Step One: We admitted we were powerless over the printed word.

I was born to drink. I'm the daughter of Betty and Don Draper from Mad Men, and I swear I came out of the delivery room with Frank Sinatra crooning, "It's no good unless you love them allllllllll the way," a gin gimlet in my bottle, and a pack of Pall Malls tucked into my baby blanket.

I couldn't wait to grow up and be like my mom--hosting cocktail parties, clicking about in slingbacks with matching sheath dresses, and nuzzling handsome men in dark bars with the flashing martini glass above the door. When one of those guys caught me taking a hit off the lipsticked butt of a Salem Menthol at age 7, I didn't skip a beat before I answered the whatcha-doing question with a sweet-voiced, "Just pretending to be my mom."

But things didn't work out for drinking and me. Yes, I had my wild times in my early twenties, but I didn't have the staying power; I couldn't sustain a drinking life. The gift for real drinking had passed me by in the great genetic shuffle. And by 25, I had my nose stuck in a book. I wanted the literary life, the way my mom wanted the Rat Pack one. These days I can fall asleep after just a half a glass of Shiraz, but the right words can keep me up into the party hours of the night.

This blog is about my wild writing life, my desire to find myself on the printed page and to finally make sense of the thirst that runs through my family.