The book was first published in 1993 by Hyperion, and subsequently in paperback by Penguin. The new volume will feature a newly written afterword, and an entire chapter that was dropped from the manuscript before the original publication. According to press materials, the story "was inspired by Busch’s nascent theatrical career in New York City’s East Village during the early 1980s, when that neighborhood was a bohemian breeding ground for convention-flouting artists, musicians, writers and performers. The book’s narrator, Julian Young , follows a path similar to that taken by Busch when his East Village comedy Vampire Lesbians of Sodom transferred Off-Broadway and became a hit that ran for five and a half years."

About the lost chapter—in which Julian and his sidekick Roxie go to a Long Island Bar Mitzvah, for which they have been hired as the evening’s entertainment—Busch said, "it was one of my favorite chapters in the book, but it veered away from the story at a crucial point. However, in 2005, I say ‘veer away!’ The more laughs we can attempt to provide in this very strange world, the better."