The banned chapter of my memoir

They wouldn't let me print this one - with hindsight, I can see why.

Sweet Embrace by Claire Milbrath, 2021

I just stumbled across this while tidying up some old folders and am sitting here, thinking I might cry from laughing or just cry from crying, hard to be sure which. It’s in a ring-binder and it’s a print-out of a draft chapter from my memoir, The Hungover Games, that my beautiful agent and beautiful editor both quietly begged me to destroy rather than publish.

(Just this chapter, not the whole book- in fact the book’s progress went a hell of a lot more smoothly after we all agreed to burn this section, now I recall.) Did I really think I could put this in a Penguin Random House book? Imagine.

And I’ve now looked for the digital document in my sent emails folder, in my hard drive, in the Cloud and even in my Dropbox account, but no, it seems I really and truly deleted this chapter from every draft, and only have these actual pieces of paper to remind me.

So I have photographed them here - you can just about read them if you’re on your phone right now, but it’s easier on a computer. And perhaps some genius will come along and tell me how to scan a printout back into my Mac, which I shall do straight afterwards and upload again for you if reqd. Well, if my daughter doesn’t get to me with a pitchfork first. At least I wouldn’t be the first of the greats to die at this time of year, etc etc.

But that’s why this is having to go behind a paywall - there’s no way she’s going to stump up £4, is she. Is she?

(And I just reduced the price to as low as I can go, in case anyone skint wants to read this. Annual membership reduced to £35 as well, a bargain! Will go up again to approx £5 and £40 after this long weekend.)

Merry Easter everyone!