks your sessions and photos, which is cool because you can see results in real-time.

Anecdotally, after a few months of use, my skin tone and texture improved (soft!), my neck seemed less saggy, and my undereye circles weren’t as dark. Here is the photo side by side from their app:

I feel like my eyelids are more lifted, too, but it could be how I posed for the photo. These aren’t scientific or professional, and the lighting is a bit different, but this, combined with the science, has impressed me enough to keep using it! Their website has tons of before-and-after photos and clinical studies if you want to check them out. Again, this is an affiliate link for 15% off (enter code EMILYP10), but it matters not to me whether you use my link or go straight to the website; I wouldn’t recommend something unless I really liked it.

Now for the in-office procedures I have done1

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