As a bonus for the people who bought my first book, Please, I’ve put together a guide to its real-life inspirations. (Each episode in the book is based on something that happened to me or someone I knew.) If you’re interested in a copy, let me know and I’ll e-mail you a PDF. I don’t need proof of purchase — honour system applies.

A sample:

I worked as an enumerator once. I went door to door registering people to vote. People complained to me about their lives and what the government had done to them. I knew I would never be able to afford the places they lived in. A lonely man begged me to come in and have a beer with him, but I didn’t. I once walked past a man leaning against a fence who waved at me. I waved and kept going. I went to the drug store and bought things I don’t remember anymore. On the way back, I saw paramedics working on the man in his yard, but it was too late. A woman held a crying woman in the doorway of the house. At night I dreamed about finding an empty house in my enumerating job and moving in, trying to trick the neighbours into believing I lived there. I once looked out my window and saw the man living across the street run out of his place and throw something burning into a snowbank. And once I saw a man catch fire after someone threw a can of spray paint into a bonfire. I didn’t try to rescue any of them.