The pictures feel as essential to me as the text. I was always interested in including pictures with writing.

I started to wonder, and felt relieved that there might be truth to the idea of intellectuals all being frauds. I knew that I certainly was.

I first emailed Tao Lin a story I wrote about the experience of losing my virginity sometime in April 2011. He didn't respond until it was later published on Thought Catalog, after which he sent me an email that said something very similar to, "I enjoyed reading this on Thought Catalog. Good job."

Obviously this all gets tricky/complicated when your writing reveals so much of your private/intimate life, and the nature of writing on the Internet comes with a lot of focus on your "personal brand."

I've never written about a situation involving real people that I haven't directly taken part in. I've never made things up about other people. None of my stories were written with ill-intent towards the other people in them, even though I doubt people will believe that about "Adrien Brody."

I'm not very close to my parents. My stepfather (in my opinion) was very emotionally abusive when I was growing up and there were a lot of other issues I don't feel comfortable talking about publicly. I spent a lot of time in therapy dealing with these issues though, and I feel i'm finally starting to move past them.

There's just something "off" about equating the act of spending three years writing a book with the act of someone exploiting themselves by drunkenly flashing the camera for "Girls Gone Wild" or something.