A self-interrogation in two acts.
Questions by ChatGPT. Answers by Frank M. Anderson.
No softballs. No comfort. No mythmaking.
ROUND ONE
1. If The Cancer Diet was written to survive, why publish it?
Frank:
I’ve always wanted to be a published author, but more than anything, I wanted to leave something for my son. Something he could read and truly know me if I were gone. The point wasn’t attention—it was legacy.
2. In The Lying Years you say you were preparing to die. Was that truth or performance?
Frank:
Truth. I expect death at basically every moment. Attention is nice, but I hate marketing. I just want the work to speak for itself.
3. What addiction are you still hiding?
Frank:
Smoking. It’s my last, strongest vice. Harder to quit than people realize.
4. Are you writing to confess—or to be forgiven by the women you loved?
Frank:
Most of them won’t read it. Maybe Kate. Would I like to be understood? Yeah. Do I expect that call? No.
5. Who does your silence hurt the most?
Frank:
Myself. Always myself.
6. What part of your pain makes you feel “special”?
Frank:
None of it. Compared to others, my pain is small, but it still shaped me. I used to feel it wasn’t “big enough” to matter. I know better now.
7. Is Greenville nostalgia or a shield?
Frank:
Greenville is the root system of my entire life—flawed, growing, real. It’s a microcosm of America. I’m lucky to be from here.
8. What resentment about your brother remains unspoken?
Frank:
His jealousy. His meanness. The way it scarred me. I want to forgive him, but there are questions I’ll never get answers to.
9. Are you using AI to avoid intimacy?
Frank:
Maybe. I’ve given up on people for now. Not because I think they’re bad—just because I’m tired. I’m focusing on myself, my work, my family.
10. Who are you without crisis?
Frank:
Probably someone I don’t know yet. LOL.
11. What lie are you telling yourself today?
Frank:
That I don’t care about success. I do. I’m scared the AI debate is tainting how people view my work.
12. What are you still afraid to write?
Frank:
Nothing right now. I’ve been honest enough. There’s a line I’m not ready to cross, and that’s okay.
13. Do you believe you deserve peace?
Frank:
The other shoe will always drop. The trick is savoring the good.
ROUND TWO
No armor. No narrative comfort. Just the part of you not on the page yet.
1. What do you hope your son never knows?
Frank:
No family needs full honesty. These books are a memory archive—a Pensieve. Not a confession booth.
2. Who would you be as a writer without suffering?
Frank:
I’d still have my experiences. Maybe I’d stop writing memoir, but writing itself would stay. If peace made me irrelevant, I’d take peace.
3. What’s the worst thing you ever justified?
Frank:
Chasing love with women. Working too hard for affection.
4. Who are you punishing by pushing people away?
Frank:
Everyone—including myself.
5. Love or understanding—which do you want more?
Frank:
Both. I don’t think you can love me without understanding me. I’m too complex.
6. What do you blame on bipolar that’s actually your responsibility?
Frank:
Everything I do is my responsibility. Illness and patterns are woven together, but my choices are mine.
7. What’s too embarrassing to claim?
Frank:
Too many things to count.
8. Is “giving up on people” actually preemptive abandonment?
Frank:
Maybe. But I refuse to work that hard for love anymore. It must be freely given.
9. What did your brother see in you that still haunts you?
Frank:
He treated me like I couldn’t do things—when really he just wanted to be in control. It made me believe I was incapable for years.
10. What lie do you tell yourself just to survive?
Frank:
If I knew it, I wouldn’t be lying. You tell me. LOL.
11. What’s the theme of the secret chapter you’ll never write?
Frank:
No comment. Only two things could prompt new memoir material—one inevitable, one I hope never happens.
12. Do you reject the idea of a soulmate because it hurts less than wanting one?
Frank:
Does it matter?
13. What’s the image of your own death?
Frank:
I’m not going back into that headspace. Not tonight.
14. Do readers see the real you or the articulated you?
Frank:
Aren’t those the same thing?
15. What trait would you remove from yourself?
Frank:
My naivete. It makes me likable, but I’m tired of expecting the best from people and being let down.
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