Interview with Rosemary Keevil

Question 1: Rosemary, I need to first say that I am taken aback by the description page of your book, The Art of Losing It: A Memoir of Grief and Addiction on Amazon. I would like to start this conversation by asking the many obvious questions authors get asked. What inspired you to write this book?

The answer to this is short and simple: Life handed me a bad rap. I am a journalist. What to journalists do? They write. I had a story to tell so I wrote about it.

Question 2: For readers who haven’t read the book yet, and without giving much information away, could we have a sneak of what we’d expect in terms of themes and subject lines picking up the book?

I was living a charmed life. I had an interesting career in the media, a doting husband and two precious little daughters. Then disaster struck like a thunderbolt. Two loved ones were diagnosed with terminal illnesses and died within the year. I plummeted into addiction. Eventually, I crawled back out only to find a brand-new type of chaos in my face. I survive all of this and burst out the end with a message: You too can survive all of this, and maybe even with humor and irreverence infused into the journey.

Question 3: In Part One of The Art of Losing It there are many graphic details of hospital visits and the emotions swirling around your young family. How did you get so many details of when your brother and husband were dying which was 30 years before you wrote it?

As a journalist it was second nature to thoroughly research non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and AIDS. In addition, I recorded everything that happened day in and day out in a reporter’s steno pad which was in my purse at all times. I had also hoarded all the hard copies of medical information such as appointments, test results, etc. I combed through these old files and notes to ensure I got all the medical details correct.

The first draft of my memoir was a disaster. My editor wrote me: “Your background as a journalist gives you a disadvantage here because journalism is all about telling. It’s about informing the reader of what happened. Memoir is the opposite. It’s about evoking emotion.” If I am to believe my reviews, my finished product (my memoir) evokes emotion quite successfully.

As it turns out, I had two personal diaries which provided treasure troves of emotions. I had kept my own detailed journal of the months when my husband and brother were dying. I was also very fortunate to have a diary my husband wrote during his last two months of life. In it, he writes: “I was sorting all my banking files and pictures etc. and realized that maybe if I spent the little energy that I have on a diary about my thoughts and feelings it might be more interesting for Rosemary than my 1986 car insurance.” As it turns out it reads like a love story—exuding love and adoration and appreciation for me.

Question 4: You’ve lived through profound loss, addiction, and healing. When did you first feel that these experiences weren’t just personal but also something others needed to hear? And this book also sheds light on what it means to be “high functioning” while battling addiction. Why was it important for you to share that part of your reality?

When I first wrote the book, I was motivated by the need to write about it. As it turns out that was therapeutic. But more importantly, I learned it was actually a resource for people suffering the same fates as me. This became a motivating factor for my second research book on grief and addiction which I am working on now.

I was a “high functioning” alcoholic and addict as I was able to keep my job as a current affairs radio show host. I simply did not drink or snort or pop pills when I was going to air. Well, maybe once I did snort a couple of lines in the station bathroom, but I quickly learned never to do that again. So, I would get up very early and do my show—it was during the morning drive slot—go home, nap, get up, get the kids from school and then indulge in mind-altering substances. That does not mean I was not irresponsible. I did drink and drive. It just meant it looked like, to the outside world, that I was still functioning, as opposed to the homeless addict on skid row. That does not, by the way, make me any better than the homeless addict on skid row: I was tormented by the same internal demons and I was heading along the same path, until I entered rehab in 2002.

Question 5: A year after getting sober, you were still struggling a fact that you found confusing. Could you elaborate on what that period was like for you? And looking back now, do you think that kind of struggle is more common in recovery than people often realize?Also, does writing this book give you some sort of relief? It looks to me like that’s just not an ordinary picture.

My daughters were 13 and 15 when I got clean and sober and you’d think that once I cleaned up my act all would be rosy. But it was quite the opposite. All of a sudden, I tried to have rules, curfews (Imagine that!) and they rebelled. My thirteen year old even said, at one point, “I wish you’d never gotten sober.”

A new brand of chaos was introduced into our lives when I changed. I’ve learned that we had been functioning in a dysfunctional equilibrium—a term used in the family systems theory. It doesn’t mean that dysfunctional equilibrium isn’t chaotic, just that the reactions of the family members within the chaos are predictable and this predictability is threatened when sobriety is introduced into the equation.

So, we had to really go through turmoil and break down all the old dysfunctional coping mechanisms and try to build new ones. This is a process and it requires a lot of work, a lot of therapy and we’re still works in progress.

This route is not uncommon among those people getting clean and sober.

I’m proud to say, I must have done something right because both daughters are happily married with fulfilling careers. This doesn’t mean their roads have not been rocky but that is their story to tell, or not.

Question 6: You know, Rosemary, one of the most interesting things to me as a writer is to listen to readers’ feedback. You may want to agree with me that one of the things that makes literature complex in its entirety is the fact that it can be interpreted in different ways by different readers based on their opinions. Sometimes, the readers might get the message intended by the author; sometimes, they might be close to getting it; sometimes, they might be far from getting it; and sometimes, they might hilariously misunderstand the message and interpret the book upside down. As interestingly fun as this sounds, I would like to ask you, how do you feel when readers interpret your work differently than you intended?

There is not a great deal of room for interpretation but there is room for judgement. I had to be prepared for people to be shocked and think that I was a bad mother. I felt I had to include facts that I was not proud of. I had to tell the ugly, shocking truth and be prepared to be judged. I didn’t sugar coat anything. In fact, in the intro I include the most shocking fact of all. I admit to driving my children stoned and drunk and blacking out. By some divine intervention, I did not have an accident.

Question 7: Rosemary, could you tell us about your upcoming book, The Truth About Losing It: Voices on Grief and Addiction? What inspired you to bring this book to life, and what key messages or insights do you hope readers will take away from it?that you incorporated other women’s stories. What was your writing process like and how did the inspiration and ideas come to align together?

I realized, as I said above, that my memoir served as a resource for people whose lives had also been turned upside down by grief and addiction. But I felt there was more to add: I wanted to bring relevant facts to the table that supported the story in my memoir.

I am researching specifically about when the death of a loved one leads to addiction or alcoholism, as this is what happened to me. This research book consists of interviews with experts on grief and addiction as well as with people who have been through the ringer with grief and addiction.

The Truth About Losing It: Voices on Grief and Addiction will be published in 2028, so I am currently conducting the interviews. I am discovering interesting facts. For example, brain functioning changes in a similar way when one is grieving and when one is addicted.

Question 8: Apart from the books we’ve mentioned so far, do you have any other works you’ve authored or currently working on?

I write articles on grief and addiction. For example, one story I am researching now is about the studies currently being conducted using naltrexone, the drug used for addiction, to treat grieving.

Question 9: Could you tell us what publishing is like for a published author like yourself? Are there any challenges you’ve encountered in the process of writing this book and ever since you got published?

I cannot finish any piece of writing without a deadline so, for my memoir, I hired an editor and manuscript consultant, Brooke Warner, who is in Berkley, California. I had deadlines: one chapter on the first of every month. Brooke also happens to be publisher of She Writes Press who published my memoir. It was an easy transition from completed, edited manuscript to publisher.

Brooke Warner is a dynamo, a publishing expert and TEDx speaker. She Writes Press is a hybrid press, which means your manuscript needs to qualify and then you pay their professional services which include: traditional distribution; proofreading of final manuscript; copyright filing in US; warehousing books; support for getting books into bookstores, libraries, and other trade outlets; custom cover and interior design, and e-book file conversion.

Question 10: As a published author, what sort of advice do you have for writers who are still struggling with publishing a book? And also, where can readers get a copy of your book?

I would be very diligent when researching self-publishers, certainly more diligent than I was for my second book. I thought I did decent research. But, in hindsight, I guess the name of the outfit should have been my first clue: Amazon Publishing Pro. Now, that’s a little shady. I knew damn well they were not THE Amazon. They were just piggybacking on that name. They were more interested in the social media campaign than giving me a clean, edited version of my manuscript. I ended up firing them and not getting my money back.

Then, I went to the publisher of my memoir, She Writes Press.

The reason I did not go to She Writes Press originally was because I had assumed that my new book was not up their alley. As it turns out, it is. But Brooke wants so many changes that I basically have to go back to the drawing board and do more research, including conducting more interviews, which I am currently doing.

Readers can find my book on Amazon.