Only a year ago, I was about to get my doctorate from an Ivy League university that was going to offer me a prestigious faculty appointment. My university mentor was encouraging me to publish my dissertation as a self-help book that he thought would be  a best seller. To boot, I was engaged to a wonderful woman who thought I was a fit mate. Never in my wildest imagination could I have dreamed of such good fortune.

I was also keeping a journal of my metamorphosis from an insecure graduate student into a journeymen psychologist. I intended to include as a case study a psychopath, a patient of mine who believed he could become President of the United States. Though he would be only a footnote, I thought he'd provide a dramatic opening. Of course I didn't intend to use his real name. But now, after all that happened, everyone knows who he is.

Back then, when I tried to preserve his anonymity, I could never have imagined he would try to kill me. Nor that I would plan to assassinate him. 

Radio Scripts Intro

I do enjoy having these little chats at the front of books. This is a complete lie, in fact. What actually happens is that you are battling away trying to finish, or at least start, a book you promised to deliver seven months ago, and faxes start arriving asking you if you could possibly write yet another short little introduction to a book that you clearly remember writing "The End" to in about 1981. It won't promises the fax, take you two minutes. Damn right it won't take you two minutes. It actually takes about thirteen hours and you miss another dinner party and your wife won't speak to you and the book gets so late that you start missing entire camping holidays in the Pyrenees and your wife won't talk to you, particularly since the camping holiday was your idea and not hers and she was only going on it because you wanted to and now she has to go and do it by herself when you know perfectly well that she hates camping. (So do I, incidentally. I am making this bit up).