When I first wrote Party Girl in 2005, I was quite a different person than I am today—more conservative, you could say. “Far more boring” would be another way to put it.
Trust me when I tell you that when I was giving sex advice on TV, posing for Playboy or penning a novel that one critic would dismiss as “crasser than most,” I did not envision myself as the sort of person who would spell out swear words rather than say them in front of her 18-month-old child or go to sleep at 8 pm.
The idea of my son growing older and one day stumbling across a book that contained 32 uses of the f word is somewhat horrifying; the idea that his mom would be the author even more so.
And so I decided to do something that musicians have done for years: I got the rights to the book back from HarperCollins in order to create a "clean" version of the book. This means that I took a 2024 anti-crass axe to this version of Party Girl, excising anything that Today’s Me might flinch at.
I had every intention of getting rid of the near-threesome that opens the book but realized it was too central to the plot to remove. Former party girls can only, I guess, change so much.
I hope you enjoy this PG version of PG...and if you ever encounter my son, please don’t mention the original.
—Reformed Party Girl Anna David
