Night Job: Drag Queen

by John F. Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 4/4/2005

A memoir by a young New Yorker who for a period of his life worked as an up-and-coming ad exec by day and at night dressed in glittering dresses and high heels and went on the downtown drag queen beauty contest circuit was snapped up by Maureen O'Brien at HarperCollins. It's called I Am Not Myself Today and is, said O'Brien, a darkly funny and brilliantly written account by Josh Kilmer Purcell that reminds her of the work of the young Jay McInerny. She was alerted to it by one of her authors, Clive Barker, who urged her to read it though it sounded to O'Brien "so not me." She was bowled over, and immediately got in touch with Purcell's agent, Andy McNichol at William Morris, to buy world rights. There's more: Aquadisiac, as Purcell called "herself" in her winning sorties, was simultaneously having what turned out to be an ill-fated affair with a male escort who had a crack problem. It is, as admirer James Frey wrote, a book that has a bit of everything and will be published as a lead title for Perennial a year from now. Barker himself has bought the movie rights for his production company.