Thank you, Carrie Fisher

In the acknowledgment section of my book, Mafia Hairdresser, I tell author actress, Carrie Fisher, "it was because of you that I became a writer." And this is true.
To my knowledge, I did not know Carrie Fisher in the sense that we ever exchanged words or thoughts. I'm not even sure if our eyes met or if she even paid the slightest amount of notice to me the many times our paths crossed. The reason that I'm not sure was that I was under the influence of many things, including youth and bashfulness, when we were both intermingling around the Hollywood party scene at the same time. Of course, I knew who she was, but I was a little twink of a hairdresser working for a mob couple and we got invited to all the same fancy shindigs where the coke was free and the Dom Perignon was on tap.
I loved watching Carrie Fisher, from afar, at those parties. She was captivating and funny and she was always making the men around her double over in pain from laughter. I do not know if she was under the influence of anything but a jacked-up magnetism, but I wrote a fictionalized interpretation of how I remembered the real Carrie in my first book; which also takes place in the 80s. I hope, one day, she reads my book and smiles. But I really want her to know that it wasn't until years later that she became my inspiration to become a writer. When her book, Postcards from the Edge, came out, I was so impressed at how effortlessly she came through the pages. It was like I was actually listening to the real Carrie Fisher that I used to eavesdrop on. The humor and stabbing wit in her book made me laugh out loud and her story told of the era of when I had also been at those wild parties. I thought, I talk like this, I can write like this and I think I can do this too. I had also lived through those Hollywood high-times and I had a story to tell as well.
Thank you, Carrie Fisher. You still inspire me.
Read all of Carrie Fishers books, Postcards from the Edge, Surrender the Pink, Delusions of Grandma, The Best Awful, Shockaholic, Wishful Drinking. And do go see her Broadway play, Wishful Drinking!

• jon-david is the self publishing author of Mafia Hairdresser, an 80s tale. (screenplay is finished too! and looking for an agent...)

• jon-david's second book, The Glow Stick Gods, about the 90s, is due out on all ebooks November 2011

• jon-david's third book, Murder, There's An App For That, is due out on eBooks November 2012