A published author of 10 books, 2 bestsellers, 7 produced plays, a poet, theater critic, journalist (newspapers and magazines), and radio show host, I've taught writing at The New School, FIU, New World School of the Arts, and now, for what I'm told is my "Second Saturn Return," absorbing great doses nightly of social media marketing to promote a new e-book publishing venture with Amazon KDP. I dream it will lead to baby steps in educational reform.

Of greater or equal import, I'm writing and polishing "the big one," my 11th book, a memoir, LIVING UNDER THE INFLUENCE, five decades of a magical, remarkable, painful, and totally unexpected life. Published first as a poet by major magazines like Seventeen when I was 15, attending NYU at 16 (1969!), working with Warhol, partying with Jagger, freelancing for Norman Vincent Peale, those pivotal years shaped a generation and a young soul. But the baggage carried by a terrified only child would only catch up with me cruelly almost 40 years later in a heartless place that held none of the dreams a Bronx girl had expected from it all her life.

Was it hard to be published? No. Hard to have a bestseller? No, not for me. To ride mechanical bulls bulls with pro wrestlers, to sit and talk literature with Capote and Hellman, Wolfe and Mailer. Or to stand in the blood of John Lennon? Like Woody Allen's Zelig, I seemed to be there, even when the odd British man I married so young broke me off from NYC and dropped us in South Beach, just in time to catch the big wave of change. When crack houses and heavens' waiting rooms on Ocean Drive turned into the house of Versace. In Miami I flew even higher, returning to New York for a visit to find myself chummy with Jackie O. and friends.

But then, everything slowly, ever so slightly, began to change.

That's the journey of the Warrior, because behind these events lies a more important tale. Of a girl who at 18 and then 27 was visited by two teachers. The type who only take on one apprentice. Two magicians.A girl who is now a woman, an Adept, and who has come to teach you.

To KNOW, to WILL, to DARE, and to KEEP SILENT.I was never good at the last part. Yet I was told this was the time and this book is my destiny.