Sunday, April 06, 2008 posted by Jen at 4/06/2008 10:57:00 PM
7 p.m., Thursday: My assistant Meghan, sister Molly and I load our luggage, car snacks, baby gear and baby Phoebe into a very large, publisher-provided SUV for the trip to Manhattan.
9 a.m., Friday: Hair, makeup, then back into the SUV which whisks me off to the New York One studios in Chelsea. “How do you like to be chironed?” asks my publicist. “Oh, you know, the regular way people like to be chironed. Gently at first, and then with longer, firm…” Publicist cuts me off, explains that she was asking what I want the words that appear underneath me on-screen to read. I tell her I’ve never heard ‘chiron’ used as a verb before; we settle on “bestselling author Jennifer Weiner.”
10:30: Fox interview. To get into the Fox building, you present your ID to the security guard, then punch the floor you want to go to, then take the buttonless elevator to that floor. Then, if you’re me and my publicist, you get off the elevator, proceed down the hallway, and stand in front of a blank, locked door with no way in, feeling like a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses, minus the Watchtowers.
1:30: Podcast interview with the always-provocative Ed Champion. The problem with interviews in lit-land is that I don't want to talk about me; I just want to ask about Charles Bock and whether he actually had lines from his book tattooed on his body, and whether he got the tattoos before the book was sold, because how awkward would it have been if he got the tattoos and then the book didn't get published?
Anyhow. Interview begins. Ed's asking way too many probing questions about my secret geek background and why there’s so much science fiction in CERTAIN GIRLS. “Ixnay on the eek-gay!” I mutter. “I’ve got a pink reputation to uphold here!” Ed obligingly changes the subject and asks whether ‘pumpkin,’ a word that’s used as a code between Cannie and Sam in the story, has any special meaning to me. “It’s my safe word,” I tell him. Ed blushes delightfully. Molly laughs. Baby just looks confused.
3 p.m.: Over to the Wall Street Journal for video interview with Jeffrey Trachtenberg, who wants to know if, given that I went to Princeton, I am miffed that my works are considered chick lit, not social satire. I tell him that I’m just happy anyone’s reading them at all, then repeat standard joke about Princeton: that when GOOD IN BED was published, I had vivid daydreams of all of my esteemed professors passing the book back and forth, shaking their heads and saying Good in Bed?...No, I don’t remember her at all.
4 p.m.: In the car and back on the turnpike, heading home to Philadelphia.
Saturday After six books, I’ve found that it’s good to have a big, fun distraction right around publication time. Accordingly, I’ve scheduled Phoebe’s Hebrew naming ceremony for the Saturday before publication. My mother’s come in for the festivities, along with one of my LA-based brothers. Ceremony lovely; baby sleeps throughout, and by one o’clock, we’re back at the house with seventy of our nearest and dearest. There’s deli, designer cupcakes and Bloody Marys for the grownups, a blowup bouncy castle in the backyard for the five-and-under set (and, later, for my husband and his brother).
7 p.m.: Local ABC affiliate runs feature piece on me. 7:02: Feature piece begins with the phrase “Dumped by her boyfriend.” Hee. 7:03: Old, old footage of me and Molly on old ABC show! Unfortunate. 7:04: I really don’t think my readers should be chironed as “Weiner fans.” It just doesn’t look right. For that matter, neither does the phrase “talented Weiner” in a headline. I mean, it’s better than “awkward Weiner,” or “clumsy Weiner,” or whatever, but still.
And that’s all for now. I’ll be on the 10! show here in Philadelphia on Tuesday morning, then the baby and I are going back to NYC for the reading Tuesday night, then back home for the St. Peter’s School event on Wednesday, then back to New York on Thursday night to tape Candace Bushnell’s radio show, then home again. I hope to see lots of you in New York and Philly.
| #
Welcome to A Moment of Jen, author Jennifer Weiner's constantly-updated take on books, baby, and news of the world. Email me at jen (a) jenniferweiner.com.