This entry is cross-posted from the More Than Two blog. Feel free to comment here or over there.

Finally, after incredible struggle, the manuscript for my memoir The Game Changer is finished and in copyediting. You can preorder it now on Amazon.

Writing this book has been one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. I’ve been thinking of it as The Big Book of Franklin Gets It Wrong, because it tells the story of the most awful things I have ever done, the greatest mistakes I’ve ever made, and the various ways I’ve hurt people close to me in the quest to figure out how to make this whole polyamory thing work. It’s been written and re-written and re-re-written (I went through four complete drafts and numerous smaller revisions and edits, prompted in large part by the incredible support and comments I’ve received from people who looked at the early versions).

Writing this book meant reliving some of the most painful times in my life. Along the way, I had to wrestle with my first-ever feelings of imposter syndrome (“Who am I to be writing a memoir? Who’s going to care about the relationships I screwed up?”), with feelings that I wasn’t good enough to write this book (it is radically different, in style, tone, and content, from anything I’ve ever written before), and with my own inner demons: my guilt and shame over the people I’ve hurt and the things I’ve screwed up.

In the end, I wrote this book because I believe there’s an elephant in the poly living room, a great gray pachyderm we don’t often acknowledge. We like to say that one of the biggest benefits of polyamory is we don’t have to choose; when we connect with someone new, that connection doesn’t have to threaten our existing relationships. Indeed, some poly folks look down on those benighted monogamous heathens, those poor struggling savages who aren’t yet enlightened enough to realize that a new love doesn’t have to mean discarding the old.

But sometimes, we connect with someone new, and that person changes things. Or changes you. Love is not always safe, or tidy, or neat. Sometimes, it’s disruptive. Sometimes, a new love makes us realize that our existing relationships no longer work for us.

These relationships are game changers.

Game changers, by their very nature, create turmoil. Game changers upset applecarts. And we, as polyamorous people, need to be aware that game changers happen.

My first game-changing relationship showed me that for years, the compromises I had made to be with a monogamous partner were damaging to the people around me. I was both easy to love and dangerous to love. I did not think about the consequences of my agreements for new partners who might want to be close to me, and I did not recognize the ways I failed to take responsibility for my own emotions or actions. And so, predictably, I hurt other people—people who loved me very much.

The Game Changer is a love story, but it’s also more than that. It’s the story of how I learned to be honest about my needs, to recognize that other people are human, and to take responsibility for myself.

It’s also the story of things I did very, very wrong.

It is still, years later, hard for me to deal with some of the things I got so badly wrong, and the damage I did to people who loved me. Maybe, just maybe, other people will read this book and be a little bit less wrong, a little bit more compassionate, in the way they handle their game changers.

Everyone’s favorite source of poly wisdom, BadAss McProblemsolver, is back to take on a complicated question: “How do I handle a broken relationship agreement without Drama?”

The answer, as it turns out, can be found in Star Wars. Don’t do what Luke Skywalker did in The Empire Strikes Back.

In this new addition to the lore of Badass McProblemsolver, he offers his calm, wise advice about how to deal with feeling squicked because your girlfriend wants to have sex with another man. Check it out!

In this week’s episode of Badass McProblemsolver, our plucky polyamorous advice-giver answers a thorny backer question: How do you get back into the world of dating after many years in a relationship? Check it out!

The polyamory book More Than Two my partner Eve and I have been writing is available for preorder from Amazon! It’s a monster–a 500-page book that covers everything from ethics to hierarchy to finding poly partners to dealing with insecurity to solo poly.

The foreword was written by Janet Hardy, of The Ethical Slut fame. Here’s part of what she has to say about it:

Dossie and I have been described as big sisters (if your big sister is a slutty kinky aging hippie); Franklin and Eve are more like wise neighbors. Think of the guy on the other side of the fence on Home Improvement, calm and wise and funny. Dossie and I write primarily about the sexual aspects of poly; Franklin and Eve are more interested in the day-to-day living part. Dossie and I like to indulge ourselves, just a little, in high-flown realms of abstraction and idealism; Franklin and Eve like to keep their feet on the ground.

I am really, really proud of this book. We’ve worked incredibly hard not just to make it happen, but to give concrete, real-world experiences, ours and other people’s, to illustrate what we have to say.

It’s a bit of a change for me. In my writings over the years, I’ve tended to focus on pragmatism and boots-on-the-ground poly without really talking very much about my own life and experiences. In this book, I talk more about myself and my experiences than I have anywhere else, and I’ve tried to be unflinching about the places I’ve screwed up and the things I’ve done wrong along the way.

It’s only been up for preorder for a little while and it’s already selling strongly. I have a sneaking feeling this thing might just run away from us.

Anyway, I hope you guys like it. Writing it was certainly an adventure.