A Moment of Jen

2012-01-17T10:21:00.013-05:00

Why isn't this woman smiling?

Back in the summer of 2010, some female writers (including me) used the occasion of the orgy of coverage around Jonathan Franzen’s FREEDOM to make a point that seemed obvious to anyone paying attention: the New York Times does not do a very good job at covering women writers.

After a tsunami of indignation swelled across the Internet – a tsunami that, unfortunately, was directed not at the Times, but at the female writers who dared to complain about its policies -- Slate.com confirmed the problem: of the 545 books reviewed between July 2008 and August, 2010, 62 percent were by men, 38 percent were by women…and of the 101 books that were reviewed twice in that time period, 71 percent were by men.

Did the Times do any better a year after FREEDOM?

To quote Reverend Lovejoy of Simpsons fame, short answer yes with an if, long answer no with a but. No male writer received the kind of saturation-level combination of reviews, profiles, think-pieces and mentions that surrounded Franzen's new book...but if you're hoping for equality, the paper's got a long way to go.

I counted the number of novels and short-story collections that were written up in the Times, mostly because fiction is what I write, and what I read. Numbers first, analysis at the end.

In 2011, the Times reviewed 254 works of fiction. 104, or 40.9 percent, were by women, and 150, or 59.1 percent, were by men.

Of the works of fiction that got two full reviews, 21 were by women, 22 were by men.

Of the works that received one full review plus a mention in a round-up, 5 were by women, 11 were by men. (This can be largely explained by Marilyn Stasio’s weekly round-up of crime novels).

Finally, of the works of fiction whose authors were reviewed twice (either with two full reviews, or review plus roundup) and profiled, one was a woman and ten were men.

The men who received two reviews plus a profile were David Foster Wallace, Albert Brooks, Julian Barnes, Kevin Wilson, Nicholson Baker, Tom Perrotta, Russell Banks, Jeffrey Eugenides, Haruki Murakami and Allan Hollinghurst.

The only woman who received two reviews plus a profile was Tea Obreht (who also received a mention in the TBR column).

J. Courtney Sullivan (a former Times employee), received a full review and a round-up mention, and was featured in the “Sunday Routine” column, where she discussed her preferred brunch, her work habits, and her favorite dog park.

Sullivan also appeared in the "Inside the List" column, wrote a book review, and published a piece on her hobby -- dollhouses.

Ann Patchett was reviewed twice, and was written up in a story that had to do with her buying a bookstore than her as a writer.

Ann Beattie was also reviewed twice for her book, MRS. NIXON, and mentioned in T Style, in a Q and A about holiday gifts. (Also featured? Gary Shteyngart and Jeffrey Eugenides.)

No female novelist received two reviews plus a Sunday Magazine profile, while two men (Nicholson Baker and Haruki Murakami) hit that trifecta. The only woman novelist profiled in the Sunday Magazine was independent publishing sensation Amanda Hocking. None of Hockings’ books were reviewed in 2011. The magazine also ran a great piece on cartoonist and nonfiction author Lynda Barry and her "workshop for nonwriters." Barry's last novel, CRUDDY, was published in 2000.

Finally, there’s the issue of timing.

The ideal situation for an author is to have a new book reviewed within days of its publication. New books hit shelves and e-tailers on Tuesdays, which means a review the Sunday before is ideal, as is any day-of-publication ink.

Of the authors who received two reviews within two weeks of their publication date, seven were women and twelve were men (David Foster Wallace, whose THE PALE KING was published on April 4 and received his reviews on March 31 and April 5, almost made the cut.)

The year had some bright spots. Commercial mystery writers Lisa Scottoline and Chelsea Cain were reviewed, as was YA queen Meg Cabot and chick lit-ish writer Allison Pearson.

Of the five works of fiction chosen as the year’s best, three were by women: Karen Russell's SWAMPLANDIA!, Eleanor Henderson's TEN THOUSAND SAINTS and Obreht's THE TIGER'S WIFE.

Only one of them – THE TIGER'S WIFE – was reviewed twice, while both men who received the honor (Chad Harbach and Stephen King) also got two reviews.

The Times showed improvement, at least in terms of fiction, in the two-review department, but the disparity between men and women who get that coveted two-reviews-plus-a-profile is still shocking.

Final thoughts? Like they say on the subways, if you see something, say something…and if you don’t see something, say something about that, too.

Social media means that everyone gets a voice – not just authors and publishers, but readers, too.

So if you believe that PEN-prize winning Jennifer Haigh's new book FAITH deserved better than a throwaway mention under the heading “For the Ladies” in a Janet Maslin summer beach-book round-up…or if you notice that Tom Perrotta got two reviews and a profile within three days of publication, while Erin Morgenstern’s THE NIGHT CIRCUS received a single review, three weeks after its pub date…or if you wonder why memoirist Meghan O'Rourke is posing in a Missoni sweater in T Style Magazine, while novelist Gary Shteyngart talks technology...or if you believe the Times could have swapped one of its multiple pieces on well-connected cross-dressing memoirist Jon-Jon Goulian for a write-up of National Book Award-winning Jesmyn Ward (who was eventually reviewed, once, months after SALVAGE THE BONES was published)…or if you believe that a book review that makes space for mysteries, thrillers and horror novels can also spare a few paragraphs each week for romance, commercial women’s fiction and quote-unquote chick lit, get on Twitter, get on your blog, post something on Facebook. Speak up.

The near-equality among the twice-reviewed and the best-of lists, and the occasional not-entirely-dismissive mention of a commercial female author suggests that, even if they’ll never say so, people at the Times are paying attention. Things can change.

(Last but not least, a special thank-you to my assistant, the indomitable Meghan Burnett, who compiled all these numbers).

2011-12-06T12:23:00.002-05:00

Remember that old Andre Agassi campaign where he finger-combed his mullet and told us that “image is everything?”

Take that and triple it when it comes to ethics in book reviewing.

Readers deserve a critic’s honest take on a book, an opinion that hasn't been influenced by the critic’s relationship with the author or her publisher. Because the community of critics and writers is small and incestuous, with plenty of connections and lots of overlap, editors are meticulous about making sure that the reviews they run are beyond reproach.

A reviewer cannot share a blood relation or a bed with the author of the book she’ll be considering. She can’t have written a blurb or be thanked in the acknowledgments of the book under consideration, or have blurbed or thanked its author.

Critics can’t review the work of a friend, or an enemy.

Generally, reviewers are required to disclose any relationship – any at all – that they have with the author. Did you ever work at the same university? Judge a contest together? Win the same fellowship, sit on the same panel, attend a writers’ conference at the same time? The editors want to know, because they want to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, of log-rolling or score-settling or a review that is, or even seems to be, ethically tainted. They want their reviews to be fair, and to look that way.

Among the list of thou-shalt-nots is a rule that’s so basic that editors could be forgiven for not even mentioning it: thou shalt not take money from the publisher to promote the book you’re reviewing.

That's why it was surprising to find the Minneapolis Star-Tribune publishing Bethanne Patrick's review of Joyce Carol Oates’ book THE CORN MAIDEN…the same book that Patrick, wearing her #fridayreads hat, had done a paid giveaway of the month before. (Full disclosure: Joyce Carol Oates was one of my creative writing professors in college, some twenty years ago).

Patrick was assigned the review in August. She turned in her review in October. At some point between October and November, she negotiated the promotion with Oates’ publisher.

Star-Tribune Senior Editor Laurie Hertzel said in an email interview that at no point did Patrick disclose that she was doing a paid promotion for the book she’d reviewed. Hertzel said she “did not know about the financial relationship (between Patrick and Oates’ publisher) before the review was published.”

In fact, Hertzel said didn’t even know that there was a paid component to Fridayreads.

This should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following the Fridayreads saga, and who know that Patrick, who has been doing paid promotions ranging from $750 to $2,000 since March of this year, chose to disclose that fact that Fridayreads is “a hashtag and a business both” halfway down a FAQ page on a website, as opposed to on Twitter and Facebook, as FTC regulations require, and did not label promoted tweets as such.

When all of this was pointed out, by me and other writers, Patrick essentially threw up her hands and pleaded ignorance. Things moved fast, steps were skipped, the Internet’s a big, confusing place. Maybe she didn’t do everything right, but she didn’t mean to mislead anyone and she’s sorry if she did.

Which is the same line she’s repeating now that the book review-promo conflict has come to light. "I'm in new territory here," she tweeted yesterday.

Except disclosing a conflict to a newspaper editor isn’t new territory, or even new media. It’s fundamental. It’s Book Reviewing 101.

Readers and writers understand how rapidly the ground is shifting as the conversation about reading moves from print media to the Internet, where book bloggers work multiple jobs and sometimes have conflicting allegiances. Reasonable people can make allowances for honest mistakes…but not telling an editor who’s assigned you a review that you’ve been paid to promote that same title?

That’s hard to understand…particularly from someone who’s worked in the publishing world for years.

Hertzel said Patrick’s future as a freelance critic for the Star Tribune is now under review.

But there’s a bigger issue here than the critic who made bad choices, the editor who was kept in the dark, the author whose glowing review now looks fishy, and the readers, who now have reason to wonder whether what they read in their morning paper was an honest assessment or a bought-and-paid-for Valentine.

Authors deserve reviews that are fair and impartial. Other freelance critics and book bloggers don’t deserve the cynicism and suspicion that they’ll receive in the wake of Patrick's double-dip. Most of all, readers deserve reviews that are not, and do not appear to be, influenced by relationships, connections, or -- above all -- money.

2011-11-27T18:48:00.004-05:00

By now, people who follow publishing news are familiar with the headlines from last week’s Fridayreads brouhaha: popular hashtag revealed as a business, too! Proprietors apologize for not properly labeling promotional tweets! “We may have made mistakes, but we’ve got ethics!” they claim.

When it began, #Fridayreads was a popular hashtag that was billed by its founder Bethanne Patrick, who tweets as @thebookmaven, as a “global community of people who come together each week to share whatever they’re reading.” Last week, Patrick admitted that Fridayreads is a hashtag and a business both, a business that charges publishers fees from $750 to $2,000 to host giveaways, author Q and A’s, “twitter tours,” and post positive tweets about their books.

Now that the business aspect is out in the open, there’s another question to consider, one that’s bigger than the issue of why Patrick and her colleagues chose to disclose the moneymaking component of a Twitter hashtag on a website few would have occasion to see, and whether they really believed that disclosure was sufficient: namely, why does any of this matter to readers and writers?

My own full disclosure: I found out that Fridayreads was selling services after a new online literary magazine called Book Riot ran a story that criticized me and Jodi Picoult for the crime of being insufficiently pissed about the coverage novelist Jeffrey Eugenides received (yes, this is the life I lead). A few of the Riot’s employees were kind enough to tweet the link at me, just to be sure that I saw.

I read the story. Then I went to the masthead to figure out who was in charge of this new magazine, and was surprised to learn that Patrick, who I’ve met once and who has always been friendly to me on Twitter, was the Riot’s new executive editor.

I went to Patrick’s Twitter page, to see whether her new job was mentioned. It wasn’t, but her Twitter page led me to the Fridayreads home page (which also failed to mention Patrick’s new affiliation). The home page led me to a link to the FAQ page, and, deep on the FAQ page was the news that the Fridayreads services were for sale (the page also revealed that two of Fridayreads’ three employees also have positions at Book Riot).

How many casual readers and tweeters would follow such a serpentine path, figure out how Fridayreads worked, and make an informed decision about whether they wanted to participate and be counted not just as a reader but as a potential consumer of the books Patrick was selling? My guess: not many.

In addition to posting their disclosure on a website, while most of #fridayreads happens on Twitter and Facebook, the people running the hashtag failed to clearly label promoted tweets as promoted. This is a problem, too. As others have noted, the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection has rules spelling out how bloggers and Twitter users must disclose when they’re paid to endorse or mention a product.

The rules make it clear that “a single disclosure doesn’t really do it because people visiting your site might read individual reviews or watch individual videos without seeing the disclosure on your home page," and that promoted tweets have to labeled as such, with an #ad or #sponsored or #promoted hashtag.

I won’t speculate about whether the disclosure-on-a-website and subsequent failure to label promotional tweets correctly was deliberately deceptive or merely clueless.

But I do want to talk about why disclosure and transparency matter.

On Monday, Patrick issued an explanation/apology on her website. In the comments section, someone named “Chris” said this was much ado about nothing. “It was obvious that someone was getting something for hours of hard work.”

In other words, duh, of course the Fridayreads crew was getting paid. You’d be a naïve idiot to think otherwise.

That’s my biggest problem.

I don’t believe that the vast majority of authors, or literary bloggers, are secretly or semi-secretly for sale.

I don’t think that publishing is a private club run behind a locked door with winks and nods and secret handshakes, where insiders know the truth about how things really work, and the outsiders are left in the cold, guessing. It worries me that readers are going to come away from the Fridayreads contretemps believing that’s the case: that there’s a story that gets handed to the public, and then there’s the truth that gets whispered among the members of the club, who all know that of course litblogger A runs hashtag B and also works for magazine C and who don't think the public needs to know that a hashtag that presents itself as a fun exercise in community-building is quietly a business on the side.

In ten years as a novelist, that hasn't been my experience with publishing professionals, or other authors, or the dozens of literary bloggers I've met. Implying otherwise is an insult to every blogger who ever did an interview or a giveaway because she loved a book or an author and wanted to get out the word.

It’s an insult to every author who ever gave an honest blurb or recommendation, or tweeted, “Guys, you’ve got to read this” because he believed it, not because the publisher slipped him some cash or he expected a favor down the road.

It’s an insult to the authors who do interviews and Q and As and post advice and links and the stories of how we got started on our blogs, who do giveaways and pay for the postage out of our own pocket because we want to give back to the reading and writing community, to support other authors, to encourage the newbies, to celebrate books in a world where opportunities to do so are shrinking, and are too often given to the usual suspects.

It’s an insult to the bloggers who have chosen to monetize their content publicly and honestly, the ones whose ads look like ads and whose disclosure policies make it clear when they get books to review or give away from publishers.

Nobody’s running a literary blog or magazine to get rich. Most writers who maintain blogs end up losing money, not making it. Should a blogger decide to try to turn their hobby into a paying endeavor, nobody rolls their eyes or clutches their pearls. We're all used to seeing ads alongside a blog post, or a request for sponsorship on a literary website, or a virtual tip cup at the bottom of a post or a review with a note saying, “Hey, if you like what I’m doing, consider supporting it.” I don’t think anyone begrudges the Fridayread folks the ability to make money from their endeavors, if they’ve found a way to do it honestly.

But honesty matters – to readers, to writers, to bloggers and Twitter users, to those who’ve chosen to monetize their content in a clear and public way, and those who continue to do what they do for community and good karma instead of cash.

In the midst of the Twitter conversation someone wrote to say that I was wrong to imply that Patrick was dishonest. “If you knew her, you’d never say that,” he claimed.

I don’t know Bethanne Patrick or her colleagues, except on the Internet…but I believe that you know people through their actions. If they’re honest, if they’re ethical, you can see it in the choices they make. If they aren’t, no amount of indignant insistence otherwise will change your mind.

The Fridayreads people have taken the steps of saying the right things, of adding the hashtag #promo to their promoted tweets and updating the Fridayreads FAQ page to note that the hashtag is also a business. Here's hoping that their actions continue to reflect their words.

2011-10-28T11:16:00.005-04:00

The hands-down, all-time chart-topping question writers get is, “where do you get your ideas?”

Usually we mutter something jokey and self-effacing about Target or the Idea Elves, because the truth, at least for me, is, we don’t know where ideas come from. They just come…and whether they arrive as an image, or a scrap of dialogue, or a what-if question, it’s hard to say where they’re born.

At least, that’s true most of the time.

But, on Tuesday, I had an idea, that turned into a story (my first-ever horror story!), and I can chart exactly how it happened.

I spoke at an event Tuesday night, out in the suburbs, and I was driving home, letting my trusty GPS be my guide. As I tooled through the darkness, along a deserted road I’d never been on, I thought, What if this thing doesn’t want me to get home?

What if it sends me somewhere else entirely?

On Wednesday morning, I sent out a tweet asking if anyone had ever written a story about a possessed GPS.

A few people mentioned the great Stephen King story, “Big Driver,” (it’s in his latest collection, FULL DARK NO STARS). But in that story, the GPS is a benevolent presence, almost a friend to the troubled heroine.

I was thinking of a darker kind of GPS. And then, I started asking the big writers’ question: why? Why would a GPS want to do bad, bad thing?

Just like that, I had a story. An abused wife. A dead husband who doesn’t want to stay dead. A gift-wrapped box in the attic…and a GPS that starts telling its new owner to make some seriously wrong turns.

This was Wednesday morning. I emailed my brilliant agent and asked, if I write this thing, like, today, is there any chance we can get it up for sale on Halloween?

She talked to my editor. My publishing house swung into action. I wrote the story…and it came really, really fast. Thirty-five pages in five hours fast.

My agent and my editor both gave me notes. I revised it late Wednesday night and Thursday morning (the finished product clocked in at around forty pages, or 10,000 words).

On Thursday afternoon, my copy-editor, Nancy Inglis took a pass. By Thursday night, we had a cover, designed by the amazing Anna Dorfman. Everyone there hustled to get this thing formatted, spruced up, and ready for your enjoyment.

The story goes live on Monday – Halloween – and will be available on Amazon, on B&N and on iTunes for a mere 99 cents -- such a bargain!

Technology is amazing. And my publisher’s great. I hope you have as much fun reading “Recalculating” as I did writing it.

Happy Halloween. And if your GPS starts sounding like it’s angry with you the next time you take a trip, you might want to pack a map…

2011-07-05T19:53:00.002-04:00

Greetings from Bungalow 5, on my last day in Los Angeles.

Tonight, I’ll pack up my office and go out to dinner with the writers for “State of Georgia.” Which, by the way, got an amazing review in The New York Times.

Tomorrow, I’m on a plane to New York. Tomorrow night, I’ll be live-tweeting “Georgia,” which airs at 8:30 on ABC Family. Tomorrow’s episode introduces a few of the show’s semi-regulars, Jo’s physics classmates Lewis, Leo and Seth, played by the very funny Kevin Covais (remember him from “Idol?”), Jason Rogel and Hasan Minhaj, all of whom are on Twitter…just put an “@” sign in front of their names, and you can’t miss them.

On Thursday morning during the eight o’clock hour I’ll be on “The Today Show,” along with Harlan Coben, who writes some of my favorite thrillers. We’ll be giving our summer reading recommendations, so please tune in!

Then, on Tuesday, July 12, THEN CAME YOU hits the shelves, and the e-reading devices, and I’ll hit the road, with stops in New York, Princeton, Philadelphia, the Chicago suburbs, and Kansas City. THEN CAME YOU has gotten some lovely early reviews, including the coveted four beach umbrella award from the New York Post, which said, “Weiner makes the unsympathetic women compelling, and chronicles the hard-luck ladies sans melodrama. We come to care about each one."

You can check out the first chapter of THEN CAME YOU right here and look at my tour dates here. Please note: all readings will feature whoopie pies. Not because there are whoopie pies in the book (although now that I think about it, there should be), but because I like whoopie pies, and I don't trust anyone who doesn't.

Thanks to everyone who checked out "Georgia," and I hope to see lots of you on the road.

2011-06-28T15:46:00.002-04:00

Greetings from Studio City, where I've got of exciting news to report. First up: "State of Georgia" premieres tomorrow night (that's Wednesday, June 29) on ABC Family (which is NOT ABC -- it's on basic cable; check your channel guide) at 8:30 p.m.. The show stars Raven-Symone and Majandra Delfino as two best friends from a small town down South who are trying to make it big in New York City, under the benign neglect of Georgia's Aunt Honey, played by Loretta Devine.

I hope you'll tune in for the premiere....and I hope you'll stick with the show. It's been an amazing experience, shooting a pilot and then working on nine new episodes, watching the show find its feet and find its voice as the weeks went on. I think that Georgia ended up in a great place -- a funny show with lovable characters and a lot to say about what it's like to take those first steps toward adulthood. You can read more about my book-to-TV transition in the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Also, if you "like" "State of Georgia" on Facebook or follow me on Twitter, I'll be live-tweeting the premiere and posting pictures from our premiere party, as well as pictures of real-life BFFs watching the show on Wednesday night.

On July 12, THEN CAME YOU comes out. THEN CAME YOU tells the story of four women and a baby. There's brittle, wealthy newlywed India who will pay any price to have a child. There's Jules, a college senior with a few big secrets, who becomes the egg donor, and Annie, who's struggling with financial constraints, an unhappy marriage and her own ambitions, who become the gestational surrogate. Finally, there's Bettina, India's skeptical stepdaughter, who thinks the whole thing is a mistake.

The book's gotten some great early reviews, and I think readers will enjoy meeting each one of these women as they make their way toward becoming a family. I talked to Cosmo.com about how the book came into being, and you can, of course, read the first chapter here.

Last but not least, the tour! I'll be doing readings, and handing out delicious whoopie pies, in New York City, Princeton, Philadelphia, Chicago and Kansas City, beginning on July 12. All the details are here, and I hope to see you there!

2011-05-23T16:08:00.003-04:00

Hard to believe, but GOOD IN BED is ten years old this week!

I remember like it was yesterday seeing the book in bookstores for the first time (and then trying to sneak it onto the 'New Release' octagon at a New York City bookstore, and having the clerk promptly put it back).

If you haven't heard, we're celebrating with a "Win Cannie's Weekend" contest, where the lucky winner and a friend will get to experience Los Angeles Cannie Shapiro style. Two airline tickets, three nights at the Regent Beverly Wilshire (made famous in "Pretty Woman,") dinner at Asia de Cuba and a chance to watch a taping of "State of Georgia."

Sadly, I cannot guarantee a makeout session with a movie star, but it could happen, right?

To enter, click here, and tell me about the most remarkable thing that's happened to you in the last ten years. I've already read some wonderful essays -- hilarious and heartbreaking and everywhere in between. (PS: you have to enter through a Facebook app. If you're not comfortable with that, you can do it via my website right here).

In other news, FLY AWAY HOME is out in paperback, and in bookstores now, as is the anniversary re-release of GOOD IN BED, that comes with a new introduction and a candle on Cannie's bed-cake.

On June 29th, I hope you'll all tune in for the premiere of "State of Georgia," the sitcom I co-wrote and am executive producing, on ABC Family. Then, on July 12, THEN CAME YOU hits bookstores. It's a funny, moving, timely story of a surrogate pregnancy and how four very different women come together to form a family. I'll be posting the first chapter soon, and I hope you'll all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

2011-04-05T21:25:00.002-04:00

It's been an exciting few weeks out here in Los Angeles.

My books appeared on "The Office" a few weeks ago, in an episode called "Garage Sale."

If you didn't see it, check it out here. Without giving anything away, it was one of the sweetest half-hours of TV I've seen in a long, long time. I only hope "The Great State of Georgia" can do as well some day.

Time Magazine named me one of its top 140 Twitter users (Tweeters? Twits? Never mind). They enjoyed my "Bachelor" tweets -- God help me, I miss that show -- and write, "the author of Good in Bed and Fly Away Home's smart tweets on writing — particularly the ongoing feud between chick-lit authors and quote-unquote real women novelists — make for entertaining, indispensable reading."

Entertaining and indispensable. Like a funny diaper for a not-quite-toilet-trained two-year-old!

If you agree, you can vote for me here...and, of course, you are always more than welcome to follow me on Twitter.

In non-Twitter news, I am having way too much fun in the writers' room, working on the first nine episodes for "The Great State of Georgia," which may be renamed "The State of Georgia." Or just "Georgia!" Stay tuned...and tune in to ABC Family for the premiere at 8:30 on June 29th.

I'm also doing a teeny tiny tour for the paperback release of FLY AWAY HOME.

On Saturday, April 30 I will be at the Warrington Country Club at noon, doing an event in support of the Doylestown Library. Tickets go on sale on April 10. Learn more here.

That night, I'll be at the library in Horsham at 5:30. Tickets for that event are $20, and you can learn all about it here.

On Sunday, May 1 at 3:30 I'll be in Los Angeles, appearing at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on the USC Campus.

I've spent years reading about the famed LAT FOB from the opposite side of the country, admiring the line-up and wishing I could attend. Finally, my wish has come true, and I'll be hanging out listening to Patti Smith, Aimee Bender, T.C. Boyle and as many other authors as I can see (the full list of participants is here -- and it's amazing).

Then it's back east, for an event at the Soho Apple Store at 103 Prince Street on Wednesday, May 4 at 6:30. On Thursday, I'm reading at the Gershman Y in Philadelphia at 7 p.m., and my beloved Headhouse Books will be on hand to sell books.

Finally, on Friday, May 6 I'll be in Chicago, doing a 6 p.m. event at the Apple store on North Michigan Avenue.

I hope to see lots of you out there...and check back for news about the GOOD IN BED !0th-anniversary contest, and some fun THEN CAME YOU giveaways, as I continue to count the days until "The Bachelorette."

2011-03-22T11:18:00.001-04:00

Which Dunder-Mifflin employee reads my books? Watch "The Office" this Thursday night and find out!

2011-03-20T12:46:00.003-04:00

Greetings from Los Angeles!

I’m spending my days on the CBS lot in Studio City, where a bunch of absurdly funny writers and I are coming up with the first nine episodes of “The Great State of Georgia,” which will premiere on ABC Family on June 29, and finishing up the edits on THEN CAME YOU, out the second week of July.

Here is the cover! I love it, especially the green, which feels so fresh and spring-y.

THEN CAME YOU concerns four women and a baby. There’s India, the older, wealthy, married lady who wants to get pregnant, and can’t. There’s Jules, the college student who donates an egg, and Annie, the Pennsylvania housewife who serves as a surrogate, and Bettina, India’s twenty-three-year-old stepdaughter, who’s deeply skeptical of the whole endeavor. It’s an exploration into the issues that surrogacy raises…and also, the story of how these women end up forming a very modern family. It's been a lot of fun to write, and I hope lots of you will enjoy it this summer.

As for Georgia, I am loving my first stint in a writers’ room. In fact, I’m not sure how I’m going to keep writing without one. Novel-writing is so lonely, and writers’ rooms are hilarious. You spend the day sitting around swapping stories, pitching jokes, telling tales of Hollywood stars’ bad behavior (except because I don’t know any, I mostly just listen to those) and making up adventures for your girls. And then every afternoon: food trucks!

I think Georgia’s going to be a fresh, funny take on a time we all remember: right out of college and/or our parents’ houses, in a big city, taking those first jobs, navigating those first romances, finding your favorite bar and gym and yogurt shop, figuring out who you’re going to be. It’s a little “Laverne and Shirley,” a little “Sex and the City," and very girl-centric, which I'm thrilled about, because there's still so many comedies where the women are second bananas or romantic appendages or punchlines.

You can keep up with all things Georgia on the ABC Family website, right here.

Finally, the last piece of news, from the department of Wow Am I Old: GOOD IN BED turns ten this May! My publisher's releasing a special edition with a new cover (Cannie's bed-cake has a birthday candle), a new afterward, where I talk about what it was like to write my first novel and how the world has changed, or failed to change since then, and a new e-book price ($4.99). Best of all, I'm throwing a Win Cannie's Weekend contest to celebrate.

If you read GOOD IN BED, you probably know what the lucky winner and her BFF could get: a trip to Los Angeles, a stay in a fancy hotel, an afternoon of spa treatments, a delicious dinner, and an invitation to come watch us tape "The Great State of Georgia." (Introduction to movie stars who will subsequently become your friends or engage you in makeout sessions, alas, are not included).

Check back for the details. Better yet, follow me on Twitter, where I am @jenniferweiner, and I talk about what I'm reading, what I'm writing, and what I'm watching on reality TV.

2011-01-31T20:17:00.005-05:00

Hey!

More details forthcoming, but I wanted to share three pieces of big news.

Piece one: I turned in a draft of THEN CAME YOU to my editor today!

Piece two: I'll be on "The Nate Berkus Show" tomorrow, talking about life as a working mother.

Piece three: I learned that the most beautiful words in the English language are "I love you," and "ordered to series." "The Great State of Georgia" is a go!

So: I'll be relocating (temporarily!) to LA for the next few months, sharing executive producer duties, which means I will be writing scripts and overseeing casting and approving costumes and sets and doing a zillion other things to put a great, funny show with a big heart on TV.

Seriously, I heart Georgia. I loved writing the show, I loved watching Raven-Symone and Majandra Delfino bring the thing to life, and I think that, come springtime, you're going to dig it, too.

The TV show will premiere in late May or early June. The novel will be out the second week in July. And I'm assuming I'll spend August lying flat on my back, moaning softly to myself.

2010-12-17T00:49:00.002-05:00

One of the heartbreaking things about writing novels is, there’s no opening night.

Yes, you’ve got pub day, which, as any author will tell you, is pretty anticlimactic. Your book shows up in stores with no fanfare or flourish. Maybe you do a reading that night, and maybe there’s a review or two. Your publisher sends you flowers, your loved ones offer congratulations, and your mother tells you she reserved her copy at the library. After that, nothing. It’s a whimper, not a bang.

TV? That’s different.

You spend months laboring over a script, thinking about the characters and their motivations, where they come from, what drives them, how they look, what they say. You hold your breath until the network gives you the go-ahead. You find your casting director, then your cast. A crew builds a set, constructing the workplaces and houses that have only ever existed in your dreams. There’s costumes and makeup and lighting and music. And then, you go onstage, in front of a live studio audience, and you put on a show.

We shot “The Great State of Georgia,” the half-hour sitcom I wrote with Jeff Greenstein last week at Hollywood Center Studios, where, once upon a time, “I Love Lucy” was filmed. About twenty of my friends and relations came to L.A. to watch the fun. Everyone from my seven-year-old daughter to my ninety-five-year-old Nanna was there…and my sister nabbed a small role, so they got to watch both of us work.

The whole thing was kind of magical. The sets looked so rich and so real – “just like a TV show!” I kept saying, which I’m sure wasn’t too charming after the hundredth time I’d said it. The characters, on stage, were funnier and more poignant than they ever sounded in my head. Raven-Symone as Georgia is all grown up, hilarious and heartbreaking when she has to be. Majandra Delfino, as her BFF Jo, is, in a word, adorable. Meagan Faye as Aunt Honey, their eccentric fairy godmother, is brilliant and droll, and should strike a chord with anyone who ever loved “The Golden Girls.” And I still love the story of the curvy, confident girl who’s going to change the world, instead of letting the world change her.

“So which do you like better?” a Facebook friend asked. “Books or TV?”

The truth is, they’ve both got their strong points. Nothing rivals the control you get from writing a novel: how it’s just you and your story and that great intangible, the reader’s imagination to see the world you're building on the page.

Television, as many anti-TV types point out, does a lot of that work for you: instead of imagining how a character looks and sounds, the viewer gets them served up in high-def.

But television also gives you a much broader canvas, a chance to tell a story over seasons, over years.

There’s also the question of audience.

If you write a hardcover that sells 100,000 copies in its first month of release, trust me, your publisher will be ecstatic.

In TV-land, a show just got cancelled for only bringing in 500,000 viewers on its debut night…and the show was on cable. Bottom line: if you’ve got something to say, a story to tell, and you want to reach people -- a lot of people -- there’s worse places to do it than on TV.

TV writing's refreshingly collaborative – instead of writing alone, spending a year by yourself with the characters in your head, you’re in a room, with other writers, pitching jokes and bits of dialogue, which the actors then bring to life.

I also love the chance to fix things that aren’t working. Joke’s not landing? Exposition’s feeling wordy? You rewrite on the spot, give the actor a new line or a new bit of direction, and it’s fixed. How many novelists would give blood or money for a chance to start tinkering with their words once they’re in print and out in the world?

Then there’s been the adventure of going from Philadelphia to West Hollywood. I’ve had a bunch of fun star sightings (Kelsey Grammar! Sarah Silverman! Cameron Diaz, who I think may actually live at my gym)! And I’ve learned lots of fun lingo. A “one-percenter,” for those wondering, is a joke that only one percent of your audience is going to get (“Like that joke you pitched about Sally Hemmings,” one of my new friends explained. “Or everything on ’30 Rock.’”) “Beat the blow” only sounds dirty – it means working on the joke or moment that ends a scene.

I’ve learned the joys of audience testing and network notes calls, gone through casting and blocking and post-production, a process in which you can sample a dozen different burps to put in your character’s mouth…and oh, did I mention that Liz Phair (Liz! Phair!) and her producing partners are doing the music? And that I had a breakfast meeting with Liz Phair during which I was too awestruck to speak? So now Liz Phair probably thinks of me (fondly, I hope) as that mute lady who ate some of her fruit plate. Which is cool. Could be worse, right?

So when can you see “The Great State of Georgia?” If ABC Family buys what we’re selling, I’ll be back out here in the spring to write and shoot more episodes, and the program will be coming to a TV set near you sometime this summer.

Stay tuned…

2010-10-25T20:29:00.003-04:00

It’s been a week since I came to Los Angeles and started working on “The Great State of Georgia,” the sitcom I wrote with Jeff Greenstein that ABC Family picked up, and things are flying along. In a week’s time, we’ve hired a bunch of key personnel, including a great casting director and started auditioning actors for the lead roles.

Auditions are great fun…and a little dangerous. Actors come in. They read the lines, and then you say, “Could you try it a little faster? A little slower? With more of Southern accent? Hopping on one foot?” Georgia, our lead, is a singer, so we asked a few of the actors, if they could sing for us. One of them just finished a run as the lead on a Broadway show, so having her singing in a room was just amazing.

The thing is, once you realize that the actors will basically do anything you tell them, as long as they think it’ll help them get the part, it’s tempting – at least, for me – to take it too far, in a dance, meat puppet! kind of way. I see on your resume you can do a Cockney accent. Can I hear it? It says you can belt an E above high C. I’d like to hear that, too. In Polish. On one foot.

Georgia, our big, confident, curvy girl is probably going to be the biggest challenge to cast. Big, curvy, confident girls are not easy to find in LA as, say, tall, skinny, gorgeous girls. But our Georgia is out there, and we will find her.

Aunt Honey, our Southern grande dame of a certain age, is a challenge for another reason – we've got an embarrassment of riches. It seems like every actress of a certain age with comedy chops and a Southern accent in her repertoire wants to read for the part. I can’t name names, but it’s been kind of a Who’s Who of 1980’s/1990’s sitcom stars and big-screen actresses, and I’m having a hard time not behaving like Chris Farley meeting Paul McCartney when I see them. Remember when you were in the Beatles? That was cool!

In between all the TV fun, I'm working on my new book and getting my November and December in order, figuring out when I can fly home to see my family, or when they can come out here and visit me. Bicoastal living is rough. I miss my friends, and my routines, and Philadelphia in the fall…but I love this show, and I love these characters, and I’m having a lot of fun. And in less than six weeks we'll be shooting the thing!

Stay tuned...

2010-10-14T17:36:00.002-04:00

Hey! Remember that development deal I had with ABC?

I had a great time. Met amazing people. Learned a lot. Wrote a few pilots and had them get close…and then, nothing.

Hollywood breaks your heart like that, and I figured, I loved the experience, and learned so much, and made great contacts, so I couldn’t be too disappointed. Especially not when I hadn’t quit my day job – I signed a new deal with my publisher last spring – and got to keep a hand in the world of TV, working on other ideas for shows.

So there I was, a few weeks back, on a beautiful September afternoon, hopping into a cab to meet my friend Elizabeth for lunch when my cell phone rang. It was a comedy executive at ABC Studios calling. Remember “The Great State of Georgia?” he asked.

Do I remember Georgia? I remember Georgia like you remember your first love, the guy who gave you your first great kiss, and then broke your heart and took your best friend to the prom.

“The Great State of Georgia” is a half-hour sit-com that I wrote with Jeff Greenstein, who is a genius, and much funnier (and taller) than I am. It’s about a big, gorgeous girl with a big, gorgeous voice from a tiny town down South who wants to be a star, and moves to New York City to make it happen, with her geeky, stunning-but-doesn’t-know-it science-nerd BFF in tow. Hilarity ensues – much of it stemming from the times when our heroine who is not, as they say, challenged in the self-esteem department, comes up against the unpleasant realization that she’s not what the snooty tastemakers of NYC have in mind.

I loved writing Georgia. It was a chance to do a funny, modern gloss on “Laverne & Shirley,” with rich, well-rounded female characters; to write about friendship and family and love and new beginnings; about making it in spite of the world telling you that you can’t.

It was also a lot of fun to do a big girl who’s not stuck in self-deprecation-land: Georgia knows she’s fabulous – the fabulous descendant of a long line of fabulous, beauty-pageant-winning babes who turn men into drooling piles of mush -- and is mostly confused when the world doesn’t agree. It broke my heart when ABC didn't bite. I figured Georgia and Jo, and Luke, Georgia’s loyal but dim-bulb hometown honey, would be forever consigned to that unhappy land where imaginary characters go to die.

But! Hold the phone! Turns out, ABC Family (home of “Melissa and Joey, “and “The Secret Life of the American Teenage,” and the late, lamented “Huge”) liked the script and wants to shoot a pilot.

Which means I’m packing up to head west this weekend for eight weeks of casting, hiring, rewrites, and, eventually, shooting the show. If ABC Family likes what it sees, they’ll order a bunch of episodes, which I will executive produce. So if you like my books, my blog, or even my tweets about “The Bachelor,” I think you’ll like “Georgia.”

It’s all very exciting. And scary. This will be, by far, the longest I’ll have been away from my family…but I’m thrilled to be starting a new adventure. And hiring a line producer. And figuring out what a line producer does.

So! Keep reading the blog -- and follow me on Twitter -- for what I hope will be frequent and funny updates from TV Land. (And if you're a gorgeous young plus-size actress who can sing and dance and wants to star in a sit-com, please keep your ear to the ground for news about casting calls, which will be happening soon).

As they say, stay tuned…

2010-09-24T11:27:00.003-04:00

When I first heard the premise of Emma Donoghue's ROOM, I think my reaction was probably something along the lines of, "Oh, hell no."

A novel about an abducted woman, living in a lead-lined garden shed with her rapist's child? Thanks, but no thanks. Life's hard enough, and I've got little kids. Bad enough to pick up the newspaper or People magazine and read about the real-life cases of women snatched and stolen, turned into sex slaves by random monsters or their own fathers, living in lightless dungeons, being raped and tortured and isolated from the world. I'll pass.

But the reviews were so good, and there were so many of them (which shows, better than anything, the power that book reviews still have), that I bought a copy, and found myself not only completely engrossed but charmed and, ultimately, completely blown away by Donoghue's accomplishment.

ROOM tells one of those familiar, terrible stories, but turns it on its head by telling it from five-year-old Jack's point of view. Jack, who speaks in a patois familiar to anyone who's had a little kid in the house, thinks Room is pretty much a paradise. Ma, creative and resourceful, is never out of sight, and she fills his days with games and exercise, with singing and reading and activities he doesn't always understand -- there's a Daily Scream, where the two of them lie underneath the skylight and make as much noise as they can. She feeds him, nurses him, and tells him that the only things that are real are the things he can see...that everything on television is made up, and that there's nothing at all beyond Room's walls. When Jack asks for a telephone -- "Bob the Builder has one," Ma replies, "Jack. He'd never give us a phone, or a window." Ma takes my thumbs and squeezes them. "We're like people in a book, and he won't let anybody else read it."

Eventually, in spite of Jack's reluctance, Ma conceives a plan to set them free. "Let's just stay," Jack protests, but Ma tells him, "It's getting too small."

There's a nail-biting section where Jack gets his first taste of the outside...and then Ma and Jack's world cracks open. The rest of the story deals with the way the two of them cope with their new circumstances -- as tragic as they are triumphant -- and are, in a sense, born again.

ROOM also comes with an amazing website. You can read an excerpt here, explore ROOM here, and read about the author here.

Emma Donoghue was kind enough to answer my questions. Our Q and A is below...and don't forget, if you order the book before tomorrow morning and send your receipt to jen@jenniferweiner.com, I'll do a drawing and send ten winners a signed copy of whichever one of my books they choose.

Where did this story come from? Have you always been interested in
the topic of abducted women and imprisoned children, or was there a specific case in the news that piqued your interest?

Although I've often written about real incidents from history, I've never looked to today's headlines for material: my contemporary work tends to be inspired more by my own experiences. And I'd never taken any particular interest in kidnapping-and-confinement cases before, in fact I'm not sure I'd ever more than glanced at such headlines before hearing about the Fritzl case in Austria in April 2008. I think because my children were four and one at the time, I was primed: a couple of days after first hearing about it, I was seized all at once with the idea of a novel narrated by a five-year-old who's never been outside.

I know you did a lot of research on the Internet to understand Jack and Ma's circumstances. Did you also read novels? Were you interested in exploring the abductor's point of view (I'm thinking about John Knowles' THE COLLECTOR), or was it a deliberate choice to stay away?

Absolutely, I had separate research files for factual and fictional works. But with the fictional ones, with the exception of Fowles's masterful THE COLLECTOR and V C Andrews' unforgettable FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC (both of which I read as a teenager), it wasn't books about imprisonment I was studying hard, so much as books in which a narrator (often but not always a child) conjures up their own little world, all the way from Daniel Defoe's ROBINSON CRUSOE to Mark Haddon's THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT TIME. I also watched films such as Truffaut's WILD CHILD (for that shock of encountering 'civilisation') and Cameron's TERMINATOR 2 (there's no fiercer momma on celluloid!) As for representing the abductor's point of view, I did deliberately keep Old Nick at arm's length in ROOM: just as Ma does, I was refusing to let him set the terms of the novel, refusing to make it a kidnap story rather than Jack's story of childhood. Also, so much gripping detective fiction has explored the psyche of the 'collector' type, I was more interested in focusing on the vibrant normality of his victims.

Many reviewers have marveled at Jack's language, which struck me as both incredibly specific and universal to the way kids see the world (I've got a seven-year-old and an almost-three-year-old, and I was so impressed with how well you captured kid-speak). Did you draw on your own children for influence? Did you read the book out loud as you were writing, to hear Jack's dialogue? Who are some of your favorite fictional children?

I always read, or at least mutter, my lines aloud as I'm editing them; this is why if ever I write in a public space such as a cafe I seem like a crazy person. As for inventing Jack's language, I drew above all on my son, who (serendipitously) was five as I was drafting the novel: I wrote down remarks he made, and charted his linguistic oddities, trying to pick out a few of the most flavorful five-year-old-isms (such as the logical past tense, 'I winned', 'I eated') rather than subject the adult reader to all of them! My son knew the gist of 'the story of Jack and the bad guy' and let me, at one point, press-gang him into getting rolled up in a dusty old rug to see if he could wriggle his way out.
My favorite fictional children are a large crowd, but I'm going to pick... Scout in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, the boy in THE GO-BETWEEN (I don't even remember his name but I'll never forget his feelings of confusion and embarrassment), and the hero of Roddy Doyle's PADDY CLARKE HA HA HA. And there's a wonderful novel out next spring by Stephen Kelman called PIGEON ENGLISH with a Ghanaian-Londoner child narrator you'll never forget.

What was the reaction when you told people this was what you were working on? Did you discuss ROOM while it was a work in progress? Did you get any interesting responses from friends and loved ones?

My partner said 'But how could a five-year-old... produce enough meaning?' I took that as a challenge. My UK and US agents, more cannily, said 'yes, yes, yes!' Even now, I always feel slightly awkward when summarising the set-up of ROOM for anyone for the first time; I start waving my hands and saying 'honestly, it's not sick or depressing...'

One of the things that's always struck me about true cases of women like Ma, who are kidnapped, raped, and bear their captors' babies, is how often there's a woman involved, whether she's aiding and abetting a man she's in love with or married to, or she's the clueless mother of the victim, buying her husband's stories about what happened to their daughter. Did you consider giving Old Nick a female accomplice?

You're absolutely right. I read up on all the sexual-kidnapping cases I could find, and they typically have additional complications such as a complicit woman, religious mania, sadistic torture, incest, child abuse, brainwashing, Stockholm syndrome, health-damage from bad ventilation, additional captives... While these are all very interesting, I really wanted to focus on the issue of freedom versus confinement, so I created the simplest and most bearable setup I could for Ma and Jack. I didn't want my readers to be flinching and shuddering on every page, I wanted them to enter into the magic kingdom Jack and Ma manage to create in the middle of the underworld.

Ma gets testy with her "puffy-hair" interviewer when she's asked about still breast-feeding Jack. I've been surprised to see how the nursing's become an issue for some of the critics, who seem just as discomfited as your fictional reporter. Did this surprise you?

I encountered that reaction at the first-draft stage when someone working for my UK agent told me she was bewildered and repelled by the breast-feeding. Aha, I thought, I must keep that in! Not only does it seem to me to make sense that Ma wouldn't wean Jack off something so primally comforting as long as they're locked in, but I like the way it makes readers remember, every now and then, that Ma and Jack are not quite like everybody else: they're from a different place.

Many reviewers, and readers, have been grappling lately with the question of what makes a book "big," and what kinds of stories qualify as "great American novels." ROOM can be read as a domestic novel, a story of a mother and son that takes place in a tiny and circumscribed world, but it's got a lot to say about some major issues -- about a mother's obligations, about the nature of fame and notoriety, about what parents owe their children, and what they owe themselves. Do you think ROOM is a big book? What do you look for in a great novel (American or otherwise?) Tell us about a few of your favorites, and what makes them great.

I do see ROOM as a big book, in that it's got high ambitions, and it's about the most universal human issues. I tried to write on on several levels, so that one reader could enjoy it as a page-turner about an imprisoned boy, and another could recognise it as a thought-experiment along the lines of Plato's cave. But that does mean that at least some reviews have stuck to considering it as a description of kidnapping, or perhaps seen it as a simple celebration of motherhood... when I'd prefer them to make that leap and understand Jack's story as not just Everychild's story but Everyperson's too. After all, each of us is locked inside one skull. But this is an age-old argument. A woman writer, a domestic setting, and a small number of characters, often cause a novel to get mis-filed as small, ever since Jane Austen.

As for the novels I consider great... oh dear, it's so hard to choose, and to explain their greatness! Let me stick to mentioning American ones on this occasion: Audrey Niffenegger's THE TIME-TRAVELLER'S WIFE, Dave Eggers' A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS, Michael Chabon's THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY, Jane Smiley's A THOUSAND ACRES, Neal Stephenson's CRYPTONOMICON.

My readers always want to know about my process, and trying to find time to write with young children at home. How do you do it? When, and where, do you work?

Like many writers, my books absolutely depend on the hard work of paid carers. ROOM, for instance, got drafted in six months of four long mornings a week, when our toddler daughter was being looked after by a woman in the little French town we were staying in. I've never managed to write while my kids are in the house, but I do get through my email somehow, often with my daughter writhing in my lap, and my son saying 'Can I see sharks on You Tube when you're done? Are you nearly done? Are you done?' I work in our front room, which we've turned into an office, and the minute the kids are off to daycare and school I run to my desk as if to a lover. I shouldn't boast about this, but my ability to absolutely ignore mess and dirty dishes really helps.

Another question I get a lot is about how old my kids will be before I let them read my books. Is this something you've thought about yet?

As the child of a writer (the literary critic Denis Donoghue), my experience is that kids often have no interest in picking up Mom or Dad's books! In the case of ROOM, I suppose it's possible that the child-narrator will make this one appealing to my son and daughter at some stage. I would let an eight-year-old read it, actually. It's got only the most brief and indirect references to rape in it; they'll hear far worse at school.

Finally, what are you reading now? What are you writing now? When can we look forward to seeing something new?

I'm reading Kate Atkinson's STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG (she and Elizabeth George being my favorite intelligent-detective-fictioneers) and Peter Carey's PARROT AND OLIVIER (because I want to have read the whole Booker shortlist by the time I go to the party). I've finished the research for my next novel - 1870s San Francisco lowlifes - and am mulling over those vital questions of point-of-view and tense. I don't know when it'll be finished, though, because I'm finding that success takes up a lot more of my time than I expected: an alarming proportion of my days is currently spent on phone interviews and having my picture taken, and in between I find I don't have much in my head!

2010-09-21T18:01:00.007-04:00

Back in August, when Jodi Picoult tweeted about the New York Times’ predilection for reviewing the fiction of white men, people wondered: is this true?

A few weeks after the #franzenfreude conversation began, the bloggers at Slate’s DoubleX.com ran the numbers…and found that they’re even worse than regular readers of the paper might have guessed.

Of all of the fiction the New York Times reviewed last year, only 38 percent was written by women.

Of all the novels that got the coveted double reviews, 72 percent were written by men.

When you consider popular fiction, the numbers get even worse.

According to blogger Scott Lemieux, in the time period Slate considered, eleven best-selling male authors, including Stephen King, John Grisham and Dan Brown, got the double whammy of the daily and the Sunday review. Only one woman writing what’s considered commercial fiction – NYC’s own Candace Bushnell -- was reviewed twice in the Times.

Where, wondered Ruth Franklin of The New Republic, is the outrage? Where’s the letter from the public editor? When is this going to change?

While it’s certainly fun to imagine the Times’ public editor harrumphing through the halls, banging his cane against the radiator and demanding justice, or to picture book review editor Sam Tanenhaus pawing through stacks of galleys, desperately searching for a debut rom-com by a lesbian of color to review tomorrow if not sooner, I strongly suspect that the answer’s probably never (I imagine this in my best David Spade voice – how’s never? Is never good for you?)

I say this because, the day after Franklin’s blog post ran, the Grey Lady, which had already published two reviews and a half-dozen news stories and columns about FREEDOM, gave us her answer.

It sent a reporter to cover Jonathan Franzen’s book party.

It was, by Liesl Schillinger’s account, a magical night, what with the glittering literati all gussied up for the coronation and having themselves a good old Manhattan laugh at the “detractors” who dared to “grouse” at their golden boy’s good fortune.

"After Time magazine put Mr. Franzen on its Aug. 23 cover, with the tagline “Great American Novelist,” the author Jennifer Weiner created the Twitter hashtag @Franzenfreude (sic), defining the word as “taking pain in the multiple and copious reviews being showered on Jonathan Franzen.”

Emerging from a conversation with Lorin Stein, the new editor of The Paris Review, Jonathan Galassi, the president of Farrar Straus Giroux, publisher of “Freedom,” rejected Ms. Weiner’s word, as defined. In German, he pointed out, “freude” means “joy.” “This,” he said extending his arm to indicate the revelers —“is Franzenfreude” — Joy in Franzen.

Had Schillinger asked me for a quote, I would have told her that “your made-up German compound noun is incorrect” is not a satisfactory response to “your paper does not cover women’s work fairly.”

I would have explained how hashtags work. Then I would have said that of course it’s “joy of Franzen.” When you’ve got the nation’s most important paper acting as your personal PR firm, what could possibly cause you pain? The schaden part – the pain of the writers whose work goes unreviewed and unreported-on, the pain of readers who watch in frustration as the Times devotes thousands of words to its boy of the hour while ignoring the books that they read and enjoy and talk about – that’s as silent, as invisible as it’s always been to the people who run the Times.

**
Of course, franzenfreude was never just about Jonathan Franzen. It’s about the way the Times and the media works, piling praise and attention on a certain kind of boy writing a certain kind of book while refusing to ever consider a woman for that Great American Novelist chair. Meghan O’Rourke in Slate and Katha Pollitt in The Nation both said this more smartly than I could. Even Franzen himself, in an interview with Terri Gross on Fresh Air (which, is turns out, has female trouble of its own), acknowledged that the discussion was never primarily about of him or his book, but a feminist critique of which novels get covered, and how often, and where.

I don’t have much to add, except that it’s been amusing to watch the big boy editors and some of the quote-unquote literary novelists circle the wagons, repeating shrilly, almost hysterically, that there’s no problem with their policies, insisting that, even in the face of hard data proving otherwise, there’s nothing to see here except a pair of inexplicably discontented lady writers piling on poor Jonathan.

They’ve called me and Jodi Picoult names (in English and French). They’ve accused us of being fake populists, mean-spirited hacks just jealous of Franzen’s chops, or leeches trying to latch on to his success and tear down the distinction between high art and pop art. Most of all, they've pretended that this was a Jen-and-Jodi versus Jonathan fight -- Franzen versus "Franzen detractors," -- a conversation that wasn't really about review policies or about anything, really, except bitterness and bad attitudes...that it was personal, because with women, it's always personal, right?

Of course, there’s nothing new here.

In 2003, Stephen King was awarded the National Book Foundation’s medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and got the same kind of blowback for daring to suggest that maybe critics should give popular fiction its due. It’s the same stuff, recycled, only this time the criticism comes coated with a lovely layer of sexism, a delightfully dismissive tone of, "Oh, you girls. What will you think you deserve next?"

It’s worth considering what King said back then, in accepting his prize: “…[G]iving an award like this to a guy like me suggests that in the future things don't have to be the way they've always been. Bridges can be built between the so-called popular fiction and the so-called literary fiction. The first gainers in such a widening of interest would be the readers, of course, which is us because writers are almost always readers and listeners first. You have been very good and patient listeners and I'm going to let you go soon but I'd like to say one more thing before I do.

Tokenism is not allowed. You can't sit back, give a self satisfied sigh and say, "Ah, that takes care of the troublesome pop lit question. In another twenty years or perhaps thirty, we'll give this award to another writer who sells enough books to make the best seller lists." It's not good enough. Nor do I have any patience with or use for those who make a point of pride in saying they've never read anything by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark or any other popular writer.

What do you think? You get social or academic brownie points for deliberately staying out of touch with your own culture? Never in life, as Capt. Lucky Jack Aubrey would say….There's a great deal of good stuff out there and not all of it is being done by writers whose work is regularly reviewed in the Sunday New York Times Book Review. I believe the time comes when you must be inclusive rather than exclusive.

That said, I accept this award on behalf of such disparate writers as Elmore Leonard, Peter Straub, Nora Lofts, Jack Ketchum, whose real name is Dallas Mayr, Jodi Picoult, Greg Iles, John Grisham, Dennis Lehane, Michael Connolly, Pete Hamill and a dozen more. I hope that the National Book Award judges, past, present and future, will read these writers and that the books will open their eyes to a whole new realm of American literature. You don't have to vote for them, just read them.”

***

Readers, and some writers (most eloquently Tess Gerritsen), ask: why does the Times matter any more? Writers like you and Jodi Picoult have managed to find an audience without the paper’s approval. Who cares what they say, or don’t say, about you?

On the one hand, yes. It’s perfectly possible to have a wonderful career, devoted readers, a very happy life (and a very happy publisher) without the Times ever taking notice.

On the other hand, we’re talking about the paper of record, a paper that’s wonderfully inclusive in its coverage of the creative arts, a paper that reviews opera and orchestras and Justin Bieber concerts and “Paul Blart: Mall Cop," a paper that takes as its mission to reflect the culture, not just instruct on what it thinks the culture should be, but somehow gets the icks when it comes to ladybooks.

If all you read was the Times, you’d be excused for thinking that FREEDOM was the only book published in the past few weeks. That wasn’t the case. On September 7, Terry McMillan published GETTING TO HAPPY, the sequel to her 1992 novel WAITING TO EXHALE.

McMillan’s tale of four upper-middle-class black women and their search for love was a game-changer. It became a huge word-of-mouth bestseller and eventually, a smash movie. Its success it opened doors for other authors by showing publishers that there was an enormous audience eager for stories about minorities who weren’t living in poverty, working as domestics, or coping with rape, abuse or illiteracy.

HAPPY's publication was big news in the mainstream press. Time and Entertainment Weekly ran profiles and Q and A’s. The Washington Post published a day-of-publication review, "Good Morning America" did an interview.

And the Times? Said nothing. The paper published not one review, not one news story, not one profile. Nothing. HAPPY debuted at number four on the Times’ bestseller list, which finally landed McMillan her first mention – a single paragraph in the book review’s chatty TBR column, which mentioned the author’s “bruising and very public” divorce, and concluded with a recycled quote from the Raleigh News & Observer.

I suppose the paper could say that Tanenhaus made on NPR: “we cover literature,” and, presumably, GETTING TO HAPPY doesn’t qualify. It could say that McMillan’s readers had plenty of other places to get information about the book….but neither of those arguments kept the Times from lavishing attention on Steig Larsson’s bestselling Millennium trilogy.

The message: McMillan's book doesn’t really matter. Her readers aren’t worth talking to.

And when the paper of record tells its readers, through silence and omission, that some stories, some writers, some readers matter more than others and some stories, some writers, some readers, don’t matter at all, then yes, I’ve got a problem with that.

Maybe it’s because I used to be a newspaper reporter, and continue to cling to the belief that newspapers matter. Maybe it’s because I’ve got daughters, and if either of them is lucky or cursed enough to be a writer, I’d like to think that their books won't have to clear the hurdles of built-in assumptions about the value of women's work.

Or maybe it’s the way gay couples felt when the Times started including their photographs and wedding announcement in the Sunday Styles section. Yes, their unions were legitimate and binding even without the paper’s coverage, and yes, their friends and loved ones always knew the truth about their commitment, but it’s nice to be seen as part of the official record, to have no less an entity than the New York Times say, “You know what? You’re part of the story. You belong here, too.”

**

So what happens now? Given the inequities, and the Times’ reluctance to address them, is there anything individual readers and writers can do?

I’ve been thinking about how there has to be a way to use whatever influence I’ve got, or have gained during this tempest, to help get the word out about great books that are never going to inspire a Franzen-level frenzy.

Tomorrow I'll be posting a Q and A with Emma Donoghue, author of the brilliant and much-celebrated ROOM, which has earned a ton of praise (including the double-review from the Times) and deserves every accolade it's gotten. She'll talk about her influences (FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC, anyone?), her research, the challenges of writing with small children and what makes ROOM a big book.

If you buy ROOM between now and Saturday morning and send your receipt to jen@jenniferweiner.com, I'll pick ten winners to get a signed copy of whichever one of my books they like.

Finally, come back next week for an announcement about what I'll be doing going forward to make try to keep the spotlight on the books the Times ignores.

I think this could be the start of a great conversation. I hope you'll join me.

2010-08-31T12:41:00.005-04:00

I can remember – I bet lots of fans can – the day I discovered Jenny Crusie.

I was a single girl at the time, a working reporter and wannabe novelist with a manuscript languishing under my bed. One night, I was browsing in the bookstore, when a candy-colored cover caught my eye, along with the title TELL ME LIES.

I think it took me about a page and a half of reading about Maddie Faraday’s perfect life fall apart (she finds strange panties underneath her husband’s driver’s seat, and things go downhill from there) before deciding that this was a book for me. I added it to my stack and brought it back to my single-girl lair in Philadelphia.

Let me tell you: that book was Hot with a capital H. It was steamy. It was sexy. It was funny! It was feminist. It was, in a word, wonderful…but, beyond just keeping me entertained and laughing, that book made me believe that there might be a place in the world for the kind of story I’d started thinking about telling.

If a smart cookie like Jenny Crusie could write brilliantly entertaining books starring sassy, spunky heroines who lived out their girl-power beliefs instead of being cardboard cutouts upon which their creator could scribble her views, maybe there was a place in the world for the characters whose voices had starting filling my head.

Fast-forward to 2001, I was a newbie author, on book tour with the story that had become GOOD IN BED. The tour had been predictably disheartening. There were bookstore visits where nobody showed up, and bookstore visits where the audience consisted of two whey-faced, terrified-looking women who trembled their way to the podium and whispered, “Your mother said she’d kill us if we didn’t come, so can you please tell her we were here?” I lost my luggage, missed deadlines on the columns I was still trying to write for my day job, heard my name mispronounced more times and more ways than I could count. Once, I showed up to a bookstore to sign stock, and was met with blank looks and a twenty-minute wait, after which the too-cool-for-school clerk heaved a weary sigh and handed me a stack of copies of WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE (which, ironically, I could have used at that point, but felt reluctant to sign). I was homesick and road-weary…and I was terrified of teaming up with an established author of Jenny Crusie’s caliber.

What if she’s awful? (some authors are). What if she doesn’t want to be bothered with a first-time writer nobody’s heard of (a completely understandable response?) What if…what if…?

Well. Jenny was lovely. Beyond lovely. She was generous, welcoming, full of encouragement and great advice. She showed me how to laugh at the indignities of book tour, told me stories about her own life as a writing and became, for that day, my new BFF (I think she had to actually pry my nails out of her flesh when it was time for us to go).

At one point during the day, we did a radio interview together. The host asked us each to describe our books, then said something to the effect of, “Isn’t it strange to be sitting down with your competition?”

Jenny and I said almost the exact same thing at the exact same time: we aren’t each other’s competition. Women writers are never each other’s competition. If someone loves my books, she’ll probably love Jenny’s, and vice versa…and probably each of us would happily tell you about ten other women whose work we love.

Along those lines, I am so excited to be spreading the word about Jenny’s first solo effort in six years, the brilliant, warm, funny, completely engrossing MAYBE THIS TIME.

MAYBE THIS TIME is classic Crusie. There’s the heroine, Andromeda “Andie” Miller, a strong-willed, singular, brainy babe who lives and breathes on the page. There’s North, her guy not taken, a hot, handsome attorney who was briefly her husband, and who never stopped loving her. When North convinces Andie to move out to the middle of nowhere, Ohio, and care for his orphaned niece and nephew, Andie quickly realizes that there’s strange doings in Archer House.

The housekeeper, with her aggressive attitude and persistent smell of peppermint schnapps, is an underminer. The little boy might be a pyromaniac. Andie’s engaged to a great guy who’s not the right guy for her, and her wifty New-Age mom keeps trying to talk tarot . Meanwhile, she’s tormented by strange, arousing dreams about her ex-husband of ten years. And that’s even before she starts seeing ghosts…

MAYBE THIS TIME has a colorful cast of supporting characters (just wait until you meet Isolde Hammersmith, potty-mouthed medium, and Kelly O’Keefe, a TV reporter who’s too ambitious, and too toothy, for her own good ). There’s two prickly, heartsore little kids, and a deceased young woman who might not be as dead as she should be.

It’s a story about love and obligation; about how your family isn’t just who you birth, but what you build. It’s about the way the past tugs at us and ties us down, and how passion and courage can set us free. There is, of course, a species of happy endings, but Jenny Crusie’s happy endings are never trite or predictable. Instead, they feel as real as the women who populate her books.

And now, without further ado, Jennifer Crusie on MAYBE THIS TIME!

* * * * *

Stephen King once wrote that every horror writer is obligated to write his or her own version of the haunted-house story (or haunted apartment building, in Rosemary’s Baby, or haunted hotel, in The Shining). But you’re more known for your hilarious romances than the supernatural. What made you decide to write a ghost story?

It was Henry James’s fault. I loved The Turn of the Screw, taught it over and over again, but I always wanted to give his governess a name and a second chance. So in the back of my mind, there was this nagging idea that I should do my version of the story, not because James’s version isn’t wonderful, but because I wanted a crack at it. I was fixated on the governess, but you get the ghosts as a package deal so about a quarter of the way through, I thought, Oh, damn, now I have to write ghosts, and went for it.

Andie struck me as a classic Crusie heroine – smart, hard-headed, good-hearted, outwardly sensible with the secret, yearning heart of a romantic inside. Is she the kind of character you would have written ten years ago? How is she different than Maddie in TELL ME LIES or Sophie in WELCOME TO TEMPTATION? How is she the same?

I think all my heroines share the same value system, but after that, they all get to where they’re going for different reasons. Maddie wanted to preserve her way of life, Sophie wanted to avoid rejection, Andie wants to run away every time she gets close to emotional involvement. None of them says, “Oh, goody, change, just what I wanted,” none of them wants the conflict or goes into willingly. What makes them go into battle is a threat to somebody they love which, I have just realized typing this, is a child or children in all three cases. Huh. I am so not a kid-writer. But Maddie’s going to protect her daughter, Sophie goes to the wall for her sister Amy (who, let’s face it, is emotionally about twelve), and Andie can’t walk away from Carter and Alice. That’s pretty much a staple in Gothics, the isolated child who needs protected, so it’s no surprise it showed up in Maybe This Time, but I am surprised about the others. Kids. Who knew?

MAYBE THIS TIME is your first solo outing in six years. I’m curious as to how you wound up co-writing books, and what made you decide to write by yourself again.

Menopause. It knocked out that part of my brain that told stories, or at least the part that let me hear the voices talking in my head. They just weren’t THERE any more, and that really threw me for a loop. It’s not like I make this stuff up. Then I was teaching at the Maui Writers Conference and seriously considering leaping into the Pacific, when Bob Mayer handed me a glass of white wine and said, “We should collaborate.” I thought, He’s written thirty books, he can probably get me to the end of one, and I said, “You bet.” The big surprise was that I loved collaborating and I want to do more. It pushes me in different directions and I learn so much. But after five years, I wanted a book of my own again, and the my-version-of-The-Turn-of-the-Screw idea was still at the back of my mind, and then one day I could hear Andie’s voice in my head, and I wrote the first scene as a parallel to the governess’s scene with the guardian, and I was off again. I have six solo books I want to do, but there are also two more collaborations I want to do. They’re just different options at the buffet that is fiction.

Readers always want to hear the story of how I got started. Tell us how you wrote, and published, your first book.

I got divorced. We should do a survey of how many romance writers got started writing because their own love lives pancaked. I started to keep a journal where I wrote down a lot of bitter, vile things, and that wasn’t very satisfying, so I tried to make it more interesting and it began to turn into a murder mystery—I spent a long time on the husband’s body rotting in a closed car in the dead of August—and then I added another a love interest—at that point, it was all fiction—and then real life intervened because I had this little girl to raise on my own, so I put it aside because I was never going to write a book, who was I kidding? Two years later, I was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer and given six months to live and among the other things, I thought, “And I’ll never write a book.” It wasn’t that I’d had a huge yearning to write a book, it was that now I wasn’t ever going to. The cancer worked out all right, and then a friend wanted to go to the Antioch Writer’s Workshop and talked me into it because she wanted company. Sue Grafton was the headliner, and she looked at my work and said, “Write a romance, they’re easier.” I thought, I don’t even read romance, and wandered off again because I was a single mother in grad school working two jobs and the whole writer thing was never going to happen anyway. But when I was working on my PhD. dissertation, I started reading romance novels as research (the thesis topic was the impact of gender on storytelling) and thought, “I want to write this. I LIKE this.” So I entered a Harlequin novella contest and won (there were 12 winners so it wasn’t that great an accomplishment) and wrote nine romances for HQ and Bantam, and then one day an editor from New York said, “I’d like to publish you in single title,” and I said, “Wait a minute,” and found a fabulous agent and showed her the pieces of my divorce book and she said, “That one,” and after many rejections and revisions, we sold it to Jennifer Enderlin. So when somebody says, “How long does it take you to write a book?” I say, “Tell Me Lies took seventeen years.”

I love your stories about your editor, Jennifer Enderlin – I’ve never met her, but I feel like I know her. Can you tell us a little more about the two of you? How did you meet? How long have you been working together?

Jen Enderlin is a goddess. We met because my agent, Meg Ruley, said, “You know who’d work well with you? Jennifer Enderlin.” I think that’s an aspect of agenting that’s overlooked, that ability to matchmake editor and writer. We’d sent Tell Me Lies out (it was titled Frog Point Wallow then) to nine editors and seven turned it down. The other two offers were really low, but one was from Jen at St. Martin’s. We turned both offers down, but I read all the rejections and went back and looked at the book again and did a major revision. While I was doing that, Jen wrote a note to Meg—handwritten note—that said, “I can’t stop thinking about Jennifer Crusie. Will I ever get the chance to work with her?” Meg showed me the note and I said, “Her. I want to work with an editor who would do that.” We sent her the rewritten book as a pre-empt and she met the price, which was huge for me at the time, and I began to work with her—first change: the title, thank God—and I was captivated by how smart she was. She’s a good reader, she intuitively knows where things aren’t working, but she never says, “Put a dog in here.” She says, “This part drags, I’m not emotionally involved here, I don’t like it when she does this, this scene goes too far and squicks me out.” And then we talk about it. I tell her why I made the moves in the book that I did, she tells me why she felt the way that she did, the discussion opens up the story for me in new ways, and we work together to get what the book needs. It’s such a great partnership. We’ve been working together for fourteen years, but that trust and understanding have been there from the beginning. It makes a huge difference that I’m writing with somebody I know will always be honest with me even when the feedback is discouraging, somebody who works so hard to make our books together better. And when the book is done, she sells the hell out of it; she’s a genius at positioning, marketing, the whole publishing game. Jen Enderlin really is the perfect editor.

Do you have a favorite character in MAYBE THIS TIME? A favorite scene? What was the hardest part of the book to write? Are there any stories behind the story – an unexpected inspiration; a line of dialogue you actually said?

The hardest part was the ghosts. I didn’t want to write a ghost story, but there they were and since I’m firmly in the of-course-the-ghosts-were-real school of Turn of the Screw critics, I had to have ghosts. It wasn’t until I stopped thinking of them as things that went bump in the bedrooms and started thinking of them as people that I finally found my way in. I did a lot of ghost research, but at the end of the day, ghosts are just people who can’t let go. I can sympathize with that; you should see all the stuff in my garage. But my favorite character turned out to be Alice, the little girl. I am so not a kid writer; I’m not even a kid person. I was a public school teacher for fifteen years, I know what evil lurks in those little hearts. But about the time I started to write this, my best friend moved in with me and brought her two little girls, and I remembered why I’d been a teacher: kids are fascinating, little ids running around, staking their claim to the future. I love Alice because nothing ever defeats her; she’s eight years old, she’s lost everybody she’s ever loved, she’s eating a lot of cold cereal in a haunted house, and she’s fighting back with everything she has. She isn’t a pleasant child, but she’s a heroine.

Alice and Carter, the children are remarkable – instead of being two-dimensional cuties, or baddies, there to move the plot along or provide comic relief, they are fully realized, prickly and in pain. How did you get them so right? Are there children in literature you used as models, or look to as great examples of grown-ups writing completely believable kids?

When my best friend showed up on my doorstep with Sweetness and Light, a deeply thoughtful, introspective ten-year-old and a red-rubber-ball extroverted eight-year-old, Alice was born. Sweetness writes and illustrates her own books in the quiet of her bedroom; Light never has an unexpressed thought or a moment when she’s not moving. The two of them together gave me everything I needed for Alice. Carter was harder because boys tend to be even less verbal than Sweetness, but I remembered my brother at that age, quiet and serious and just trying to do what was right without ever talking about it, and I built a lot of Carter on him and drew on Sweetness, too, for the love of comic books, the constant concern about the people he loves. I think it made a huge difference that Sweetness and Light aren’t my kids because I could observe them so clearly. Light set the microwave on fire the other day--she was trying to make soup and put a metal can in there instead of one of the microwavable plastic ones—and her exasperation with us all was so Alice that I almost laughed. Okay, I did laugh. Alice would have had that same the-microwave-betrayed-me look of outrage.

You’re famous for your spicy sex scenes. How do you do it? Whenever I write about sex I literally have to squeeze my eyes shut and imagine a universe in which my mother or my siblings will never ever ever read a copy of my book, and that the books will have ceased to exist by the time my daughters are old enough to read them. Are you similarly inhibited?

Oh, god, sex scenes. I’m writing a first person book right now and I just want to kill myself every time I get to one. It does help that my mother doesn’t read my books. She says she does, but when I was going to give a speech in my home town, and one of the people in the host organization objected because there was oral sex in my books, and my mother found out (my mother who swears she reads every word and loves them all) and said, “You have oral sex in your books?” So yeah, not too worried about my mother reading them. Back to sex scenes. The only way to write them is to remember that they’re like every other scene in the book. There’s a protagonist and an antagonist and they’re in conflict over something and at the end of the scene, the struggle has changed them both and one of them has won. If everything goes beautifully and there’s no conflict, you just write “And then they had great sex,” and move on to the next scene. But the first time people have sex, it changes them and the relationship and they leave that scene different because of the emotional impact of all that risk and nakedness. So you write the characters, not the stereo instructions. And I still would rather write almost anything else. I have noticed that, as I get older, I’m writing more about food than sex. I sent Jen the first half of my current book and it has a sex scene in it, but the thing she mentioned was my protagonist’s lunch: “That was the best description of a cheeseburger I have ever. Read. In. My. Life.” I love my editor.

Tell me a little about your process. Are you an outliner or a seat-of-your-pantser? Do you write in the mornings or the afternoons? Longhand or computer? Do you keep a notebook by your bed to scribble down inspiration when it strikes? How has your process changed as your life has progressed? Any words of encouragement for writers trying to balance novels with toddlers and young children? (It does get easier, right?)

I don’t know how you write with little kids, I really don’t. My daughter has a two-year-old and a one-month old and works full time from home; she’s doing a great job but I know she’s holding on by her fingernails. I started writing when she was sixteen when she could get her own juice and socks, so I have no words of advice at all, just a lot of sympathy and admiration. As for my process, ha. Twenty years doing this and I’m still lurching around. I write all night because I like the night, everything is quieter then. I think I was a vampire in a previous life. A dour vampire, no sparkling. A vampire who sat at the back of the room and made smart remarks. Where was I? Right, my process. It’s completely random and intuitive. A idea wanders in, and one of my neurons looks at it and says, “Maybe if we turned it upside down,” and then the frontal lobe says, “I have other stuff in the attic that might work with that,” and then some music comes on the radio and that gets sucked in, and I’m writing a story about the vampire in the back of the room only by tomorrow it’ll be a witch because vampires are so yesterday and then a dog will show up. I’m pathetic. The real left-brain work goes on in the revision. I revise forever. Well, I have to, otherwise I’d have a vampire, a witch, and a dog making smart remarks at the back of the room and never getting anywhere.

Have you been following the controversy over the praise and attention lavished on Jonathan Franzen for his new novel, FREEDOM? Are you planning on reading the book? Do you think there’s a difference between the way women’s stories and men’s stories are perceived, and reviewed? Do you think things are getting better?

I’ve had my knife out for Franzen ever since he dissed Oprah viewers as Not His Kind, so no, I won’t be reading his book since he made it very clear he didn’t want me (“Hi, I’m from the Midwest, I’m female, and I wear a lot of knits!”). I haven’t read the reviews, but didn’t somebody call it the best book of the twenty-first century? Making the next ninety years irrelevant? That’s fanboy stuff—“BEST BOOK EVAH!”—so I’m not paying much attention, but it appears to be part and parcel of the whole Literary Group Think, something I got more than my share of doing an MFA in fiction. One of my profs said, “Jenny, you write so well. Have you ever thought about writing literature?” I said, “No,” because it was easier than explaining that literary fiction is just another genre, not God’s Library. The people who say, “I write for the canon” have forgotten or never knew that the canon doesn’t read. People read. Fiction is not beautiful writing although that’s wonderful; fiction is storytelling. It’s putting narrative on the page that moves and transforms people, and because there are many, many different kinds of people in the world, there are many, many different kinds of fiction. There’s nothing wrong with The Literary Group—they know what they like when they read it—until they start insisting that what they like is what everybody should like, and refusing to teach anything but literary fiction in creative writing programs and refusing to review anything but their definition of literary fiction in their publications. That’s a mistake: I think they’ve marginalized themselves and are becoming more and more irrelevant. Jon Stewart sells more books than a rave review in the NYT. Nora Roberts and Stephen King reach more people than Franzen ever will. There’s the real world full of a multitude of readers with a multiplicity of reading tastes, and it’s thriving and alive and interacting on the net, changing and growing and exciting because of its fluidity and passion, and then there’s the New York Times Book Review which is born ceaselessly back into the past by the literary version of the Tea Party who keep moaning that they want their America back, oblivious to the fact that their exclusive white, male America died with Gatsby. I’m much happier being part of the “All right then, I’ll go to hell” bunch. That’s where the party is.

Finally, what’s up next?

Liz Danger. I was working on a fun, secret project with a pal and my character was a mystery writer, so I mocked up her sixteen book backlist complete with covers and blurbs: the Liz Danger Mysteries. My daughter who is also my business partner said, “You have to write the Liz Danger mysteries,” and I said, “Uh huh,” and went back to writing Andie and the ghosts. But the thought stayed with me, and I’d never written a first person novel, and I was intrigued by the idea of a short (four-book) mystery series in which each book was a complete mystery but the four books together made a complete romance novel. And then the voices started and I talked Jen into it (Jen suffers a lot, working with me) and I’m finishing up the first book now. It’s called Lavender’s Blue, to be followed by Rest in Pink, Peaches and Screams, and Yellow Brick Roadkill. They were supposed to be light, frothy romps, but they took a turn for depth and now I don’t know what they are. Crusies, I guess. After that, I want to do two novels set in the same world at the same time that intersect, so that scenes show up in both books, but they read differently because the point of view character is different. One is called Haunting Alice and it’s about Alice at thirty, and the other is called Stealing Nadine, which is about a teenager from Faking It at thirty. And two friends and I are working on a collaboration called Fairy Tale Lies, about what happens after the Happily Ever After. Anne Stuart is writing Cinderella, Lucy March is writing Rapunzel, and I’m taking Red Riding Hood. I think there’s a lot of unexplored rage in Red Riding Hood and I want to explore it. Plus, wolves. Wolves are always good. So nothing but good times ahead.

* * * * *

Regular readers, you know the drill. Pick up a copy of Jennifer Crusie's MAYBE THIS TIME today. Send your receipt to jen@jenniferweiner.com. Twenty lucky winners, drawn randomly out of a hat, will get their choice of any one of my books, signed however you want it.

Good luck, and happy reading!

2010-08-29T13:16:00.001-04:00

The epic battle between the scribbling women and Emperor Franzen has been immortalized in comic-book form! Check it out here.

2010-08-28T12:40:00.003-04:00

I came up from the beach to find my mother glaring at me. In the same tone she uses to ask if I’ve left my flatiron plugged in and turned on again, she inquired, “Did you start a movement?”

“Um…”

She waved her Times at me accusingly “It says right here you started a movement. And the New York Times doesn’t lie.”

Well! I thought that what I started was a hashtag on Twitter, to take bemused note of the way the literary establishment overcovers its darling du jour.

I know I did an interview with Jason Pinter over on the Huffington Post. Now, it seems, #franzenfreude has become a movement, to which the Times has already devoted a pair of stories. Which means I’ve been mentioned twice in the Times! Legitimacy at last!

Ahem. Of course, the irony here is that stories about overcoverage still count as coverage. Four days before FREEDOM’s even available and the Times has already devoted two reviews, two news stories and two TBR columns to the opus.

That’s six stories four days before the book goes on sale…and everyone’s weighing in on whether it’s too much or not enough or if it matters at all, and who’s got a right to say so.

There was the Tweeter who sneered that my “desperate tweets” were the only way I’d ever be mentioned in the same sentences as an author of Franzen’s caliber (psst…it’s totally working!)

There was the affronted literary lady who says that if critics cover popular writers – you know, the ones who “churn out” books like butter and sell them in spots like Target -- then the less predictable, more refined authors won’t sell any of their books.

But wait – Chauncey Mabe of the Sun-Sentinel says book reviews aren’t even supposed to sell books! Literary fiction has never sold – yet book reviews must cover literary fiction as opposed to commercial fiction because it’s more important – "it just is.” (The fact that Mabe made his case on the Facebook page of Laura Lippman – a commecial writer – is either an act of astonishing bravery or of breathtaking cluelessness. I bet you can guess which way I’d vote).

I don’t want to talk about #franzenfreude forever – Jenny Crusie’s got a new book out next week, and I'm dying to talk about that -- but there are a few points I hope won’t get lost in the shuffle.

1. This isn’t about Franzen, or FREEDOM. I haven’t read the book, so I've got nothing to say about it (yet), and as for the author, he’s managed to keep his mouth shut – so far – about whether he’s conflicted, as he was in ’01, about ending up with a vast, middlebrow and female readership, so at present, I got no quarrel with him or with his book. My quarrel is with the coverage. As I said on Twitter, if was Jonathan Safran Foer on the cover of Time, I’d have gone with #schadensafranfoer. I work with what they give me

2. This isn’t just about the Times not covering my books (although, of course, that was the quote of mine today’s Times cherry-picked from the Huffington Post – because it’s so much easier to dismiss two disgruntled bestselling chicks whining than it is to look at your institutional practices and admit that maybe there’s something rotten in Denmark).

It’s about the way the Times overcovers its boy of the moment, denigrates or ignores entire genres, and their readers, and the way these actions taint the coverage women writers manage to receive.

Yesterday, I did an interview with NPR (it should air on “All Things Consider” on Monday) in which the question came up – doesn’t the Times cover some literary women?

Indeed, there are women who do manage to make it past the gatekeepers and get the double review and the profile. However, as Tina Jordan points out over on Entertainment Weekly, a literary lady's profile is likely to end up in the girly ghetto of the Style section, where much will be made of her looks or her last name…and, no matter how much the Times might praise a Maile Meloy or a Lorrie Moore, that Great American Novelist slot still seems to be exclusively reserved for men.

Why is it that a lady’s memoir of being formerly hot will only make the Style pages, where a man’s memoir of being formerly high will be featured in Style, and reviewed twice? Why am I reading about Mona Simpson’s sleeveless dress and strawberry-blonde hair instead of her writing? Why is it that, ultimately, a woman’s very good novel about a family is seen as a very good novel about a family (probably her family), while a man's very good novel is a Great American Novel?

3. This isn’t about commercial writers trying to snatch bread out of the mouths of some deserving literary writer’s children. This is about asking the Times to play fair. If the paper covers the big-boy heavy hitters – if Stephen King and John Grisham can count on a review – than Jodi Picoult and Nora Roberts should be treated the same way. If the paper’s going to do the occasional round-up of science fiction, it wouldn’t kill them to do the occasional round-up of romance.

Instead of asking which books and which authors deserve the Times' coverage, maybe we should think about what kind of book review section readers deserve.

There are critics who seem to feel that reviews are there to cover literature and literature only, no matter how few people read the books they cover. There are writers who think that because commercial books find their audience without the benefit of being reviewed, it's okay for big papers to ignore those books.

So what should a book review do? Should it be a mirror, reflecting back popular tastes? Is it a stern uncle waving a scolding finger, dragging us away from Harry Potter by the ear and insisting that we read Philip Roth instead, or a nanny telling us we have to eat our spinach before we're allowed dessert? Is it possible to be some combination?

I think book reviews are there to start a lively conversation, to get readers excited about books, to get the right book into the right reader’s hands (or to steer readers away from something they wouldn’t like).

A great book review section should have something for every reader, whether it’s the fourteen-year-old who stood in line for MOCKINGJAY, the Oprah-watching housewife who can’t wait to get her hands on FREEDOM, the guy (yes, they’re out there) who loved Jodi Picoult’s THE TENTH CIRCLE, and the guy who picked up Steig Larsson after not reading a novel since college and needs to know where to go next.

A great book review section should have something for the new mom who loves Elizabeth Berg and Susan Isaacs and Sophie Kinsella, and my mom, who reads J.M. Coetzee and Amos Oz and David Ebershoff. It should speak to my friend who loves Margot Livesy and my friend who reads Chelsea Handler.

Disdaining romance while reviewing mysteries and thrillers; speaking about quote-unquote chick lit from a position of monumental ignorance while heaping praise on men who write about relationships and romance; maintaining the sexist double standard that puts Mary Gaitskill and Caitlin Macy in the Style section and puts Charles Bock or Jonathan Safran Foer in the magazine…all of these are symptoms of a disease that’s rotting the relationship between readers and reviewers.

Better book review policies would mean more recognition and, ultimately, more readers for all kinds of writers – highbrow, commercial, young adult, thrillers, mysteries, romance.

I hope that, as we approach Freedom drop-day, critics and writers and readers can move the discussion toward what we talk about when we talk about books…and how we can all improve that conversation.

2010-08-26T08:21:00.001-04:00

Here's the Huffington Post interview with me and Jodi Picoult about gender, genre, and what the Times won't cover. Enjoy! And I hope everyone finds something great to read this weekend. I'm flying to LA, locked and loaded with Laura Lippman's latest, I'D KNOW YOU ANYWHERE, and MOCKINGJAY, the third book in The Hunger Games trilogy, which I'm holding off on until we're airborn.

2010-08-25T14:02:00.006-04:00

I’m back!

I survived my book tour. I met a lot of wonderful readers, ate a lot of delicious cupcakes, have been thrilled with the way FLY AWAY HOME’s been received in the world (and BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, too, which has been having a wonderful run in paperback this summer). Thanks so much to everyone who bought a book, came to a reading, sent me a funny tweet or Facebook message and has made me feel like It’s All Worth Something.

Meanwhile! Maybe you’ve heard that Jonathan Franzen has a new book out?

Franzen, you’ll recall, is the author of the 2001 critically beloved blockbuster THE CORRECTIONS. Around my house, he’s perhaps even better known for being the Man Who Turned Down Oprah, and pissed off a great many other writers with his public hand-wringing over what her imprimatur and down-market, daytime-TV watching (largely female) audience would mean for his reputation.

Well, he’s back! On the cover of Time! In the pages of Vogue! Reviewed, glowingly, not once but twice in the New York Times! Which has also devoted a news story and an inside-the-list column to FREEDOM, even though it won’t come out ‘til next week!

Jodi Picoult, number-one bestseller of quote-unquote commercial fiction (full disclosure: she and I attended the same college and are published by the same house), has a problem with that. Last week, she tweeted about all of the attention the Times gives to its white male literary darlings, at the expense of the hundreds of thousands of other writers – some of them literary, some of them quote-unquote genre writers – who get no love at all.

If you know me, you know that I’ve long taken issue with who the Times chooses to endorse and how its coverage unfolds and why, for example, formerly hot women who write memoirs get consigned to the Style section where totally un-hot men who write about their addictions get respectful full-length reviews.

I’ve been tweeting up a storm under the hashtag #franzenfreude, and have, it seems, stirred up a bit of a tempest. What can I say? “Bachelor Pad” is boring, my other programs don’t start for another few weeks, and I can’t talk about my work-in-progress or any of the other exciting developments going on. So I’ve turned a bemused (but not too bitter) eye toward the Franzen frenzy, which has quickly become the hash-tag heard ‘round the reading world.

The Guardian’s blogged about the contretemps. So has Laura Lippman, weighing in with some smart things to say about which writers get covered, and how.

NPR got in on the story. So did The Forward.

Of course, not everyone was pleased at a potential disruption of the status quo, or uppity bestselling lady writers even noticing that the status quo could maybe use some disrupting.

Lorin Stein, of Sidwell Friends, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Farrar Straus Giroux and The Paris Review, took to The Atlantic's blog to accuse Jodi Picoult and I of "false populism." (Want to buy a made-to-measure shirt to wear the next time YOU accuse someone of false populism? Mr. Stein told New York Magazine that he gets his here).

The New York Times crib sheet made note of the "Franzenfreude movement" (sic) and suggested that interested parties could meet "in front of Jennifer's TV during Oprah." Because, you know, silly ladies, with their Oprah. Except the New York Times does not know where I live! So suck it, New York Times!

Meanwhile, the Sun-Sentinel’s Chauncey Mabe said we're suffering from Jodi and I of ressentiment, which I believe is French for PMS. The Washington Post’s Ron Charles’ review of FREEDOM led off with an uncredited rewording of one of my tweets. Which means that I am now being taken seriously by a big-deal big-city book critic! Or not.

It’s all very exciting…and a little frustrating. Ten years into my publishing career, ten years of pointing out the same problems, and very little has changed. Boy books -- spy novels, thrillers, satire, sci-fi -- write one of those, and maybe you'll at least get mentioned in a Sunday round-up in the Times. Write chick-lit/beach-books/insert-your-own-perjorative, and it's off to the back of the bus, with nothing. Except, of course, your big, giant check (one of Mr. Mabe's readers suggested that Jodi and I should go off and cry into our mink hankies, and I know I should have been offended, but instead I thought, 'Does someone really make those?')

Anyhow. FREEDOM drops next Tuesday. Jason Pinter interviewed me for a piece on Franzen, gender and genre, and I’ll post our entire Q and A tomorrow, including some Super Sad Bookscan statistics about what the Times' love and affection will actually do for the sales of a much-hyped literary novel, and why it actually could help literary writers if critics would actually take quote-unquote beach books a little more seriously.

Stay tuned. And do come join the fun on Twitter, where I am, as ever, right here.

2010-07-22T08:34:00.004-04:00

Greetings from Boston, where the Cupcakes Across America has paused, briefly, for regrouping, laundry, and quality time with my children, the big girl and whatsherface.

Today's big news: if you like my books, and you like free things, you can download the Jennifer Weiner iPhone App for free today (Thursday, July 22) in the App Store. It's got tour dates, reading guides, photos from events, and all kinds of exciting links and videos.

I've had so much fun this last week on tour, meeting you guys, sampling cupcakes, enduring three-hour delays in the Dallas airport (okay, that part wasn't fun), and belatedly watching "The Bachelorette" (oh, Frank! How could you?)

A few highlights: the Fort Lauderdale reading, where my Nanna's friend demanded -- demanded! -- to know how the story I'm writing on Redbook ends. "You really want to know?" I asked. "Of course I do," she said serenely. "That way, I won't have to pay five dollars for the magazine."

The Atlanta reading, which was hilarious, and where I met a few former employees of the now-defunct Chapter 11 bookstore chain, which hosted my first-ever signing for GOOD IN BED, which was attended by precisely one person.

I handed out tiaras in Dallas to some lovely ladies who drove six hours to see me, and told the truth about what I'd be doing with my life if I wasn't a writer...and in Boston, I described my top-secret, never-be-made dream film project.

You can read blogger reports on my readings from Dallas, by What Women Writer, from Miami, by blogger Family of One, from Chick Lit Central, and Year of the Bookwormz and The Long Ride Home in DC and author Trish Ryan (hi, Trish!) in Boston.

Here's a great story from the Miami Herald about Susan Isaacs, one of my favorite writers -- I'm quoted!

An interview with Babble.com, about kids, writing, and that terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad plane ride.

My podcast with the fabulous Reading with Robin...my podcast with the erudite Bat Segundo (we talk about Wonder Woman's Lady Gaga pantlessness)...and a great interview with Skirt, where I talk about finding my agent, being a mom, and why ONE DAY is the chickiest chick lit that ever chicked (I liked the book a lot, I'm just a little perplexed by its reception. Also: boy, do those Brits get a lot of vacation!).

The tour resumes on Sunday in Champaign, IL, then rolls on to the Stevenson High School Performing Arts Center in Lincolnshire. Me and Jen Lancaster -- what could be bad?

After that: Denver, San Francisco and LA. Dates, times and locations are here, and I hope to see lots and lots of you on the road.

2010-07-14T17:19:00.003-04:00

Greetings from Day Two of the Cupcakes Across America/FLY AWAY HOME book tour!

Here are some pictures of me reading at the Princeton Public Library!

Here is an interview in which I talk about the challenges of e-book pricing and why I live-tweet "The Bachelorette!"

Speaking of my favorite show, do you know about The Possessionista? She tracks down all the cute things Ali wears and tells you where to buy them? That cute elephant pendant from Monday night? It will be mine! Oh, yes. It will be mine.

USA Today loved FLY AWAY HOME, calling it "an unflappably fun read," and saying "in the end, it's not Sylvie's choices that are important as much as the fact that she chooses to do what's best for her. The message is choosing to live an authentic life. As always, Weiner gives us a woman who stands taller, curvier and happier when she does just that."

I'm off to the Free Library in an hour for the pre-reading reception. Then D.C., Atlanta, Fort Lauderdale and Miami! See you on the road.

2010-07-12T19:56:00.004-04:00

In preparation for the Cupcakes Across America/FLY AWAY HOME tour, which kicks off at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble in NYC tomorrow night at 7:30, here’s What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Go to a Reading.

WHEN SHOULD I COME? Come early. Not crazy-early, but if you want a good seat, shoot for fifteen minutes before start time.

WHAT HAPPENS? Generally, I talk and tell stories for fifteen to twenty minutes. Possible topics include my mother, reality TV, what Eliot Spitzer’s escort was doing that was worth $5,000 a session and how no good can ever come from a three-hour massage.

I’ll read a brief (two to three page) excerpt from FLY AWAY HOME. Then I’ll take questions for another twenty minutes or so, which is always my favorite part of the night.

Then I sign books.

Also, there will be cupcakes, so come hungry (tomorrow night they’re from the Magnolia Bakery; the Philly cupcakes are from Betty’s Speakeasy). Seriously, do NOT leave me alone at the end of the night with dozens of uneaten cupcakes. It won’t be pretty.

DO I HAVE TO BUY THE BOOK AT THE STORE/EVENT? It’s a nice gesture, and the bookstores strongly prefer it (plus, if they sell a ton of books they’ve got a better shot at getting me, and other authors, to come back). That being said, I’ve never seen anyone pulled out of line or turned away for having purchased a book elsewhere. Use your own judgment.

I’VE GOT ALL YOUR BOOKS. WILL YOU SIGN THEM ALL? I am happy to sign any book you bring (provided it’s one that I wrote). However, if the book store or event organizer has different rules, or needs to keep the line moving, I will defer to their wishes.

CAN I TAKE A PICTURE? But of course!

I’M COMING TO HEAR YOU AT A LIBRARY/AUDITORIUM. CAN I BUY THE BOOK THERE? All of the non-bookstore events I’m doing WILL have books for sale on site. Never fear!

I'm looking forward to seeing lots of you on the road -- you can find all the tour dates here. FLY AWAY HOME comes out tomorrow, and without being annoyingly self-promote-y, I would love it if you'd pick up a copy. I had a great time writing it, and I hope you'll love reading it this summer.

2010-07-09T09:03:00.003-04:00

So here we are, three days out from the July 13 release of FLY AWAY HOME, and my editor asks, could I please Facebook and tweet about it more?

I directed her toward this article, which says that authors who incessantly beat the drums of self-promotion get unfollowed.

Then, ignoring the problem of taking Twitter advice from a woman who doesn't have that many followers, I went to the beach.

But seriously, the problem of promotion is a tricky one, especially if you are not the kind of writer who can get the handful of media outlets still covering books to beat the drums for you.

Sadly -- or maybe not! -- we can't all be agent-turned-addict-turned-author Bill Clegg, whose recent memoir has netted three NYT pieces (one profile, two book reviews) and the recent "Today Show" appearance (speaking of TV appearances, I'm taping the Joy Behar Show on Monday, where I might get to talk about my new book, FLY AWAY HOME, which comes out on Tuesday).

The rest of us are left to beat, and tweet, our own drums, to Facebook about the blog q and a's and radio chats and good reviews, to tour the country (all my dates are here) and do whatever we can in service of the book.

In my case, that also includes running contests, asking people to tweet me cute pictures of their copies of BFF, which I will post as soon as I figure out how (there's one of the book on the toilet!)

It also includes buying ads.

If you follow me on Twitter, you might remember my plight in re: the New York Times Book Review.

My agent wanted me to buy an ad there. I didn't want to. The NYTBR never reviews my books, or many books like mine, and when it does, it says such stupid, ignorant things about chick lit (none of it's funny! it's all about moms!) that I'd hurl the stupid thing across the room except it's too flimsy for a good toss.

But, said my agent. Booksellers still read the Times. Which is why you'll find giant ads for the likes of Danielle Steel and Nelson DeMille within -- not because the Times takes commercial fiction seriously, but because it's a way to give booksellers a heads-up that your new book is coming out, say, this Tuesday.

I reluctantly caved. Then my brilliant agent and the whip-smart art department had the genius idea of creating an ad that actually shows the first two pages of the book.

So instead of a book cover, a half-dozen laudatory quotes and a link to my website, Times readers flipping through praise for Jennifer Egan will be able to actually read a piece of the book.

Maybe they'll think it sucks as much as they suspect all chick lit does. Maybe they'll be intrigued enough to buy FLY AWAY HOME, when it goes on sale this Tuesday. Pick up a copy (of the Times, not my book, which does not go on sale until Tuesday), and let me know what you think! There are also nice mentions of FLY AWAY HOME in the August issues of O Magazine -- my first-ever appearance in that illustrious publication -- and in GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, and on the summer reading list in the on-stands-now ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY.

Meanwhile, I hope to see a bunch of you in NYC on Tuesday (when my book FLY AWAY HOME goes on sale), in Princeton for lunch at the library on Wednesday, then at the Free Library of Philadelphia Wednesday night, in DC on Thursday, in Atlanta on Friday, and in Florida over the weekend.

2010-07-06T08:17:00.003-04:00

One week from today, FLY AWAY HOME hits the stores, and I hit the road! You can find all my tour dates here. Yes, Virginia, there will be cupcakes.

On Thursday, I'll be doing a live chat from 3 to 5 at Barnes & Nobles' Facebook page. Stop by and ask me anything!

Finally, if you're in need of a beach book right now, Susan Isaacs' mordant and witty AS HUSBANDS GO is out today. Enjoy, and I hope to hear from you Thursday!

2010-07-01T12:43:00.004-04:00

Happy almost-Fourth-of-July!

Maybe you'd like to celebrate by watching me on the Rachael Ray show! My segment airs tomorrow.

I talked about the inspiration behind the book over at Elle.com, and there's a lovely review over on Bookpleasures.com.

You know, of course, that you can find the first chapter here...or find out where you can catch me on my two-week cross-country tour here (just added -- a reading at Vroman's in Pasadena on August 2!)

Finally, a question: what do you like to see on the back of a hardcover book?

These days, readers get two choices: a list of entirely complimentary quotes about the writer's previous works (because, duh, nobody's going to publish a this-writer-sux) quote, or a super-flattering, Easter-Island-size head shot, or full body shot, of the writer (because, duh, nobody's going to publish an ugly picture).

I'm not sold on either one...or, rather, I'm not sold on the idea that either looking at a big picture of the author's giant head, or reading a bunch of quotes about previous work, sells books.

Personally, I like wraparound art work, like on Stephen King's THE DOME. You figure, he's got enough name recognition that you know what you're getting without the quotes on the back, so you can just do a supercool front-and-back cover that's at least as alluring as either the headshot or the quotes would be. But what do you think? Let me know on Facebook or on Twitter.

Have a wonderful weekend, and I hope to see lots of you on my Cupcakes Across America tour!

2010-06-25T11:17:00.004-04:00

I don't know if I can adequately express my thanks for everyone who sent their stories, snappy comebacks and words of wisdom about flying the (un)friendly skies with little kids.

I think the worst part of my experience was feeling completely isolated -- like I was not just the only one on the plane whose kid was being disruptive (for a whopping 10 minutes!) but that I was the only one in the world whose child had ever upset other passengers on a plate with her noise, actions, or bodily functions.

Four hundred plus entries later, I can safely attest: not true. I am not alone. And if you've ever had a rough time on the road with a wee one, neither are you.

Plus, I learned so many things! Such as...

1. Wrap skirts are not your friends.

2. But sometimes drunks are!

3. Murphy's Law is totally in effect once you hit 30,000 feet. If you child is prone to bawling, kicking, pooping through her diaper, projectile vomiting or screaming the word "PENIS!", it's going to happen when you're on the plane.

4. Bring extra clothes for your kids, for yourself, and bring your sense of humor. You're going to need it.

So hooray for all of my readers, for making me feel much better about my miserable experience with the Lady in 8-A. Hooray for the Free Library, which is getting 400 new books as part of its 10,000 books for children drive.

Without further ado, the lucky winners! Ladies, your books are in the mail.

From Heidi Bozek Regan:

Flying by myself with an 18 month old from Colorado to Massachusetts. Fly out of western Colorado where cranky stewardess refuses to help me with infant but is barking at all the things I am doing worng. The flight is etremely turbulent with ice flying out of peoples drinks and sudden drops of the plane. The Rocky Mountains rushing at you always... See More a welcome sight while flying with your toddler in your lap while you struggle to hold on to her in the sudden drops. Get to Denver and find out the connection is delaying a glorious six hours! Spend the next six hours chasing said 15 month old around the Denver International Airport. Good times. Finally board flight to Massachusetts to find it is me, my toddler and a large group of still drunk men on their way back from Reno. As I am rolling my eyes and thinking outside of a crash this isn't going to get any worse, drunk group of men fall in love with toddler and start entertaining her with exciting games of peek a boo and hide and seek. They proceed to buy me many drinks and even the movie! I relax as they entertain child who is returned to me as we are getting ready to land. Child falls asleep and as I struggle to gather my things, drunk group from Reno grabs my bags and the babies things and help me off the plane and to my ride. I highly recommend taking drunk men on any flight involving small children.

From Dana D'Amore Gilpatrick

When my daughter was a potty training toddler we had to travel for a family reunion. After the 6th trip to the closet sized airplane bathroom,my child went screaming down the aisle ( after I would not let her flush her training pants) chasing after her, my "wrap-around-skirt" decides to unwrap exposing me to all the annoyed passengers
This was the same trip the toddler decided to ask several male passengers if they had a " PENIS!!!!!!"

From Courtenay Carr Russo

Traveling alone with a 3 yr and one-year-old, plus stoller and car seat (hands full!) Mia-DFW-Lax. One-year-old threw up on me on plane -- had a xtra shirt :). In Dallas layover jumped up to keep 3yr from hugging strange children and I split my pants! Did NOT have xtras. Pried 3yr old off strange child, tied them both down in stroller, tried to cover gaping hole in pants and went to seek out the only pair of pants in the airport- at a mens golf store. Left in mens Nike swim trunks. Yep... Arrived at destination with clean shirt and mens swim trunks. Oh and black boots! Both kids unscathed. :)

From Courtney Burns

My husband is a cop in Vegas, so a few times a year I have to make the trip from Vegas to Michigan to see my family. This is extra fun, because the average Midwestern tourist cannot grasp the idea that some of us actually have to live in Vegas and so they treat me though I have spent the week entering my 4 year in slot tournaments. One old man was so nasty on a flight back and would clear his throat and POINT AT ME from across the aisle every time my son made a peep. Two hours in I lost it and (sobbing) told him that the only reason he wasn't robbed while sucking down an all you can eat buffet was because of men like my husband, which is subsequently why my parents don't ever get to see their grandkids. I haven't had a good meltdown like that since, but the man and my son were both very quiet for the rest of the ride.

From Tricia Wolfe Neerman

Mine is my best AND worst at the same time. My husband and I were bringing our daughter home to Texas from China. We'd only been a family for two weeks and I was still getting to know her. During our 27 hours of traveling she went through three sets of clothes and I went through two because she had the worst case of diarrhea ever. She got it everywhere. Here I was on a Chinese airline, a mom for the first time, trying to change this horrible diaper in a plane bathroom. My husband was behind me handing me wipes and I was in tears. It was awful. BUT, it was the best because I'd waited to be a mom for seven years and I didn't care how awful it was, she was finally in my arms!

From Jennifer O'Neill Coenen

Mine would have to be flying home from the Caribbean with my then 17-month old & my then 2 1/2 yr old daughters. Our flights were delayed, of course, and when we finally got up in the air we hit major turbulence. Both girls puked all over themselves, and me, and once I changed them both and handed them to my husband, they puked all over themselves AND him. I was out of clothes for the kiddos, so we ended up taking them through customs in their diapers only, and Doug & I ... well, let's just say no one wanted to stand by us in line! We MAY have used the stink-ass card to get ahead in line & were waived pretty quickly through ... they're now 5 & 6, and while I no longer pack multiple changes of clothes ... I DO try to seat them by their Daddy as much as I can when we fly!

From Meghan Price

My husband, mother kids and I were on our way home from Georgia to Wisconsin on a 19 hour drive with a nursing 9 month old and a potty training three year old. During the trip my 3 year old was traumatized by the automatic flushing toilets and was refusing to go potty. In the space of an hour she threw up all over herself, me and the carseat, and pooped her pants. During all of this I intermittently tried to nurse my 9 month old while he was still strapped into his car seat. We had to drive about 15 hours with the windows down because of the smell in the car. There was nothing we could do but laugh about it and keep going.

From Maggie Finley:

Worst experience with kid travel? Well, my little one (we only had one at the time) was 18 months old. We were flying and he wasn't doing all that well with the mini DVD player- he just wanted to hit the buttons. But we found that we could keep him fairly quiet with juice. If he was drinking, he was happy. It wasn't a long flight, just Orlando to Detroit. But juice does run through rather quickly.....when we landed, I went to get him out of the car seat to check his diaper. I was WAY too late, though. He had saturated his pants and his car seat. And of course, while I had a change of diapers with me, I had no clothes packed in the carry-on. (I had not, in 18 months, EVER needed a change of clothes for him while out and about, so the thought hadn't even crossed my mind.) While I waved other passengers past us, I tried to figure out what to do. I cleared the row, pulled off his pants, changed his diaper, and then pulled off his shirt and put it on as pants- each leg in an arm hole. At this point, my Mom looks back to see what the delay is and exclaimed loudly "something's wrong with his pants!" I pulled my own sweater out of my backpack and threw it on him as a shirt. Then we rushed off the now empty plane, carrying the child and the car seat separately, praying it would air dry before we needed to install it in the rental car. All this and it was 11pm and a whopping 12 degrees outside. There's a bit more to it, but these were the highlights. It took us so long to get that car seat installed that it DID air dry by the time we had to place him back in it. And my Mom snapped pictures of him dancing around the rental place, looking like a homeless elf, as we struggled with the latch system in the freezing darkness. Fun times!

How to survive? Oh you just have to laugh. Just roll with it and laugh. No matter how well you prepare, something will happen.

A comeback? I wish I could come up with a great one, but honestly, I'd just want to say, "My mother taught me that if I couldn't say anything nice, I shouldn't say anything at all, so I won't tell you how incredibly rude you're being. Everyone is allowed to have a bad day once in a while, even my child. And until we can teleport places, mothers will always struggle with keeping their children happy on planes. Have some freakin' compassion."

From Stephanie Elliot

My son was nine months old and had a habit of projectile vomiting. (Only years later did I discover what reflux was - I still can’t believe my pediatrician never diagnosed him!) We were in the process of relocating from Chicago to Philadelphia and I was taking a flight to meet my husband where he was already in Philly working. I had flown with AJ previously, but as a new mother, I was still very nervous.

Seated in the middle seat with my son, I noticed an older couple walk toward us and the woman looked up at the seat number and then down at me in utter distain as if her flight was already ruined. Her husband shrugged and took the seat next to me, while she took the seat behind us. I jokingly said to the man, “I take it your wife doesn’t like babies?” trying to break the ice.

His blank stare showed me that ice wasn’t breakin’.

After the requisite “put-your-mask-on-yourself-first-then-your-baby” announcements, it was time to take off and I knew what to do next because I’d read all the books. At take-off, you give your baby something to suck on so his ears don’t pop and hurt.
I took out my baby’s bottle filled with distilled water and scrambled to find the formula while holding AJ with my other arm. I poured the powder into the bottle within the confines of my seat trying not to jostle my seatmate, the curmudgeon whose wife was behind us. My other seatmate was a kinder gentleman in the window seat, who had had the decency to talk to me like I wasn’t the mother of the spawn of the devil when he boarded earlier. I started feeding AJ his bottle as we took off.

What the books don’t tell you is that if you’re feeding your baby in a cradling position and his belly is filling up, well, then it’s pretty likely that he may start projectile vomiting. And before we reached 10,000 feet in the air, that is exactly what AJ was doing, all over in row 14.

Kind Seatmate grabbed the vomit bag and held it for me while I tried my best to search for the diaper cloth I usually had on hand, while “I-Hate-All-Procreators” shot 9 millimeter bullets through his eye slits and I could hear his wife muttering behind us all sorts of horrible parenting commentary. I rushed to do my best to clean up what I could and calm AJ down, and held back hot tears.

I wanted to die.

Only when I could gather enough Mother Power, did I force my way past the man next to me, taking my soaking baby, baby bag, barf bag and what was left of my dignity, with me. The plane was completely full so there was no way I was going to get another seat, and surely no one would want to switch with me and sit in a formula-vomited-soak-stained seat now. And there was no way in hell I was going back to sit next to that horrible child-loathing man.

So I stood. I stood on that whole flight in the back of the plane and I rocked my baby AJ. And my arms killed and I stank like wet formula, and my baby cried, and I felt defeated and like the worst mother in the world, and I felt mad at those people for making me feel the way that they had, and what right did they have to make me feel that way?

And do you know what happened?

The asshole guy came to the back of the plane and thanked me for standing back there so he and his wife could enjoy the flight!
HE THANKED ME.

“We just can’t understand why we can’t bring our pets on board; that they have to go in the belly of the plane,” he said, “but people can bring babies on planes.”

Seriously, HE SAID THAT TO A BRAND NEW MOTHER!

I said to him, “It’s obvious that you two do not have children.”
And here’s the most shocking part of the whole story. This man then tells me that yes, in fact, they do have FOUR children, but they don’t see them all that much.

I can only imagine why.

I’m pretty sure that he also then went on to say they liked their pets more than their children, and that his pets didn’t ask them for money or need to be sent to college or eat them out of house or home …

And yes, I just hugged my AJ tighter.

It’s my only solace to know that that couple is going to grow very old and very lonely together and make each other very, very unhappy. Because I never wish ill-will toward people, I am pretty sure these people will bring it upon themselves just by being horrible people, and these were horrible people.

I also think that when they die, there is going to be a playback/rewind button on their lives, and they will be shown video of EVERYTHING and they’ll not only see how horrible they’ve been to people, INCLUDING THEIR OWN CHILDREN, they’ll also see stuff they weren’t aware of, like times they cried on airplanes or public places as infants. Because everyone starts out as a baby, and all babies cry and are imperfect, and do unexpected things in public.

I will never forget that couple, and since then I have taken many flights and some without my children, and yes, a crying baby can be an annoyance on a plane, and sometimes even my kids, (who are now 12, 11 and 8) still cry from earaches, a headache, or something painful on a plane.

But every single time I am on a plane and there is another fussy child near me who is not mine, I think back to THAT situation I was in, and that hurt and sadness I felt, and I try to do what I can for that mom or dad, whether it’s a kind word, a funny joke, some peek-a-boo with their baby, or a “would you like me to hold your baby so you can pee?” …

Traveling with a baby or a child is hard, plain and simple, even if everything goes practically picture perfect. And those who judge so harshly and so cruelly, either have no clue or no heart, as did these people I came in contact with so long ago.

From Ashley Taylor

Here you go, read it and weep...God knows, everyone on my flight probably did!!
I took my barely 2 year-old daughter Emma to visit a friend and her family in Washington, D.C. making it about a 2 hour flight from Charlotte. Great flight up there, great visit, etc. The day we were supposed to come home Emma decided to buck the system totally and skip her nap, despite my repeated attempts to make her take one. That afternoon, I started to not feel so great. Unexplainable stomach pain, borderline nausea, but whatever I am a mother, so I just sucked it up and my girlfriend drove us to the airport. By the time we got through security, I was really not feeling very hot at all and Emma was HYSTERICALLY sobbing in her stroller.

I got to our gate only to realize that our flight was, yes you guessed it, delayed. However, much to my surprise, I discovered that the very next gate had a flight to Charlotte leaving in 15 minutes. I rushed to the counter, explained my situation...not that it needed much explaining, given the sobbing coming from just below the counter and begged to be let on that flight. They told me that they could get me on, but my luggage would come on the later flight. Fine, no problem, who cares, just get me and my screaming, way over tired toddler home as quickly as possible. I got on board and wrangled Emma into my lap with her paci (yeah, yeah, yeah, 2 year-olds don't need pacis, bite me people!), knowing that just any minute now she would pass out from exhaustion. Which she totally did not. And then I got the overwhelming, sweat pouring down your face, feeling that I was going to be sick. Like right then. Couldn't find a barf bag to save my life, thankfully, was able to grab one from the seat across from me and proceeded to get violently ill while attempting hold my HYSTERICAL, UNCONTROLLABLY SOBBING, ATTEMPTING TO BAT AWAY THE BARF BAG THAT I AM ACTIVELY USING toddler. Did anyone offer to help? No. The only thing the flight attendant managed to procure for me was several more sick bags. We finally took off (oh yeah, this was all before we had even left the ground) and Emma sobbed. And screamed. And cried. And writhed. And I got increasingly sick. Now, I am a registered nurse, so I pretty much knew at this point that there was something seriously wrong with me. I was having uncontrollable stabbing back and abdominal pain with pretty constant vomiting. Emma finally fell asleep about 5 minutes before (that's right, just a mere 1 hour and 45 minutes into the flight, which means that she had sobbed uncontrollably for every single second since we boarded) we landed in Charlotte. I got the attention of the flight attendant and let her know that we would need some medical help on the ground.

The *only* and I mean *only* upside to this story is that my husband was flying back to Charlotte from a trip and was planning to meet us at our gate (being post 9/11 this would not have been possible otherwise), so I knew that he could take over with Emma once we landed, while I got some help. As soon as we landed, they told us that we would be another 20 minutes getting to our gate because it was not ready. I got on my cell phone, let my husband know that we had taken a different flight, told him to have my dad come and meet us at the airport to take our daughter home because I knew that I would need to get to a hospital. Finally, we got to our gate. The medics boarded the plane, carried the still sleeping (thank you sweet baby Jesus) Emma off to the plane to my waiting husband and loaded me up right then and there on a stretcher. My blood pressure was really high so they took me in an ambulance to the hospital where it was determined that I was having a terrible kidney stone attack.

Anyway, I feel like if this story doesn't earn me some sort of terrible travel pity and sympathy book, then I don't know what will!!!

From Ami Presley

OK, so I have no advice for flying with kids, as I have only done this once, and my daughter was already 9. Once she had her snack and her MP3 going, she was fine. I do, however, have a pretty awful travel story. This is not a "my kids were demons, and so I was mortified" story. This is a "learn from your mistakes to be more prepared" story.

My husband, my two daughters (Kristen, age 5, and Jordan, age 3), my father-in-law and I were in the car. As this was 15 years ago, I don't exactly remember where we were going... my F-I-L had just got a new-er car, and I believe he was taking us out for "a drive in the country". Anyway, we were a good hour and a half away from anything, on the highway. I am sitting in the backseat with the girls, and the two men are in the front. Kristen suddenly says, in a quivering voice, "Mommy... I don't feel so good..." I turn to look at her, and she is positively green. I think, "oh God... she's gonna spew in the new car. PLEASE don't spew in the new car". I roll down my window to get her some fresh air, and holler up to my husband what is going on. Both men start flipping out. I am trying to keep Kristen calm and breathing slow. Jordan is not sure whether or not to laugh or to cry. I ask my F-I-L to pull over, but because we were in the inside lane of a four lane highway on a beautiful Saturday afternoon (and in Ohio, where as soon as the ice melts, the entire interstate becomes a construction zone), this was not immediately possible. It is also becoming more and more obvious that puking will NOT be avoided. So I start asking for ANY kind of container, as FAST as they can get their hands on one. But before anything can be found, I hear the first heave. So, my mom instincts kick in, and I thrust my cupped hands under her chin.

I am still begging for a container, but as this car is a new acquisition, there aren't really any "things" in it yet. She heaves again. And again. And yet again. My hands are now brimming with vomit. And not just ordinary vomit. We're talking "breakfast full of milk" vomit. There is nothing I can do. There is nothing I can transfer it into... there is no chance of us pulling over any time soon...um, yea. We pass a sign that says "next rest area 60 miles". So I had to ride for an HOUR, with a giant handful of chunky, smelly milk puke, with the lovely summer sun beating in the windows, before we were able to get off the road and I could put down my load and wash my hands. The whole way to the rest area, I just kept chanting to myself "PLEASE don't let this turn into the pie contest scene from Stand By Me... PLEASE". Luckily, parenthood had already given my husband and I the gift of VERY strong stomachs.

Lesson learned - have plastic bags and baby wipes in the car and/or in your purse AT ALL TIMES. I still carry these things, and my girls are now 18 & 20 years old.

And finally, from Nevada Gutierrez

When my oldest son was about one, I flew overnight with him across country on the red-eye out of LAX. He was asleep in my lap until he awoke abruptly about 45 minutes into the flight. He was disoriented and startled and proceeded to bite a chunk out of my neck. The flight attendants were not the least bit helpful or sympathetic, and so I bled my way across the vast North American continent.

And a comeback: "I guess the best we can hope for is that one day she'll grow up & mellow into a sweet little dear like yourself."

Again, thanks to everyone who participated. Stay tuned for happier blog posts and more fun contests next week!

2010-06-20T16:20:00.003-04:00

With just over three weeks until the release of FLY AWAY HOME, I know that I'm supposed to be in full-on pimp mode. I should be posting sassy pictures and sexy excerpts, or hosting fun-filled giveaways, or telling you all about the upcoming book tour.

But yesterday I had one of the worst travel experiences of my life yesterday -- a true and total bummer -- so I think that, instead, I'll tell you about that.

After a week in Los Angeles, I was flying back home with my seven-year-old and two-and-a-half-year old.

I’ve flown a lot with my kids before, and pretty much have it down to a science: I know when to leave, and what to pack (snacks, stickers, one inexpensive new toy, one small canister of M & M’s, fully-charged iPod, small gift for the flight attendants and earplugs to offer row-mates) and generally how it’ll go.

Yesterday, I figured that because we'd be leaving just after the two-year-old’s nap, there would probably be ten minutes of fussing, squirming misery, at which point she’d conk out for an hour or two, and be fine the rest of the flight.

We boarded early and settled into row nine. The woman in row eight – an older lady, in high heels and a sweater set -- was clearly trouble. When the soldier (in uniform) tried to put his backpack in the overhead bin, she snapped at him, “There’s a WEDDING DRESS in there. You can’t just go shoving your things ANYWHERE.” When I said, “You know, the flight attendants would probably hang your dress up front if you asked,” she turned to me, glaring, and said, “It’s not MY DRESS, and NO THEY WON’T.”

Now. It’s been my experience that flight attendants, when asked nicely, are usually happy to help, but maybe her experiences were different.

The flight took off. The lady in 8-A ordered two white wines. Phoebe started squirming and kicking. I did my best to soothe her…but, as other mothers of two-year-olds will attest, sometimes, your best isn’t good enough. Sometimes, your best doesn’t feel like it's doing anything at all. Especially when you’re dealing with a child whose favorite toy is the toilet brush and who has not, as they say, approached the age of reason. My daughter is a lovely, sunny, good-natured well-behaved little girl most of the time, but when she’s cranky and needs her nap, she is more or less the Kraken in Pampers.

The seatbelt light was on, so I couldn’t get up and walk her. We were in the row in front of the exit row, so I couldn’t even recline my seat to get a few extra inches. We were, in short, in hell.

She was thrashing, weeping, trying to squirm out of my arms, pulling down the tray table, clambering over my shoulder to peer at the passengers behind us – and yes, I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant for anyone around her. It sure wasn’t pleasant for me. I was trying to hold her still and keep her quiet. She’d just hit me in the nose when 8-A whipped her head around, “Exorcist”-style, and hissed, “MUST YOU keep KICKING ME?”

“I’m not kicking you!” I blurted….because I wasn’t, and because I figured that a little humor might defuse the situation.

“Do you have ANY IDEA how ANNOYING your CHILD IS?” she barked.

At this point, several responses occurred to me, the first of which was, “I carried her for nine months and have lived with her ever since and so, yes, I do…” but honestly, I was as shocked and speechless as Taylor Swift being Kanye’d. I stammered that I was sorry. She kept ranting, eyes narrowed, spittle flying from her mouth. I don’t even remember what she said, because I was so stunned. I just held on to Phoebe, trying to keep her quiet and still, until finally, she fell asleep in my arms, and I sat there for the rest of the flight, feeling angry and ashamed and like the worst mother in the world.

How should I have handled it? What should I have done? Offered to switch seats with the angry lady? Flagged down a flight attendant and bought her even more white wine? Told her that if she wants guaranteed peace and quiet she should charter her own jet? Suggested that the all-grouch section was in the back of the plane?

Is the answer to just not fly with the little one until she’s bigger? Or drug her ahead of time (I’ve heard good things about Benadryl?) Can I convince Kevin Smith to rent me that bus he bought after his bad air-time with Southwest?

I suspect that the real answer is just to realize that when you fly with kids, you run the risk of the kids being awful, and being seated near someone who doesn’t like kids, or had a bad day, or whatever, and just get over it. But if I’ve made it this far while still being this sensitive, getting over it doesn’t seem likely.

I honestly don’t know what to do here except….have a contest!

So here’s the deal. You send your most awful traveling-with-kids story….or your best piece of advice for how to survive the experience….or your snappiest comeback for the lady in 8-A to jen AT jenniferweiner.com.

On Friday, I will publish the five best/funniest/most helpful responses, and those hardy travelers will win fresh-off-the-presses, not-even-my-Mom-has-one-yet copies of FLY AWAY HOME.

Finally, for every entry I get between now and Friday, I will buy one book for the Philadelphia Free Library’s 10,000 Books for Children campaign, which you can learn all about right here…because some good should come of this, right?

2010-06-16T00:55:00.003-04:00

I'm in Los Angeles, hanging with my brothers, my sister, my niece and nephew, my agent and my mother and her special lady friend, and counting the days until the July 13 release of FLY AWAY HOME.

You can read the first chapter on the home page of my website...and if you need a little more Weiner to tide you over until July, pick up the current issue of Redbook. I wrote a two-part short story about an imploding marriage, a canceled business trip, and anonymous hotel sex (among other things). It's called "The Half-Life," and I really dig it. I especially liked the challenge of writing a kind of cliff-hanger. I hope you'll enjoy Part One, and pick up the August issue of the magazine to find out how it all turns out.

Happy reading!

Last but not least, I know I'm not blogging the way I used to -- blame the kids, I think -- but I do tweet quite a bit, and I'm on Facebook, too. Keep in touch, and I hope to see lots of you when I hit the road in July.

2010-06-01T08:45:00.002-04:00

Just six weeks until FLY AWAY HOME hits the shelves!

I hope to have the first chapter posted this week, along with a little bit about how the book came into being. Meanwhile, you can read about it in USA Today...and, today only, you've got another shot to win an advanced reader's copy!

Julie Buxbaum's AFTER YOU is out in paperback today. A bit about the book: After Ellie Lerner's best friend Lucy is murdered -- in front of her eight-year-old daughter -- Ellie drops everything, leaving behind her life and her troubled marriage, and moves to London to help Lucy's daughter and husband cope. As the three of them navigate a world without Lucy, Ellie discovers that her friend's idyllic life wasn't so perfect after all, and starts to reconsider what she wants from her own future. It's a moving, engaging story with realistic characters, lots of heart (and a bit of real-estate/garden porn for anyone who loves England)...a great read to tuck in your beach bag or carry-on.

So buy it today -- either online or at your local bookstore. E-mail a copy or snapshot of your receipt to jen AT jenniferweiner.com before midnight. Tomorrow morning, I'll pick five lucky winners to get those early, autographed copies of FLY AWAY HOME.

Good luck, and happy reading!

2010-05-24T11:42:00.002-04:00

Early copies of FLY AWAY HOME are here!

Want one?

1. Head to my fan page on Facebook.

2. Post your favorite scene, character or moment from one of my books.

3. Post the name of a book or author you love and would recommend.

Tomorrow morning, my completely impartial seven-year-old will pick five names from the entrants, and I will send out five signed books!

2010-05-11T19:41:00.002-04:00

News and notes...

I will be in NYC on Thursday night for the paperback launch of BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, at the Park Avenue Borders (461 Park Avenue) at 7 p.m.. Stop by for what should be a fun night, with a little preview of my July release, FLY AWAY HOME!

Speaking of FLY AWAY HOME, I'm doing the final round of edits and getting excited about my summer tour. Dates are in the post below, and I hope to see lots of you on the road.

Faithful blog readers know that one of my absolute all-time favorite writers is Susan Isaacs, whose new book, AS HUSBANDS GO, also comes out in July. Guess what -- she's on Facebook! You can come learn all about her and all of her fabulous books here.

Also, do you know that I'm on Twitter? Check me out!

2010-05-06T20:17:00.003-04:00

The summer tour dates are here...and while we're still waiting on a location for the Princeton luncheon, the dates are for certain. So mark your calendars and I hope to see lots of you on the road this summer with FLY AWAY HOME!

July 13, 2010 – NEW YORK
Barnes & Noble Lincoln Center, 7pm
1972 Broadway @ 66th Street
New York, NY

July 14, 2010 - PRINCETON
Princeton Library
Location TBD
Princeton, NJ

PHILADELPHIA
Philadelphia Free Library, 7:30pm
1901 Vine St.
Philadelphia, PA

July 15, 2010 – WASHINGTON, DC
Borders, 7:30pm
5871 Crossroads Center Way
Bailey’s Crossroads, VA

July 16, 2010 - ATLANTA
Margaret Mitchell House, 6pm
990 Peachtree St. NE
Atlanta, GA

July 17, 2010 – FORT LAUDERDALE
Borders, 2pm
2240 E Sunrise Blvd
Fort Lauderdale, FL

July 19, 2010 - MIAMI
Books & Books, 8pm
265 Aragon Avenue
Coral Gables, FL

July 20, 2010 - DALLAS
Legacy Books, 7pm
7300 Dallas Parkway, Suite A120
Plano, TX

July 21, 2010 - BOSTON
Harvard Bookstore, 6pm
Held at the Brattle Theater
40 Brattle Street
Cambridge, MA

July 26, 2010 - CHICAGO
Stevenson High School Performing Arts Center, 6:30 pm
Lincolnshire, IL

July 27, 2010 - DENVER
Tattered Cover, 7:30pm
9315 Dorchester Street
Highlands Ranch, CO

July 28, 2010 – SAN FRANCISCO
Book Passage, 6pm
Ferry Building
Ferry Building # 42
San Francisco, CA

July 29, 2010 – SAN FRANCISCO
Book Passage, 1pm
51 Tamal Vista Boulevard
Corte Madera, CA

2010-05-03T11:14:00.002-04:00

One of the all-time, hands-down pleasures of being a published author is being able to take my friends and family along for the ride. Whenever I get to go on book tour, give a reading, tape a talk show or walk a red carpet, I try to have as many relatives as possible around me. It keeps me calm and keeps them amused.

So last week, when I went to New York City to tape “The Rachael Ray Show,” (it’ll air in July), I invited my mother Fran to tag along.

On Tuesday afternoon, we pulled into the garage underneath the studio where the show is taped behind a giant SUV, from which a crew of women emerged and made their way to the service elevator. After we got out of our car, the security guard whispered, “You know who you just missed? Rosie O’Donnell!”

Now. My mother, as some of you may know, is a gay lesbian woman from the suburbs of Connecticut. Telling her that Rosie O’Donnell was in the building elicited approximately the same effect as telling a fundamentalist Christian that Jesus Himself was hanging out in the green room. Her eyes glowed. Her face flushed. She elbowed me out of the way and pushed past my publicist onto the elevator. “I have to meet her!” she said.

We got up to the studio, met the producers, and were ushered to our dressing room, conveniently just down the hall from Rosie’s. Fran lingered until I grabbed her and towed her inside, and my publicist, who knows Rosie’s publicist, promised to broker a summit.

I set about getting to my outfit (read: lots of Spanx.) A lovely assistant brought some treats – salmon with beets, sliced filet, orange-blueberry cake. Fran ignored the food, and ignored me, fluttering around the room, fanning herself, trying to call her partner and email her other kids, all the while repeating the word “Rosie!” like a mantra.

Finally, we were summoned, and my mother and I made our way down the hall into the sanctum sanctorum.

Now, I tend to roll with a posse. But if I’ve got an entourage, Rosie O’Donnell travels with an entire football team. There were publicists, assistants, hair and makeup people. Fran ignored them all, with her eyes laser-beamed onto Rosie’s.

Rosie, who looked both smaller and softer in person than on-screen, greeted us warmly.

“So whaddaya do?” she asked me.

“I write novels,” I said.

“What about?”

"Well, my first one’s about this girl in her twenties going through a terrible break-up, and her mom comes out of the closet…"

Rosie turned to my mother. “You?”

Fran nodded.

“How old were you?”

“Fifty-five,” said Fran.

Rosie’s eyes widened. “So you were with men all those years? And you were thinking, eh, this is okay, but there could be something more?”

“Or less!” I piped up.

“The first time I was with a woman, I was like a teenager again!” Fran said rhapsodically. “I never knew it could be like that!”

At which point, I think I threw up a little in my mouth and had to leave the room.

When I came back, the two of them were still bonding over my mother’s sex life, and Fran was filling Rosie in about her partner of the last six years and how they’re both big fans, at which point a producer came to take Ms. O’Donnell to the set.

“Send me your books!” she called over her shoulder. Then, reconsidering, she said, “Actually, I could probably buy them!”

So there you have it…when Fran met Rosie. Whatever I get her for Mother’s Day won’t be nearly as good as that.

2010-04-23T21:16:00.004-04:00

When I sold my first book – lo these many, many years ago – I had, as every writer does, a number of hopes and dreams and secret fantasies.

Maybe it’ll be a best seller!

Maybe it’ll win a prize!

And maybe – just maybe – I’ll get to sing backup with the Rock Bottom Remainders.

The Remainders are the world’s most prominent, and only, all-author supergroup, who’ve been rocking out at bookseller conventions and concert halls since the early 1990’s. The band stars Dave Barry, Mitch Albom, Stephen King and Amy Tan and has attracted such legitimate musical talent as Bruce Springsteen, Roger McGuinn and one of my all-time favorites, the late, great Warren Zevon.

Growing up, I always wanted to be a writer…but I had rock-and-roll fantasies, of standing in front of a cheering crowd, wailing into a microphone or rocking out on a guitar.

Sadly, these dreams were killed by – and I’m about to use some very technical musical terms here – “not being very good.”

I can read music, thanks to years of piano (shout-out, Mrs. Noar!) I can carry a tune within a very limited range. I sang in choir in high school and glee club in college, but my fantasies of rocking were mostly confined to the privacy of my shower stall or, lately, Music Together classes with my two-year-old. In front of an audience of imaginary fans or drooling toddlers, I sound just fine.

A few years ago, I joined the board of the Free Library of Philadelphia which was a great way to give my time and money to a city, and an institution, that I love (and an institution that’s hit hard when the economy tanks, private donors scale back their gifts, and tax dollars dwindle).

A few months back, the board got the word that the Remainders were going on tour, and that Philadelphia would be one of the stops, with the library receiving the proceeds from ticket sales. Here it was. At last. My chance!

I bought a bunch of tickets to give away, thinking that if I was going to sing on a stage existing outside of my imagination, I’d want people there to cheer me on. I threw a little pre-party at one of my favorite spots, the Continental, because I figured that the drunker folks were, the better I’d sound.

Last night, I got on stage, introduced the band (highlight: telling Mitch Albom that he might have “Tuesdays with Morrie,” but Philadelphia has “Marley and Me,” and that somewhere in Heaven, a yellow lab is probably taking a dump in his dead professor’s slippers).

Then I sang back-up on “Da Do Ron Ron,” “Mustang Sally” and “634-5789” and “Leader of the Pack.”

I have no idea how I sounded. I don’t know whether I was in tune, or even whether my mic was on. I have no idea how I looked, although when you’re standing next to Amy Tan in a Lady Gaga-style wig, it tends to make you feel good about your own sartorial and hairstyling choices. But being up there, with a microphone in front of me and a legitimately decent band behind me was an absolute blast and truly a dream come true.

Novelist Sarah Pekkanen – I’ve mentioned her a few times – and her friend Lindsay Manes were the winning bidders for the privilege of closing the show with “Wild Thing.” We finished up with “Gloria,” and, almost twenty-four hours later I am still beaming.

Thanks to everyone who came...and for those of you who didn’t, you can learn more about the Free Library, a remarkable institution that offers an array of great author events (Anna Quindlen next Thursday night! Isabelle Allende May 4! Charlaine Harris May 5!) and programs (podcasts! Job-search coaching! Homework help!)

If you’ve got a few dollars to throw toward a worthy institution that’s been hit hard by the economic downturn, the library could use the help.

Come summer, I’ll be reading at the Free Library’s Central branch from my new book, FLY AWAY HOME, on Wednesday, July 14, at 7:30 p.m…but meanwhile, I’m at the Pennsylvania General Store in the Reading Terminal Market on Tuesday, May 4 at 6 p.m., where there will be wine, chocolate, and paperback copies of BEST FRIENDS FOREVER.

Then, on Thursday, May 13, I’m in NYC at the Park Avenue Borders at 461 Park Avenue at 7 p.m.. Hope to see lots of you East Coast readers there. Rock on!

2010-04-07T22:16:00.004-04:00

Are you a fan of Dave Barry? Amy Tan? Ridley Pearson? Mitch Albom?

Would you like to hear them play the guitar, shake a tambourine, do unspeakable things to the songs of Elvis Presley and possibly sing “Wild Thing?”

On Thursday, April 22 at the Electric Factory, the Rock Bottom Remainders, the first all-author supergroup hailed by critics as “not as bad as you could expect,” are playing a fundraiser to benefit the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Tickets are $35, and I bought a bunch of them, which may or may not be because I may or may not end up on stage and would like a bunch of enthusiastic and possibly drunk supporters to cheer for me should that be the case.

So! If you’re in Philly and want to join the party, hear the band, and learn more about the great programs the Free Library offers and the major renovation it’s got planned, be my guest at the show. Just email me at jen AT jenniferweiner.com for your ticket. We’ll have drinks at the Continental, then move to the Electric Factory for the show.

2010-04-06T21:26:00.002-04:00

FLY AWAY HOME, my new novel, will be published on July 13. Where in the world will my book tour take me (besides NYC, Philly, Washington, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco)? Stop by my Facebook fan page and vote!

And watch this space for an exciting announcement about how you can be my guest at the Rock Bottom Remainders' Philadelphia performance on April 22, and support the Free Library of Philadelphia!

2010-03-15T08:20:00.002-04:00

Big, big thanks to everyone who participated in Sarah Spike Day! We got an overwhelming number of requests for signed books from readers who bought Sarah Pekkanen's debut novel THE OPPOSITE OF ME, and are in the process of getting all those books in the mail, so if you participated, thanks for your support, and thanks in advance for your patience. And if you haven't bought Sarah's book, you should -- and you can.

In other news, I'm in the early stages of planning the book tour for FLY AWAY HOME, which will be published on July 13. I know for sure that I'll be in Philadelphia (where I live), New York City (where my editor and publisher live), and most likely Boston and Washington, DC. If you want me to come to your city, head over to my Facebook fan page and post your town on my wall. We'll be using a highly scientific method, which may or may not be based on which towns have delicious regional delicacies, to determine the hot spots, then put it to a vote.

Thanks again, and happy reading!

2010-03-04T08:28:00.002-05:00

Thanks to everyone who supported debut author Sarah Pekkanen by ordering THE OPPOSITE OF ME yesterday! The book cracked the Amazon top 100 and the Barnes & Noble top 30, which is huge for a first-timer, and should mean the start of many good things for Sarah's book.

If you haven't ordered, you should! You can check out the first chapter here, and find links to buy here.

If you bought it on Wednesday, you'll be getting your signed book from me in a week or two. The response to the giveaway was overwhelming -- literally, you can go to my Facebook page and see a shot of just the first round of books I signed! My publisher's sending reinforcements, and as soon as they arrive I'll sign them and they'll be on their way!

2010-03-01T20:37:00.006-05:00

Hard as it is to believe, it’s been almost ten years since I sold my first novel, GOOD IN BED at auction to the fabulous Greer Hendricks at Atria Books. (Yes. I am old. Thanks for asking).

If I’ve got one regret about my career, it’s that I’ll never get to be a debut novelist again, never feel the excitement and the terror that goes with it being your first time out of the gate, when you’ve got no audience, no track record, nothing but hope, and a willingness to do whatever you can to get your book into readers’ hands.

The best I can do, ten years later, is relive the experience vicariously. That’s why I am delighted to tell you about Sarah Pekkanen’s debut novel, THE OPPOSITE OF ME, which she sold to my editor Greer Hendricks.

THE OPPOSITE OF ME is a tale of twin sisters: one a high-powered ad executive in New York City, the other engaged to be married back home in Maryland. It’s about all of that sister stuff, about love and family, the smart one versus the pretty one, the choices women make and the prices that they pay.

Booklist called it “funny and poignant.” Redbook says it’s “smart and soulful.” I say it’s fresh and funny and satisfying (right there on the cover!) You can read the first chapter here and see for yourself.

If you follow publishing at all, you probably know that it’s a lot harder now than it was ten years ago for a debut novel to get noticed Newspapers are foundering, book reviews are folding, Oprah seems to have given up on women’s fiction entirely. Too often, it seems like the bulk of the critical attention that’s left is reserved for a small handful of authors.

Sarah Pekkanen is a great, witty, observant writer, who managed to finish a her novel while mothering three little boys. (Respect). She’s also savvy about the realities of the marketplace and how much online sales matter. That’s why she’s urging people to pre-order her book from online retailers ON WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3.

The more pre-orders the booksellers get, the more likely they are to promote the book on their websites, to recommend it in their newsletters, to spur that all-important word of mouth that matters more than anything, and more, now, than it ever did.

Sarah’s raffling off some fabulous prizes on her blog (camcorder! Fancy makeup! A phone consultation if you want to learn how to sell your book!) to anyone who pre-orders the book on Wednesday, and I’m thrilled to be part of the fun.

So here’s the deal: order THE OPPPOSITE OF ME on Wednesday. You can get it from Amazon! From Barnes& Noble! From your favorite independent bookstore!

Next, head to Sarah’s website to be eligible for her fabulous prizes.

Then send me a copy of your receipt (minus the credit card information, obvs), either at jen@jenniferweiner.com, on my Facebook home page or fan page, or via Twitter. Tell me which book you want and how you want it inscribed, and I'll send out books until I run out, which shouldn’t be for a while.

You’ll get to read a great book, and discover a fresh, funny new voice in women’s fiction. You’ll score a signed copy of one of my books (and if you’ve read them all, they make lovely gifts)...and we’ll all get to see just how much social networking can get a new author on the radar.

What’s not to like?

2010-03-01T07:29:00.003-05:00

Happy Monday!

Tonight at 8 I'll be live-tweeting "The Bachelor: On the Wings of Love." I expect nothing less than the Most Dramatic Rose Ceremony Ever. You can follow along at Twitter.com, where I am @jenniferweiner.

Tomorrow, watch this space for a big announcement of how you -- yes, you! -- can support a fabulous debut novelist and win a signed copy of one of my books.

Stay tuned...

2010-02-24T11:39:00.003-05:00

Ta-da!

Here it is...the cover for FLY AWAY HOME, which will be published 7/13/10.

I love it. I hope you do, too.

2010-02-22T08:45:00.004-05:00

Significant Objects is this really cool project that assigns random flea-market purchases to writers. The writer crafts a short story inspired by the object, the object gets auctioned off on eBay, and the proceeds go to worthy charities that support literacy and writing.

This round of Object auctions supports Girls Write Now -- and you can see, read about, and bid on, my significant object right here.

In other news, FLY AWAY HOME, my latest novel, is in the hot hands of my editor, and while I'm waiting for her notes, I will be amusing myself on Twitter, live-Tweeting "The Bachelor" tonight at 8. Come follow along! There will be drinking games relating to Tenley's marriage and Vienna's weave! I'm @jenniferweiner. See you there!

2010-02-08T19:32:00.003-05:00

For those of you who've been riding the pilot roller-coaster with me. I finally got word from ABC on "Jane and Dick," the script I wrote, and the word was...not good.

This was heartbreaking, especially because now I'll never seen the headline "ABC Slips Weiner's 'Dick' Into Crammed Schedule," but ultimately, it wasn't surprising. This was a bad year to write a romantic relationship-centered show. It was an excellent year to pitch a gritty police procedural (if you like CSI, you're going to love next season's prime-time dramas!)

The good news is that we're now taking "Jane and Dick" to other networks. I've got a few other irons in the TV fire. And even if nothing happens, I learned a lot from the process.

Writing a novel is a long, lonely business. Basically, once you're a novelist and longer on your first book, you pitch an idea, maybe submit an outline, your agent and your editor give you the thumbs-up, and you go off by yourself, for a year or longer, to wrestle with the bear all by yourself.

TV is different. At every step -- the paragraph-long pitch, the story arena, the outline, the script, and the revisions upon revisions upon revisions that you make, first for the studio executives, then for the network -- you're talking to people, checking in, showing them what you've done and getting their feedback. Can you sharpen the conflict? Can you raise the stakes? Can you make the characters more vivid, more realistic, less broad? (it seems that I have a natural tendency to go to the broad place).

Sometimes the notes feel generic, like everyone writing everything is being told to sharpen the conflict and raise the stakes. But thinking about conflict, about character, about how to tell a story that's vivid and compelling and gets better with each subsequent draft isn't a bad thing, whether you're writing scripts for TV, or short stories or novels.

I think that the process made me a writer. I know that I got to meet and work with some amazing, hilarious people. I've got high hopes of someday, somewhere, seeing characters I've dreamed up on the small screen, and also of getting over my pique at the network in time for tonight's "Bachelor: On the Wings of Love."

And I've still got my day job.

2010-02-03T20:15:00.002-05:00

A reader writes: what’s up with your TV pilot?

Short answer: I have no idea!

A few weeks ago ABC picked up a bunch of dramas to shoot as possible shows for next fall. Many of them featured cops, or former cops, or disgraced former cops. My writing partner and I heard nothing about our show, “Jane and Dick,” which is a romantic comedy set in a law firm and does not feature cops, either current, former or disgraced.

So we waited. And waited. And waited. Weeks later, we’ve heard no word from the network, either thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

It’s frustrating, and unpleasantly reminiscent of that time when I liked a guy and went out with him a few times and thought it was all going well and he said he’d call and then he didn’t. Or, as I call that time, “the ‘90’s.” I would do the Hollywood thing of harassing my agent on an hourly basis for news, except my agent is my brother. Also, he’s stopped taking my calls.

The other thing: as has been amply discussed elsewhere, it’s turning into a rough development season for lady-written and lady-centric shows. Lots of people have theories about why – the most persuasive one I’ve heard is that procedural cop-based shows, where it’s more about the cases than the characters, do better in re-runs and syndication – but whatever the reason, it’s hard out there if you wrote a show about a lady who is not a cop with a male partner, and whose description does not begin (and sometimes end!) with the word “beautiful.”

Bottom line: we are still hopeful….and I am so incredibly grateful for everyone who emailed the network or signed a petition saying they’d like to see my show on the air. Seriously: touched. Grateful. Thank you (and if you haven’t done either, it couldn’t hurt to do it now.)

In other news, books! I still write ‘em!

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER comes out in paperback on May 4, and my new novel, FLY AWAY HOME, will be published on July 13. I just saw the cover, which is magnificent, and utilizes many of the colors and images from the BFF cover, only without a woman picking her bathing suit out of her butt crack.

FLY AWAY HOME is about Sylvie Woodruff, an ex-lawyer and long-married Senator’s wife, who finds out, as one does, that her husband’s been having an affair. The book was born out of my fascination with betrayed political wives from Hillary Clinton to Silda Spitzer to Jenny Sanford to Elizabeth Edwards to Dina Matos McGreevey. I wondered, Why would a woman stand on a podium beside a man who’s betrayed her so profoundly? And what happens when the press conference is over and the cameras are off? FLY AWAY HOME takes a stab at answering those questions, through the character of the disgraced Senator’s wife and his two daughters, one a physician in Philadelphia and the other a recovering addict in New York.

Will there be a book tour? Why yes, there will! Like last year, I’ll be giving away galleys and holding polls and contests on Twitter and my Facebook fan page to figure out which cities I’ll visit. So don’t start lobbying now, but in a few months, get ready to get your book club/book store/best friend and relatives to write in and vote.

Finally, in other bookish news, on February 18, you can support the Philly Spells Writing Lab and hear sisters Elizabeth Gilbert (EAT, PRAY, LOVE; COMMITTED) and her sister Catherine Gilbert Murdock (PRINCESS BEN, FRONT AND CENTER) talking about writing, relationships and more at the Loews Hotel. Details here. Should be fun!

2010-01-27T22:27:00.004-05:00

Still no news from the network...but the We Want Weiner on TV story continues to spread.

Read about efforts to get the pilot I wrote turned into an actual TV show, with actors and commercials and Very Special Episodes, on TheWrap.com, and in Entertainment Weekly's Shelf Life blog.

You can also follow me on Twitter where I'm @jenniferweiner, and learning that the waiting really is the hardest part.

And you can sign the petition to turn my script into TV reality -- but you've done that already, right?

Good night, sweet dreams, and good things for tomorrow.

2010-01-27T16:31:00.002-05:00

In the department of no news is good news...

It's Wednesday afternoon, I'm home with a six-year-old with a stomach virus, and I still haven't heard whether ABC is giving my pilot "Jane and Dick" the green light or the network equivalent of a swirlie. Hope springs eternal, so I'm still hoping.

In the meantime, I just want to thank everyone who signed and spread the word about the petition to get the show picked up. I am so grateful for all the support, the signatures, the good wishes, and the boxes of Thin Mints. Especially the boxes of Thin Mints.

If you haven't signed yet, or know someone who wants to, or if someone owes you a favor, please send them here. Or you can email the network here.

I emailed my Nanna last night to plead for her signature, with the plan of impressing the network with my vast influence among the coveted 90-and-over demographic, but so far? Nanna hasn't signed.

I'm not taking it personally.

Yet.

2010-01-25T08:59:00.002-05:00

One more thing...there's now a petition to get my pilot picked up! If you want more Weiner on your TV (and really, who wouldn't?), you can go sign it at http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/weineronABC.

My Mom already did!

Thanks, and shortly we will return to our regularly scheduled programming.

2010-01-22T22:01:00.002-05:00

So, just because I don't have enough going on, what with the books and the kids and the very slow running, I've been working on TV pilot.

The show is called “Jane and Dick” and it’s about a smart, funny female attorney who’s turned her father’s law firm into a version of career Utopia – an all-female, kid-friendly law firm where the formerly mommy-tracked lawyers can have it all. Jane’s life looks perfect: she’s engaged to Steve, a handsome doctor, she works with her best friend Ellie, and, when we meet her, she’s up for a big promotion.

Into this paradise comes the man she’s secretly loved since she was an awkward, insecure fourteen-year-old – her beautiful big sister’s old boyfriend Dick. Now a cutthroat litigator with an active social life, Dick’s been hired by Jane’s Dad to bring a little balance into the firm. Jane knows she shouldn’t have feelings for him – she’s engaged, he’s a colleague, and he might still have a thing for her big sister – but one look at him and all those old feelings come bubbling back.

It’s a show about family, and work, and love. It’s got that funny/sad thing that I do, along with a very relatable, very human narrator in Jane….and thanks to my co-writer, Michael Reisz, a lawyer himself who’s written for “Boston Legal,” it also has legal cases that actually make sense!

When I wrote it, I thought about the shows I loved – “Ally McBeal,” only with more realistic skirts and no starving cast members; “Moonlighting,” with that great sexual tension, the female friendships on "Sex and the City." I also thought about the kind of voices and heroines I want to see on television – nuanced, smart but struggling, engaging and endearing and well-rounded in every sense of the word.

The network is making its final decisions about which pilots get the thumbs-up. If you want to see “Jane and Dick” on the air, please head over here and say I WANT WEINER (you can, of course, say whatever you want, but I really like the idea of network executives getting lots of emails that say I WANT WEINER).

Thanks in advance for your support! And, if this happens, look for many funny blog entries about the wonderful world of casting and shooting a pilot.

2010-01-13T21:20:00.003-05:00

Hello and happy New Year!

Blogging’s going to be light for the next little while, as I am working hard to get FLY AWAY HOME in good shape for its summer release. Today I wrote a bad sex scene – or, rather, a scene where people have bad, unsatisfying sex. At one point, there's a description how the man jams his hand inside of woman as if he’s trying to extract the last olive from a jar.

I’m proud of that.

Anyhow! If you’re bored in the meantime, you can pick up the February issue of In Style magazine and read my interview with Heidi Klum, who was disconcertingly gorgeous, pleasantly down-to-earth, and dauntingly competent. I kept telling myself, “sure, I could have four kids and a bunch of different jobs and look great if I had all the help she does.” Then I remembered that I, too, have a lot of help, and am, still, a long way from Heidi Klum, in terms of productivity, reproduction and gorgeousness.

Oh, well.

You can always follow me on Twitter, where lately I confessed that I don't really care about which white guy and his all-male writing staff gets "The Tonight Show" slot. Seriously, can we get some ladies writing late-night jokes instead of, you know, servicing the late-night host? Please?

You could also go see “Leap Year,” starring Amy Adams, beloved by Roger Ebert, which is a sweetly diverting romantic comedy and was produced by my brother Jake.

You could read a good book. I loved AWAIT YOUR REPLY by Dan Chaon. It’s about identity – its theft and its reconstruction – and it’s creepy and twisty and surprising and disturbing. If you like Stephen King, Peter Straub and Nicholas Christopher, you will dig it.

Another book I loved was BLAME by Michelle Huneven. I resisted this book for a while, based, unfairly, on its blurbs. But plenty happens in BLAME, which is about a professor named Patsy who, driving drunk, kills a mother and child, and how her life falls apart, and comes back together, in the aftermath. It answers one of the most interesting questions I’ve seen a novel take on: what if the worst thing that happened to you turned out to be the best thing? It’s wonderfully written, but not in a way you’re meant to notice which is, to my mind, the best kind of wonderful writing.

Happy reading, happy viewing, and more soon.

2010-01-01T10:26:00.005-05:00

Last week, an editor at the Times wrote and asked for my New Year’s reading resolutions. After I scraped myself off the floor, I submitted about a paragraph’s worth of resolutions, which got whittled down to two sentences (with a hyperlink for Gary Shteyngart, and none for me, because, other than the bestseller list, what would they link to? The Times, she does not cover my books).

Here's the in-full, annotated version of what I submitted:

In 2010, I will not reflexively assume that all-male best-books-of-the-year lists or book reviews that ignore romance and chick lit are evidence of a vast sexist plot. It could totally be a coincidence. Yes, it could. (Author’s note: the editor didn’t want to include this because she argued that not everyone was familiar with the Publishers Weekly kerfuffle after its best-books-of-the-year list included no women. Also, I assume that it’s regarded as bad form to let authors trash your section in your section).

In terms of the Russians, I will read Anna Karenina, and stop using Gary Shteyngart’s last name as a curse word, even though it is extremely effective. (Author’s note: this is true. I actually do use Gary Shteyngart’s last name as a curse word, and have ever since the Times ran two reviews of his book, plus a lengthy wet kiss of a profile in the magazine. This is nothing personal against Shteyngart who, male acquaintances assure me, is actually quite funny – I’d use Charles Bock’s last name if it was a little more dirty-sounding).

If an author says her favorite beach read is “The Mill on the Floss,” I will nod politely, instead of rolling my eyes and muttering “as if” or “pretentious much?” (Author’s note: I will not link to the writer who swore, in the Times, that she does indeed shlep “The Mill on the Floss” to the beach each summer. I will merely note that I read this and muttered ‘Shteyngart!’)

I resolve to write an edgy, creepily personal account of my devotion to an outre sexual practice so that my work will be reviewed by the Times and I myself will become a Times reviewer and change the paper’s policies from the inside out. Toni Bentley, watch your ass. (Author’s note: Toni Bentley is the author of a memoir called The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir, about her decades-long love affair with anal sex. The Times reviewed it – a little skeptically – and, ever since then Bentley, a former ballet dancer, has been reviewing regularly for the paper, writing dismissive reviews of other women's memoirs in which she accuses them of oversharing. I don’t get it.)

Finally, I will not cyberstalk Katherine Dunn or Tabitha King in hopes of convincing them to publish new novels and will instead confine myself to the occasional plaintive blog post. (Author’s note: I understand that Dunn, author of GEEK LOVE, is maybe too busy putting the hurt on petty thieves to write much. However, Stephen King’s book “On Writing” mentioned a Tabitha King book that has never seen the light of publication. So would someone, as a New Year’s favor to her fans, publish it already? Seriously? Please?)

So there you have it: my resolutions. New Year’s greetings from Mexico, where I’m swimming, sunning, chasing the toddler and revising FLY AWAY HOME. May all of your dreams for 2010 come true!

2009-12-18T12:39:00.003-05:00

And guess what else? BEST FRIENDS FOREVER was an answer on Jeopardy! last night.

The best part about this -- I now know which of my friends, friends of friends, friends of Fran, Facebook friends and Twitter followers watch Jeopardy!

It's more than you'd think.

2009-12-15T12:22:00.002-05:00

Breaking blog silence...

...to ask this burning question: What, exactly, is a nightclub hostess?

Is it a waitress? A procurer? A female maitre d'?

Why didn't "nightclub hostess" come up as a possible career option on the test I took in the guidance counselors' office a million years ago?

Yes, in between finishing up the book that will be coming out this summer, and writing a TV pilot about a single lady lawyer who re-meets the love of her life when he comes to work in her law firm, I am fascinated by the case of Tiger Woods.

Oh, and by the way, the book has a name. It's called FLY AWAY HOME.

2009-09-30T14:23:00.003-04:00

Good lord!

It's been months -- months! -- since I updated here. And this is just going to be a teensy little update, prompted mostly by the fact that I'm pretty sure my Nanna thinks I'm dead.

Which I'm not! I've been keeping up over on Twitter (@jenniferweiner), and on my Facebook fan page, newly revitalized because I maxed out my friend limit on my personal page (so if you're waiting to be approved as a friend, it's not that I don't want you as a friend, it's that Facebook says I can't have you, so please check out the fan page, where I'm trying to post the same stuff).

What else? I'm finishing the first draft of a new book, tentatively titled HOME BY THE SEA and tentatively scheduled for publication next summer. What's it about? Three very different women -- a fifty-four-year-old political wife, a thirty-six-year-old married working mother and an eighteen-year-old teenager with a secret, who are all coping with relationships in crisis, and who find each other, in a home. By the sea. Where they learn lessons, tell jokes, discover their own strengths, and possibly commit a crime. Not telling yet! Anyhow, there is humor and heartbreak and romance and sex scenes both tender and inadvertently hilarious, plus a passage in which one of the women says that she hates the shape of her husband's head, and observes that once you hate the shape of someone's head, the relationship's in trouble.

I'm reading my way through Harlan Coben's entire ouevre. There's nothing as much fun as finding a new author you like, and realizing there's a dozen books you can enjoy without having to wait for the next one.

And I'm getting ready for some welcome fall weather, and Halloween. The big girl wants to be a computer. She says the baby can be a cable. "Not a mouse?" I asked. No, she said. "Maybe just a cable."

More soon...

2009-08-06T17:58:00.003-04:00

For the last two weeks I've been trying to form an opinion about "More to Love" -- it seems like the kind of thing I should have an opinion about, right? -- but I cannot find my place on the impressed-horrified continuum. Yes, the ladies seem kind of needy and pathetic...but aren't all of the contestants on every reality dating show needy and pathetic? Yes, they're drunk, but why should big girls in bathing suits be any different from the skinny girls in theirs?

Clearly, I need to keep thinking about it.

Meanwhile, here is Maureen Corrigan on BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, on NPR. Is my mother kvelling? Why, yes, she is! (My personal favorite part of the review -- writing a book deemed good enough to sit on a shelf with Susan Isaac's SHINING THROUGH, which is one of my favorite books of all time. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favor and take it to the beach).

Finally, today I was talking with a reporter from the Cape Cod Times, and the topic turned, as it often does, to Richard Russo, who I will not accuse of style-biting, even though I really think only one writer per summer should be allowed a girlie beach scene on the cover, and Cape Cod-set epiphanies inside.

I was confessing that I've never actually read a Richard Russo book...but I have a good reason.

The summer GOOD IN BED came out was also the summer that EMPIRE FALLS was published. That summer, I spent many kid-free weeks traipsing from one book store to another, where I would often read for crowds whose numbers could be counted on one hand, with fingers left over, and I'd sign copies of the book, in hopes that the store could foist them off on unsuspecting readers.

My mother would accompany me to some of these visits and, being a friendly sort, would frequently strike up conversations with patrons, who would sometimes ask what she was reading.

"Oh, I just read the best book," my mother would say. "It was funny, and sad, and true to life...it had everything!"

Here it comes, I'd think, readying myself for the maternal endorsement. Then my mother would pick up a paperback and press it into her new friend's hands.

"EMPIRE FALLS!" she'd say. "It's soooo good!"

After the fifth or sixth time this happened, I pulled Fran aside and explained that I doubted that Mrs. Russo was endorsing my book, so she needed to quit pimping Richard Russo's work. Which I still haven't read, but probably should.

So now it's back to work...but if you want more of me, I find that I'm posting on Twitter (@jenniferweiner) and on Facebook a lot more than the old blog these days. Come find me there...I give books away to people stuck on their library waiting lists!

2009-07-26T19:56:00.003-04:00

The BEST FRIENDS FOREVER book tour is mostly over – although I’ll be in West Dennis on the Cape tomorrow, and in Chatham on August 20, and in Toronto at some point soon. Meanwhile, this seemed like a good time to round up some of the best questions I got asked on the road. Thanks to everyone who came to see me – it was a real pleasure meeting so many of you as I made my increasingly bleary way across the country.

Feel free to keep in touch on Facebook – the all-new, frequently-updated fan page is right here...and if you've got a book-related question I didn't answer, post it on the fan page and I will try to comment. I'm also on Twitter (I’m @jenniferweiner).

“What are you reading these days?”

I loved Julie Klam’s memoir PLEASE EXCUSE MY DAUGHTER, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s ADMISSION, Kathryn Stockett’s THE HELP and I’m currently reading Steve Hely’s HOW I BECAME A FAMOUS NOVELIST, which is snort-out-loud funny, even if his fake-o best seller list has a book entitled HOW EVA GOT RICH, GOT THIN, AND GOT OVER HIM, which I am pretty sure I wrote.

And if I didn’t, I’m going to.

“How is BEST FRIENDS FOREVER different than your other books?”

For one thing, it has has a male main character, which was very interesting to write. After the first draft, I read a review of a book called something like HOW NOT TO WRITE YOUR NOVEL, which warned about introducing a male character by having him masturbate. Of course, that had been Jordan’s first scene, so I had to quickly write a new introduction, where he’s much more heroic and his hands aren’t down his pants.

“Why is your hair so straight?”
Asked by: my Nanna.

Last summer, I got that Brazilian straightening treatment, and it has changed my life, which I know sounds ridiculous, but is nevertheless true. After a lifetime of struggling with my wavy, fine hair, which lies on top of my head like an undercooked pancake with poor self-esteem, I can now blow it out in five minutes, zip over it with a flatiron, and it actually looks as if it’s been styled by someone who knows what he or she is doing. It’s expensive, but it lasts for three months, and I cannot imagine ever having un-straightened hair again.

“What do you think about ‘More to Love?’”
Asked in: Atlanta

Short answer: I haven’t seen it yet, so I’m withholding judgment.

Longer answer: I always worry about the fat-people minstrel show aspect – the close-ups of parts that jiggle and wobble, the teary confessions of misery and loneliness…and it looks a little cheesy and exploitative. Then again, all TV dating shows are cheesy and exploitative, and have teary confessions of misery and loneliness, so why shouldn’t big girls have a chance to be cheesily exploited, and weep through their makeup in the back of a limousine after the bachelor sends them packing?

Also: Emme is hosting. Emme is good people, so that eases my mind. I’ll report back after I’ve actually seen the show.

“How’s Jake?”
Asked in: San Francisco, by my Uncle Freddie, in a question that totally confounded the audience, whose members demanded to know who Jake was.

Jake, who is my brother, is fantastic. So are Joe and Molly, my other sibs, but Uncle Freddie didn’t ask about them.

“What are you working on now?”

Honestly, figuring out what time zone I’m in, and whether Delta will ever recover the Kindle I left on the Atlanta-to-St. Louis flight (it’s not looking good, particularly since the not-terrifically-helpful Delta lady seemed perplexed as to why I was so upset about a lost "candle"). Beyond that, I’m putting the pieces in place for the next novel, which I think will include a betrayed political wife in the Silda Spitzer model….I’m fascinated by those women who stand at press conferences as their politician spouses confess the most outrageous wrongdoings, and very curious about what happens when the cameras are off. God willing, it'll be published same time next year...and I'll be back on the road!

2009-07-23T00:51:00.003-04:00

The BEST FRIENDS FOREVER book tour is OVER...and it ended with a bang!

At five o'clock, I got The Call. My editor was on the line. My publisher was, too. BEST FRIENDS FOREVER is a number one New York Times best seller.

I think I screamed so loud that they could hear me in New York. And I'm in San Francisco!

Eight hours later, I'm still thrilled, and amazed, and humbled, and so, so grateful to everyone who bought the book, which I hope you're enjoying.

Thanks, especially, to everyone who's friended me on Facebook and followed me on Twitter who came out to say hi, snap a picture, drink Champagne (you're damn right I had Champagne at the reading tonight!) and ask me to sign their book READ THIS BITCHES. I loved meeting you all.

So now I get to go home again, hang up the dresses, put away the heels, and go back to the family, and the work in progress. It's a little bittersweet -- as hard as the travel is, it's fun to be on the road, meeting everyone, wearing the grownup clothes, zipping through the airports unencumbered by stroller and sippie cups and Ziplock'd snacks and diaper bag, and the kids who require all of the above. It's fun to drink grownup beverages, use grownup words, and stay in fancy hotels where sometimes the pastry chef will whip up a dark-chocolate replica of your book, just because.

But it's back to life, back to reality.

I'm sure I'll have some funny tales from the road when I'm home and rested, but meanwile, if you're looking for another book, let me recommend Lizzie Skurnick's ode to the young adult fiction of our (okay, my) youth, SHELF DISCOVERY. I've got an essay in there about, natch, Judy Blume's BLUBBER.

Enjoy, and again, thanks to EVERYONE who bought the book. I truly hope you enjoy reading it as much as I loved writing it, and I'm very grateful to you all.

2009-07-17T15:29:00.002-04:00

Greetings from Atlanta! Lovely, cool, temperate Atlanta, with its cozy, intimate airport!

I hope you've all picked up your copies of BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, and I hope to see lots of you on the road -- I'm in Atlanta tonight, St. Louis on Saturday, Framingham, MA on Sunday, Lincolnshire, IL, on Monday, El Cerrito on Tuesday and San Francisco on Wednesday.

All of the times and places are here...but meanwhile, a special treat (heh) for those who can't join me...the Free Library podcast of my Wednesday-night reading!

Warning: it is filthy.

Seriously filthy. I don't know what's gotten into me this book tour, but I seem to be saying "cock" a lot.

Enjoy! And enjoy BEST FRIENDS FOREVER!

2009-07-14T13:41:00.003-04:00

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER is in stores today!

You can read about the book in USA Today, today...and you can see me on the road.

Today, July 14: New York City, 7:30 p.m., Lincoln Triangle Barnes & Noble

Wednesday, July 15: Princeton, Eno Terra Restaurant, noon

Wednesday, July 15: Philadelphia: Free Library Central Branch, 7:30 p.m

Thursday, July 16: Washington, DC, Borders Bailey's Crossroads, 7:30 p.m.

Friday, July 17: Atlanta, East Cobb Borders, 7 p.m.

Saturday, July 18: St. Louis: The Ethical Society, 9001 Clayton Road, 8 p.m. (please note: there WILL be books for sale if you want to buy one)

Sunday, July 19: Boston, Barnes & Noble, Framingham, 3 p.m.

Monday, July 20: Lincolnshire, IL, Stevenson High School Performing Arts Center, 7 p.m. (there WILL be books for sale!)

Tuesday, July 21: San Francisco, Barnes & Noble El Cerrito, 7 p.m.

Wednesday, July 22, San Francisco, Book Passage in the Ferry Building, 8 p.m.

Hope to see lots of you on the road...and I hope you enjoy BEST FRIENDS FOREVER!

2009-07-10T11:04:00.003-04:00

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER comes out Tuesday (but you knew that already, right?)

In the meantime, three more events in St. Louis AND San Francisco, which were the top two vote-getters in my Facebook poll. Come see me...

Saturday, July 18: St. Louis, The Ethical Society of St. Louis (9001 Clayton Road), 8:00 pm

Tuesday, July 21: El Cerrito, Barnes and Noble El Cerrito, (El Cerrito Plaza), 7:00 pm

Wednesday, July 22: San Francisco, Book Passage Bookstore in the San Francisco Ferry Building (1 Ferry Building, #42), 8:00 pm'

Finally, a note for Kindle users -- I know the book is currently priced at $14 for Kindle, as opposed to $9.99 you pay for most titles. Amazon is responsible for setting the price. My understanding is that they list titles they expect to do well for $14 and then, after a week or two, the price drops to $9.99...but because it's Amazon, not the publisher, making the decision, I can't tell you how the price got set, or tell you when the price will change. All I can say is that I hope you decide that BEST FRIENDS FOREVER is worth $14, and that you enjoy the read.

2009-07-02T08:06:00.003-04:00

New blog at the Huffington Post about bad reviews, bad behavior, and why your "friends" are not your friends.

New event in Princeton, at noon on Wednesday, July 15, at Eno Terra restaurant, to raise money for 101, a nonprofit organization that provides college scholarships to Princeton High School students. $50 gets you lunch, wine and the pleasure of my company...and BEST FRIENDS FOREVER will be for sale! To sign up, call Eno Terra at 609-497-1777. Seating is limited!

And my closet and I are featured in the new Entertainment Weekly...so if you want to see where I write (and why I'm there), pick up a copy.

2009-06-30T10:33:00.003-04:00

Two weeks until BEST FRIENDS FOREVER!

In the meantime, you can read more about the book, what inspired it, and how (and where) I wrote it, at Chick Lit is Not Dead, The Mummy Chronicles, Laura Reviews, and in The Hartford Courant, which lists it as a "summer book that doesn't feel like homework."

Don't forget to go to my Facebook fan page and vote for me to visit your city on my book tour.

Last but not least, the first Fran story of the summer.

Me (calling to daughter in back seat): "Lucy, see if you can spot Pilgrim Monument!"

Fran: "That's not Pilgrim Monument. That's a water tower."

Me: "No, it's over there."

Fran: "Are you sure? I can barely make it out with all this fog."

Me: "Look harder."

Fran: "Oh. Right. There it is. Gee, I can hardly see it!"

Me: "Yeah. That's why I thought looking for it would be a fun game. For my six-year-old."

Pause.

Fran: "You better not be Tweeting this."

2009-06-26T17:05:00.002-04:00

Two new tour dates have been added to the summer schedule, in addition to the dates in NYC, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago:

Washington, DC, Thursday, July 16 at 7:30 p.m., Bailey's Crossroads Borders, and Atlanta: Friday, July 17th at 7pm, Atlanta/East Cobb Borders.

Still don't see your city? There is hope! Go to my fan page on Facebook at http://facebook.com/jenniferweiner. Once you become a fan, you can nominate your city in the comments section of my status update. Top five cities move on to the finals, and the city that gets the most votes gets me on Saturday, July 18.

Vote early and often!

2009-06-24T19:39:00.003-04:00

With less than three weeks until the July 14 publication of BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, I am delighted to finally announce my tour dates.

Tuesday, July 14: New York City, Lincoln Triangle Barnes & Noble (Broadway at 66th), 7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, July 15: Philadelphia, Free Library of Philadelphia Central Branch (1901 Vine Street), 7:30 p.m.

Sunday, July 19: Framingham, MA: Barnes & Noble, 1 Worcester Road, 3 p.m.

Monday, July 20: Lincolnshire, IL, Stevenson High School, 1 Stevenson Drive, 7 p.m. (The event is free, but you have to register for tickets ahead of time, which you can do by clicking here).

Monday, July 27: Dennis, MA, with Jane Green and Lynn Kiele Bonasia, Lighthouse Inn, 4 p.m. (This event is a fundraiser for the Dennis Public Library. Tickets are $50, the link to buy them is here).

Tuesday, August 20, Chatham, MA, Wequassett Inn Resort, 11 a.m.. (Tickets are $80, which includes lunch and a signed book. To buy them, go here.)

There is still the possibility of a second Boston event on Tuesday, July 21, and a reading in Washington the night of the 16th. I'll post details as soon as I get them, but for now, mark your calendars and I hope to see you all on the road!

2009-06-11T22:07:00.003-04:00

I know we're still four weeks and change away from the release of BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, but, OMG! The New York Times actually had something to say about something I've written! And that something was nice!

In her annual chick-lit roundup, Janet Maslin writes: "Jennifer Weiner, another creator of widely popular female characters, injects an element of suspense into her latest, “Best Friends Forever.” This book begins on an unexpected note of violence, but the friendship of the title is at its heart. Two estranged onetime high-school chums — one now a television weathergirl and the other one of Ms. Weiner’s lovable, snack-obsessed frumps — are thrown together to find out what happened in that opening scene and to hash out old grievances. Ms. Weiner’s characters are warmly and realistically drawn, even if the weathergirl needs to be told, about the Weathermen, “those guys weren’t actual meteorologists.” Ms. Weiner writes comfortably about the real world."

Sweet!

You can read the first chapter of BEST FRIENDS FOREVER right here (it's a very short first chapter, and I'll be posting a longer excerpt shortly). The book comes out July 14. I'll be in New York City at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble the night of the 14th, then in Philadelphia at the Free Library the following night, and in Chicago on July 20.

More dates and specifics to come, but for now, woo hoo!

2009-06-04T14:13:00.002-04:00

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER (hey, did you see that Time Magazine picked it as a summer beach read?) is coming in about six week, which means I'm thinking a lot about publicity and promotion.

This year, for the first time since 2001, my publisher's campaign contained no print element at all. No big day-of-publication New York Times ad, no little Times ad, no ad in any paper or magazine at all. Just lots and lots of advertising on the Internet and on the radio.

On the one hand, I want the ads to target potential readers as specifically as possible, to meet them where they live, which means Facebook and Twitter, gossip and fashion websites, top 40 radio, mom-blogs and the like.

On the other hand, as a former print journalist, the tacit admission that newspapers and magazines don't matter much anymore is a little hard to take.

So when it came time to supplement my publisher’s efforts, I looked around for a print component to compliment the plan already in place, and quickly arrived at People magazine.

The ad's ready to go. The date's been chosen. Now comes the big roll of the dice: who will be on the cover the week the ad runs?

A few weeks ago, the Times published a fascinating piece about the people on People a few weeks ago about how the editors choose their covers, about what works and what doesn’t, and how “at this point Farrah has to die. It’s the only cover left for her.” (their words. Their words! Not mine!).

Evidently, we've all had our fill of Madonna, whereas Jon and Kate are as huge as their brood (which totally makes sense – I’ve seen about five minutes of the show, but, thanks to People, I have many elaborate theories and opinions about their marriage).

Death is big, whether it's a dead princess, dead pundit, or dead crocodile hunter. Weight gain and weight loss seem to be guaranteed sellers – who doesn’t love the story of a dramatic transformation or, better yet, the sad tale of a former skinny who’s fallen off the wagon?

But celebrities are tricky, and the editors acknowledged that it’s hard to find the sweet spot of a subject appealing to the magazine's wide range of readers, who are diverse in terms of age (boomers and x'ers), geography (red states and blue), and whether they care about NASCAR, country music and Heidi and Spencer.

Which leads me to this question: what would be the absolute, ultimate, jaw-dropping, earth-shaking, cannot-look-away People cover to run July 21st (available on newsstands in major cities 7/15?)

Brad and Angelina Get Hitched? Brad and Angie break up? Brad leaves Angie for Jen?

Diana: Back from the Dead…and Pregnant?

Kirstie Alley, thin once more? Valerie Bertinelli, heavier again?

A secret royal love child? A shocking celebrity death? Baby down a well? Farrah down a well?

Hmm…

2009-05-26T12:02:00.002-04:00

The event last week in Cambridge was fantastic: funny and inspirational and a pleasure to attend, even if I did get totally tongue-tied in the presence of some of my favorite authors (I spent the whole book-signing session asking Tom Perrotta if he wanted a crab puff or stuffed mushroom cap. Of course, Tom Perrotta's reading was about how he does not eat a great many foods. Including mushrooms. Sorry, Tom!)

Best of all, my tell-me-a-joke-for-a-ticket contest netted me tons of great jokes, which I am now delighted to share with all of you, on a rainy Tuesday that feels like a Monday with none of the benefits (am I the only one missing my programs?)

Also, if you are feeling charitable, check out the Free Library of Philadelphia's wish list. As locals know, the library's funding has been cut, and libraries are in desperate need of children's books for the summer. You can find the wish list here. First five readers who buy a book and email me proof at jen@jenniferweiner.com get a signed copy of BEST FRIENDS FOREVER!

Without further ado, a few of my favorites. Winners, your books are in the mail!

A Male Blonde Joke, from Jen McDevitt Moran

A blonde guy gets home early from work and hears strange noises coming from the bedroom. He rushes upstairs to find his wife naked on the bed, sweating and panting.

"What's going on?" he says.

"I'm having a heart attack" cries the woman.

He rushes downstairs to grab the phone...but just as he's dialing, his 4 year old son comes and says "DADDY! DADDY! UNCLE TED'S HIDING IN YOUR CLOSET AND HE'S GOT NO CLOTHES ON!"

The guy slams the phone down and storms upstairs into the bedroom, past his screaming wife, and rips open the wardrobe door. Sure enough, there's his brother, totally naked and cowering on the closet floor.

"You rotten S.O.B.," says the husband, "My wife's having a heart attack and you're running around NAKED SCARING THE KIDS!"

From Sarah Beal...

Two guys are sitting at a bar. One starts to insult the other one. He screams, “I slept with your mother!” The bar gets quiet as everyone listens to see what the other will do. The first again yells, “I SLEPT WITH YOUR MOTHER!”

The other says, “Go home dad you’re drunk.”

From my mother's friend and book club member Lynne Hawkins...

With all the new technology regarding fertility recently, a 65-year-old friend of mine was able to give birth. When she was discharged from the hospital and went home, I went to visit:

"May I see the new baby?' I asked

"Not yet,' she said 'I'll make coffee and we can visit for a while first."

Thirty minutes had passed, and I asked, 'May I see the new baby now?'

'No, not yet,' she said.

After another few minutes had elapsed, I asked again, 'May I see the baby now?'

"No, not yet,' replied my friend.

Growing very impatient, I asked, 'Well, when can I see the baby?'

"WHEN HE CRIES!' she told me.

"WHEN HE CRIES?' I demanded. 'Why do I have to wait until he CRIES?'

"BECAUSE I FORGOT WHERE I PUT HIM, O.K.?!!'

From Rhonda Todtman...

Quasimodo was getting on in years and needed an assistant in the bell tower. So he placed an ad, and a few days later a young man with no arms applies for the job.

Quasimodo: Did you even read the ad? You have to ring the bells!
Armless Man: Yeah, I read it. Do you need help or not?
Q: Well, how are you going to do it?

With that the armless man jumped up and banged his head on the lowest bell and, sure enough, it started to ring.

Q: Doesn’t that hurt?
AM: Nah, I can do it all day long.
Q: Well, those other two bells are kind of high.
AM: If I get all the bells to ring at the same time, do I get the job?
Q: Sure.

The man took a few steps back, took a run and a leap and banged his head against the second bell and it started to ring. He then went back as far as he could, ran as fast as he could, jumped as high as he could, but missed the bell by an inch and went sailing through the window falling thirty stories to his death. Quasimodo rushed down to the courtyard where a crowd had gathered around the dead body. A villager called out, “Does anyone know who this man is?”

“I don’t know who he is,“ said Quasimodo, “but his face rings a bell!”

But wait, there's more!

The very next day the armless man’s identical twin brother comes in for the job.

Q: Your brother died yesterday trying out for this job.
Armless Man's Identical Twin Brother: My brother was a klutz. What do I have to do?
Q: Just get all three bells to ring at once and you’ve got the job.
AMITB: No problem.

With that the man jumped from where he was standing and hit the first bell. He took a few steps back, took a little run and jumped to hit the second bell. He then went back as far as he could, ran as fast as he could, jumped as high as he could, but missed the bell by an inch and went sailing through the window falling thirty stories to his death. Quasimodo rushed down to the courtyard where a crowd had gathered around the dead body. A villager called out, “Does anyone know who this man is?”

“I don’t know who he is, “ Quasimodo said, “but he’s a dead ringer for his brother.”

From Shannon Benton...

A distinguished young woman on a flight from Ireland asked the priest beside her, 'Father, may I ask a favour?

"Of course child What may I do for you?'

"Well, I bought an expensive woman's electronic hair dryer for my Mother's birthday that is unopened and well over the Customs limits, and I'm afraid they'll confiscate it. Is there any way you could carry it through customs for me? Under your robes perhaps?'

"I would love to help you, dear, but I must warn you: I will not lie.'

"With your honest face, Father, no one will question you.'

When they got to Customs, she let the priest go ahead of her. The official asked, 'Father, do you have anything to declare?'

"From the top of my head down to my waist, I have nothing to declare.'

The official thought this answer strange, so asked, 'And what do you have to declare from your waist to the floor?'

"I have a marvelous instrument designed to be used on a woman, but which is,to date, unused.'

Roaring with laughter, the official said, 'Go ahead, Father. Next!'

From Lee Ann Axford:

What did the elephant say to the naked man?

That's cute, but can it pick up peanuts?

From Susan Gillan, my six-year-old's favorite...

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Smell mop.
Smell mop who?

And from Julie Frankel:

A man and his wife were working in their garden one day.

The man looks over at his wife and says: "Your butt is getting really big I mean really big. I bet your butt is bigger than the barbecue."

With that he proceeded to get a measuring tape and measure the grill, then went over to where his wife was working and measured his wife's bottom. "Yes, I was right, your butt is two inches wider than the barbecue!!!" The woman chose to ignore her husband.

Later that night in bed, the husband was feeling a little frisky. He made some advances towards his wife who completely brushes him off. "What's wrong?" he asks. She answers: "Do you really think I'm going to fire up this big-ass grill for one little weenie?"

and...

One morning the husband returns after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap. Although not familiar with the lake, the wife decides to take the boat out. She motors out a short distance, anchors, and reads her book.

Along comes a game warden in his boat. He pulls up alongside the woman and says, "Good morning Ma'am. What are you doing?"

"Reading a book," she replies, (thinking, "Isn't that obvious?")

"You're in a restricted fishing area," he informs her.

"I'm sorry officer, but I'm not fishing, I'm reading."

"Yes, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment. I'll have to take you in and write you up."

"If you do that, I'll have to charge you with sexual assault," says the woman.

"But I haven't even touched you," says the game warden.

"That's true, but you have all the equipment. For all I know you could start at any moment."

"Have a nice day ma'am," and he left.

Thanks again to all the winners, and thanks in advance to everyone buying books for the library.

2009-05-15T19:39:00.004-04:00

Congratulations to Lee Ann Axford, Sarah Beal, Jen McDevitt Moran, Betsy Young and Kelly Bowes, my lucky, funny winners for the Cambridge event Monday night. I can't wait to meet you all!

I'm still going through the jokes and sending out the handful of remaining advanced reader's copies of BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, but here are two of my favorites, courtesy of Kim Evans Meshanko who, sadly, lives nowhere near Cambridge:

Say Something Positive

A husband and wife are getting ready for bed. The wife is standing in front of a full-length mirror taking a hard look at herself.

"You know, dear," she says, "I look in the mirror, and I see an old woman. My face is all wrinkled, my hair is grey, my shoulders are hunched over, I've got fat legs, and my arms are all flabby." She turns to her husband and says, "Tell me something positive to make me feel better about myself."

He studies hard for a moment thinking about it and then says in a soft, thoughtful voice, "Well, there's nothing wrong with your eyesight."

The Wife

A woman accompanied her husband to the doctor's office.

After his checkup, the doctor called the wife into his office alone. He said, "Your husband is suffering from a very severe stress disorder. If you don't follow my instructions carefully, your husband will surely die.

"Each morning, fix him a healthy breakfast. Be pleasant at all times. For lunch make him a nutritious meal. For dinner prepare an especially nice meal for him.

"Don't burden him with chores. Don't discuss your problems with him; it will only make his stress worse. Do not nag him. Most importantly, make love to him regularly.

"If you can do this for the next 10 months to a year, I think your husband will regain his health completely."

On the way home, the husband asked his wife, "What did the doctor say?"

"He said you're going to die," she replied.

In other news, I let my geek flag fly and blogged about Star Trek for The Huffington Post.

Oh, and the New York Times still thinks all chick lit sucks (along with all chick flicks, and chick TV shows). None of them are funny, says one Jincy Willett...who, presumably, has made an exhaustive study of the genre and read, or viewed, each and every example of book, film, and TV show, because the Times wouldn't just allow her to make that kind of blanket condemnation without being able to back it up, right?

Dissing chick lit is nothing new from the Gray Lady. At this point, I'm almost convinced that the paper does just to get chick lit fans, and authors, riled up enough to link to their increasingly irrelevant book review (I don't know about you, but I didn't hear a lot of chatter about last week's cover story about that Finnish 9-11 novel).

This time, at least the reviewer makes no bones about her biases. She describes herself as "an aging, bitter, unpleasant woman" (not that there's anything wrong with that!). Also, her website's homepage purports to have been written by a "Professor Twitmore D. Twatface."

Huh. Maybe her sense of humor is just a lot more advanced than the rest of ours.

2009-05-11T12:11:00.003-04:00

The summer tour for BEST FRIENDS FOREVER is still coming together, but meanwhile, I'm going to be at an event this Monday night, May 18, in Cambridge, at the American Repertory Theatre, to benefit the Hoffman Breast Center at Mount Auburn Hospital.

I'll be appearing with a stellar lineup of authors: Elizabeth Berg, Sebastian Junger, Gregory Maguire, Claire Messud, and Tom Perrotta. Oh, and it's hosted by Alice Hoffman.

Tickets are $250 apiece, and you can buy them here.

I know what you're thinking: Two hundred and fifty dollars?!?! For two hundred and fifty dollars, I want Gregory Maguire to come over and tell my kid a bedtime story!

I want Claire Messud to personally explain to my book club what the ending of THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN meant!

I want Sebastian Junger to pose for a cell-phone picture to make my boyfriend jealous!

In this economy, $250 ain't peanuts. If you've got it to spare, it will go to a wonderful cause, and I'm sure it'll be an amazing night.

But, if you don't, here's the deal: I bought four tickets, and I will give them away to whoever tells me the best joke.

You have options! You can email your joke (or funny picture, or hilarious YouTube video) to jen@jenniferweiner.com.

You can send your entry to me on Facebook, or reply to me on Twitter, where I'm @jenniferweiner, if your joke is very short.

The contest starts now, and will end at 6 p.m. Thursday, which will give me time to pick the winners, and will give the winners time to get a sitter, and I will publish the winning entries right here, on my blog, so really, everyone's a winner! Except for the people who don't win. Not them, so much.

If you don't live in the Boston area, and still want to make me laugh, the five best non-New England comedians will win an advanced reader's copy of BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, with a personalized inscription exhorting them not to sell the book on eBay.

Finally, if you needed added incentive to enter this great contest, I think my mother will be at the event, so you will get to personally witness me embarrass her with the all-true story of what happened in L.A. the night of the "In Her Shoes" premiere. Trust me, it's funny stuff.

2009-05-08T12:44:00.002-04:00

I’ve already reported this on Facebook and Twitter, but if you’re not following me there (and if not, why not?), then I’m sad to report that Wendell, my rat terrier, faithful companion of 16 years and the inspiration for Nifkin in GOOD IN BED (that’s him on the back cover) and CERTAIN GIRLS, passed away on Monday.

What can you say about a sixteen-year-old dog who died? That he loved hot dogs, and beach runs, and me? Worse, what can you say about any dog who died without sounding like you’re ripping off Marley? (I swear, that damn dog has ruined it for the rest of us. Ruined it!)

We are all missing him very much, even my almost-six-year-old, whose questions have included “will Wendell be recycled?” (I blame her progressive hippie school)...but I'm comforted in knowing that he led a good, full life, with seagulls to bark at and good food to eat and people who appreciated his unique and occasionally elusive charms.

There will be more on Wendell soon…but, meanwhile, I wanted to tell you about the books I’m loving for the springtime: Lynn Cox’s SWIMMING TO ANTARCTICA, and Jayne Williams’ SLOW FAT TRIATHLETE.

Most of the time, I read novels. But into every life a little nonfiction must fall, and that was especially true when I decided to break out of my gym rut and attempt a sprint-distance triathlon last summer and a ten-mile run last Sunday (Philadelphia’s Broad Street Run! If you were on Facebook, you’d know!)

If you read my books, you know that I’m a big fat advocate – in real life and in my fiction-- of exercise and the benefits it brings to men and women of all shapes and sizes.

But big girls have to be careful consumers of fitness books, blogs and websites. Hit the wrong one and you’re in for a metric ton of dumb-ass (I have such fond memories of the your-first-triathlon guidebook which informed me, in the very first chapter, that all triathletes were “lean and fit,” or would quickly become so, and that nobody my size could even hope to run a mile. Thanks. Not).

The lazy assumption is, any woman who isn’t skinny is automatically unhealthy, or diabetic, or dying. That the only exercise she gets is lifting a Krackel bar to her face. And that, of course, her failure to accept counting calories as her primary life’s work means that she can’t possibly be smart, or accomplished, or qualified for a big job.

Of course, even the dumbest fatophobe has learned that it’s no longer okay to hate on fat girls for simply being fat…and so the snark comes blanketed in the curdled Hollandaise of concern for her health.

For the most depressing example of this ever, check out what some liberals – liberals! – are saying about potential supreme court nominees Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, neither of whom is supermodel-skinny…and neither of whom, the reasoning goes, should get the nod, because fatties die young and if Obama picks one of these ladies, she won’t live long enough to make a lasting impression on the Court and will probably keel over in the midst of her confirmation hearing. Possibly while clutching a Krackel bar.

There’s a scene in SWIMMING that made me wince with recognition. Sixteen-year-old Lynne Cox and her mother are in a cab, on their way to the beach. “Are you a Channel swimmer?” the cab driver asks, and Lynne answers, proudly, that she is.

The cabbie thinks this over.

“Well, you don’t look like a Channel swimmer to me,” he says. “You’re too fat to be one.”

Stung, Cox gets in the water, and swims the English Channel in nine hours, fifty-seven minutes, breaking the world record – one of the first of many she would shatter, all the while defying conventional notions of what an athlete looks like.

And so, for all of my sisters who feel the spring sunshine and think, hey, maybe I could sign up for that sprint tri or that 5-K, check out SWIMMING TO ANTARCTICA, which tells the story of an awkward, chubby girl who found her home, and life's work, in the water.

“Everything was new, fresh, alive and wonderful,” she writes of her first open-water swim. “The water played like music around my head, my shoulders shimmered in the sunlight, and I grew stronger, my strokes became more powerful. I went faster and faster, catching more swimmers, delighted with everything.”

SLOW FAT TRIATHLETE was my bible last spring and summer. It’s written in a friendly, accessible, down-to-earth tone, with dozens of funny anecdotes and you-are-there race reports that walk you through everything from buying your gear to navigating the water-to-bike transition.

It doesn’t have specific if-it’s-Tuesday-I-should-be-biking plans, but you can easily find those online, and it does have the F word right there in the title, which is a tough word for lots of women to deal with…but trust me. If you’re a newbie who’s bigger than a breadbox, or if you're already working out and need a book that affirms that you are, indeed, an athlete, even in a world disinclined to see you that way, this is the book for you. But don't take my word for it! Read an excerpt here, and then buy the book and be inspired.

2009-04-29T13:24:00.002-04:00

In preparation for having my own workspace photographed as part of their ongoing series about where writers work, Entertainment Weekly's editors were kind enough to send pictures of the three workspaces they’ve featured before.

I learned that Neil Gaiman works in an adorably rough-hewn woodsy little cottage in the forest. Presidential biographer Robert Caro writes at an ascetic desk, between walls lined with push-pinned notes and timelines, and a killer view of Central Park.

A bestselling mystery writer, who evidently did not get the memo that you’re not supposed to build a memorial library until you are, you know, dead, works in a grand room filled with leatherbound this and mahogany that, with priceless historical artifacts scattered throughout.

As for me, I do most of my writing on a laptop in different neighborhood coffee shops. When I'm home, I write on the vanity in my closet. To be honest, it’s a pretty big closet – more of a dressing room than a closet, which also has the benefit of being the only place in the house where there’s two sets of doors between me and the children.

There is, of course, an actual home office in my house, with all of the framed bestseller lists and book covers, the foreign editions and the “In Her Shoes” movie poster. I’ve never written a single sentence in there. That’s where my assistant works.

Here's the story: after GOOD IN BED had been sold, but before it was published, I went to Book Expo in Chicago and snagged an early version of Stephen King’s ON WRITING.

In it, he talks about writing his early short stories and first novels on a child’s desk balanced across his legs in the trailer where he lived with his wife and young children.

When he became successful, that changed. “For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room – no more child’s desk in a trailer laundry-closet, no more cramped kneehole in a rented house. In 1981 I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study (it’s a converted stable loft at the rear of the house). For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind, like a ship’s captain in charge of a voyage to nowhere.”

“A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity that put in a living-room suite where it had been…I got another desk – it’s handmade, beautiful, and half the size of the T. Rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave.”

King continues: “Put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”

I was totally taken with that idea, and by the time I could afford the massive oak slab, the leatherbound this and mahogany that, I was thoroughly disabused of the notion that I needed any of it.

There’s also an element of superstition: GOOD IN BED was written on a folding bridge table, covered with an Indian-print tapestry that dated from college, and set up in my second bedroom with my old, modem-free Mac Classic perched on top.

IN HER SHOES was written on a new laptop, on the same desk, in the tiny little bedroom in a new house. LITTLE EARTHQUAKES I started on a rickety red-painted wooden desk in the kitchen of a rented house in Cape Cod, six weeks after my oldest daughter was born.

I believe in not messing with what works, and I like King’s idea that writing is sort of a commentary on life, not life itself, and that it works best when it takes place on the margins, in the corners, on airplanes and in hotel rooms, in the second bedrooms and spare moments of your real life.

So last week, prior to the photographer’s arrival, I walked the careful line between What My Workspace Actually Looks Like and There Is No Way That’s Going In A Magazine Because My Nanna Will See.

I cleaned up the clutter, relocated the suitcases and the bags of clothing destined for Goodwill, straightened my stacks of books, and brought in fresh flowers. I purchased pretty new glass knobs for the dresser drawers, and, of course, new shoes.

The plan, I think, is for the shot to run sometime around the July 14 release of BEST FRIENDS FOREVER. In the meantime, here’s the Irish cottage where Maeve Binchy does her thing. I could work there, I think.

Finally, I have two books to recommend: Jean Hanff Korelitz’s ADMISSION, about a Princeton admissions officer struggling with her own secrets as she criss-crosses New England in search of the perfect freshman class – a total eye-opener for anyone who went to a school like that or is already worrying about getting kids in. I was completely engrossed. I was also completely terrified, and am currently, ardently hoping that by the time my girls are high-school seniors college will be available in pill form.

I also adored Kathryn Stockett’s THE HELP, a debut novel with an audacious premise – a white woman writing, in the first person, in dialect, about black maids in the South in 1963.

The book succeeds because none of the characters are two dimensional – not the maids, who are heroic but flawed, not the white ladies who employ them, whose motives are likewise mixed (Skeeter Phelan, the would-be writer whose book-within-a-book aims to blow the lid off the segregated ways of the Junior League, isn’t so much a saintly crusader as she is a lonely, confused twenty-three-year-old looking for her ticket out of town). It’s a wonderful, old-fashioned, cry-your-eyes-out novel.

2009-04-22T12:17:00.002-04:00

There’s been a lot written about the way the Amazon Kindle will change how we read, and how we shop: how easy it makes impulse buying, (you’ve essentially got every book Amazon sells in your purse or your pocket, ready for preview or purchase whenever you want); how quickly it lets you jump from one book for another.

One thing I haven’t seen discussed yet is what Kindle doesn’t give you: namely, the author’s photo.

Last week, home sick, I read HAPPENS EVERY DAY: AN ALL-TOO-TRUE STORY by Isabel Gillies, the story of a young mother’s marriage falling apart. Probably you’ve seen it – they’re selling it at Starbucks. More importantly, probably you’ve seen Ms. Gillies, who was an actress with a recurring role on Law & Order before she chucked it all to follow her feckless husband to the hinterlands of Ohio, in the name of love.

Gillies is, in a word, gorgeous: a statuesque blue-eyed blond with killer bone structure. But I didn’t know that when I downloaded her memoir, and the Kindle didn’t provide me with either a book cover or an author photo.

In a weird way, the omission made the book a lot more suspenseful than it would have been if I’d had Ms. Gillies’ visage staring me in the face every time I glanced at the back flap. A happy ending would have been a foregone conclusion. Of course she was going to meet “the love of (her) life,” as she wrote on the very last page. Probably on the way back from the post office where she mailed in her manuscript! And she probably got proposed to twice on the way there!

Instead, I read without knowing what the author looked like…although, to be fair, I figured that if she was a working actress she probably did not have the kind of face and figure that would cause observers to run away, screaming…and Gillies notes, more than once, that she considers herself pretty, is considered pretty by others, and often slid by on her good looks.

But a picture is, as they say, worth a thousand words. Being told someone is a looker is not the same as having the evidence right there in your hand. And so I read, thumbing that “NEXT PAGE” button with the dread you feel watching a horror movie, when the pretty girl whose car breaks down hikes to the creepy mansion on the hill to ask for help, and decides to take her top off beforehand. No! I thought, upon learning that Gillies’ intended had ditched his first wife while she was pregnant. Don’t marry him! It’s not going to end well!

I was charmed by Gillies’ description of arranging wildflowers in Ball jars on the organic farm outside of Oberlin; engrossed as I read about the wallpaper she and her husband chose for their big, brick house, the sweet nicknames they used for one another; enchanted with descriptions of her morning routine and her afternoon tea and the tomato-and-gruyere tart she cooked. My heart was in my throat when the gamine brunette who would eventually steal her husband’s heart showed up on campus. When Gillies, clad in a puffy down parka that probably had Cheerios in its pockets, falls to her knees in front of her husband’s mistress to beg for her marriage, I was right there in the snow with her.

Would I have felt that level of identification, that empathy, that edge-of-my-seat, thrill if I’d known that the author probably hadn’t lacked for male attention since age twelve and wouldn’t be lacking for it long, even with two kids, in the wake of a broken marriage?

I’m not sure. I suspect the truth is that I would have looked at the picture more than once, and read the book rolling my eyes. Those charming descriptions of wildflowers and nicknames and tomato tarts and summers with her still-married parents in Maine would have sounded precious. The drama of the kneeling-in-the-snow scene would have read as melodrama. And the ending would have had me cynically shaking my head: babe lands boyfriend. Stop the presses!

So, in the end, HAPPENS EVERY DAY was a book that probably went down better electronically than it would have on paper. I'm not sure what this says about the Kindle, or about me, or what it means for the future of reading and writing if we are, in fact, moving toward an era where an author’s looks won’t matter because your e-reader won’t let you see them.

The other weirdly meta-note: at one point, Gillies inveigles her husband's mistress to accompany her to the movies. It's there, during the previews, that Gillies wonders aloud how a man could leave a wife and young children, and the mistress, who has a dismayingly Gallic attitude about such things, answers that, in fact, it happens every day. And the movie they see? Is "In Her Shoes."

No word on whether they liked it.

More soon on yesterday's EW photo shoot, why Maureen Dowd isn't Tweeting, and why toddlers are like drunks (and if you can't wait, I'm posting about all of this on Twitter -- @jenniferweiner -- and on Facebook).

2009-04-14T22:18:00.002-04:00

Win a free, signed copy of CERTAIN GIRLS right here, and listen to me talk to the smart and savvy Jessica Brody, on Free Book Friday!

In other news, Amazon.com blames a "glitch" on the de-ranking of thousands of gay, lesbian and quote-unquote "adult" titles, says it's fixing the problem. That's good. But Amazon hasn't done a great job of explaining how the glitch happened in the first place or, you know, apologized. That's bad.

Bret Michaels picks Taya as his Rock of Love; seems distinctly half-hearted at the finale. I'm worried about Bret, and I didn't love the season, which seemed a little too real. Living in a VH-1 rented manse, going on fantasy dates (lingerie shopping and ATV-ing with Bret)...that's fun to watch. Watching the girls crammed on tricked-out tour buses that you just knew smelled like Aqua-Net, flop sweat and tequila farts so Bret could play at country fairs and third-tier casinos? That was just depressing.

In other reality news, I finally saw my first episode of "The Real Housewives" (how, how, could I have missed out for so long?)

Unfortunately, I watched it over the weekend, in Connecticut, with my mother, who kept looking up from her crossword puzzling, frowning at the TV set, and saying, "I don't understand this at all." And I couldn't explain it to her...I mean, really, how can you explain a woman who looks at the camera and explains that she's never gotten breast implants because her husband is more of an ass man?

2009-04-02T11:33:00.003-04:00

CERTAIN GIRLS comes out in paperback next Tuesday, April 7. I'll be reading here in Philadelphia at Head House Books at 7:30 p.m...and giving everyone a sneak peek at BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, coming this July. Details here...see you soon!

2009-03-27T13:43:00.004-04:00

I’m back from book tour and packing for Disneyworld. What’d I miss?

Well, the National Book Critics Circle handed out its yearly prizes, and every single winner was a man.

Best novel? Dude.
Best criticism? Dude.
Best poetry collection? A tie between two dudes.
Best biography? A dude, writing about another dude.

It was shocking!

Okay, it was not shocking at all. When you’ve got an organization whose members flat-out admit that they find the male voice more powerful and persuasive than female one (and, mind you, these are the lady members saying so), what chance does a book like Olive Kittredge, linked stories about the goings-on in a small Maine town with a heroine who’s a grumpy middle-aged schoolteacher, have against Roberto Bolano’s sprawling, bloody 2666? None chance, that’s how much!

In other bookish news, I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one who noticed Times critic Janet Maslin’s strange foray into hot-or-not territory…and that I’m not the only one who’s noticed the Times Book Review’s strange practice of calling female writers by their first names and men by their last. Not that publishing Joan Acocella's letter (which began, marvelously, “I am writing, as I have before…”) means the Times will change its practice, but, you know. Baby steps.

I visited London and Dublin last week on my UK book tour (Certain Girls just came out over there), and had a marvelous time. I did a few TV interviews, a bunch of print and radio stuff, and ended up talking more than I normally do about being a Jewish-American author.

Over here, it doesn't feel like that big a deal, except for the odd critic who wants to turn it into one, but over there, writing explicitly Jewish characters who do Jewish things, like celebrate bat mitzvahs and make shiva calls, seemed a bit more...exotic? Or maybe it was just my publisher's way of distinguishing me from the pack.

I flew over Saturday night and had a wonderful Sunday all by myself, wandering lonely as a cloud, sans kiddos, enjoying the wonderful springlike weather, taking myself out for tea and curry, exploring the city, grooving on the accents and trying to restrain myself from telling Scottish men that they sounded exactly like Shrek.

In the course of the week I got to visit a number of bookshops. It’s always interesting to see what books are selling, and what covers are working, overseas. My books look very different over there than they do over here. For instance, there’s an actual human woman’s face on their CERTAIN GIRLS cover, a sight you’d never, ever see here in the states, where you can show body parts and the backs of heads, but showing a woman’s face seems to be verboten.

The James Frey novel seems to be going gangbusters in paperback, for reasons nobody there seemed able to explain. Eat Pray Love? Not so much. I wonder if that’s because the notion of travel as a catalyst for spiritual growth doesn’t resonate as deeply in a country where students are expected to explore the world between high school and college, and where it’s easy for adults to hop on a plane or a train and jaunt off to Paris or Spain or Italy.

I broke out my new Kindle for the flights and, just as I’d hoped, after a while I did manage to forget that I was reading on an electronic device and just enjoyed reading. The book that did it? Laura Lippman’s LIFE SENTENCES, which I adored and am now urging all of my friends to buy (because I bought it for my Kindle, so I can’t pass it on. Sigh).

It’s about a writer named Cassandra whose first two books – tell-all memoirs about her family history and her sex life – were huge bestsellers. Her third book and first novel, though, is a flop. We meet our heroine on the eve of an excruciatingly rendered, poorly attended book reading, where nobody wants to talk about the new work and everyone has questions about the old ones and (reader, take note) about what gives Cassandra the right to tell the stories.

Half-asleep in her hotel room later that night, Cassandra overhears a snippet on CNN about an old grade-school classmate who served seven years in prison for infanticide because she refused to tell authorities where her infant son had gone, or what had happened to him. Cassandra decides to go home to her old neighborhood in Baltimore, look up her old friends, and get to the bottom of the mystery and turn it all into a book.

What happens after that is a delicious tangle of secrets and lies, complicated histories, divided loyalties, and the ways memory turns into a mirror in which we all seek our most flattering reflections. I can’t say enough about the book, and I probably shouldn’t say any more. Just get it. You won’t be sorry.

2009-03-25T12:01:00.000-04:00

Longer update about my time in the UK coming soon, but meanwhile, check out my Huffington Post piece on the strange life and times of Jade Goody: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-weiner/rip-jade-goody_b_177791.html.

2009-03-14T13:23:00.002-04:00

I'm heading off to Heathrow for the UK launch of CERTAIN GIRLS. You can catch me on the BBC Breakfast News on Monday morning in the 9 o'clock hour and, in Ireland, on The Afternoon Show (with Sheana and Blathnaid!) on Wednesday afternoon at 3.

Yes, I will be in Dublin on St. Patrick's Day. Yes, I am alternating between excitement and terror.

In addition, I'll be back in London signing stock at the Waterstones Piccadilly on Thursday at 4 p.m., so you're welcome to stop by, say hi, and get your book signed.

2009-03-12T12:03:00.003-04:00

I'm packing for my British book tour (where did I put that passport?), but meanwhile, I just posted my first-ever blog over at the Huffington Post. You can find it here.

Warning: it is lit-crit-ish, and talks about the ways gender comes into play in the reception of women's work, so if that is not your bag, baby, and you'd rather read about my kids' rashes, stay tuned. I'm sure one or the other of them will develop something new and exciting shortly!

2009-03-09T17:29:00.003-04:00

So! If you were my friend on Facebook, you would know that the baby had roseola -- a horrifying mind-twist of a viral infection.

What happens with roseola? Glad you asked! Basically A., your kid runs a really high fever for a few fun-filled days; B., your kid pukes in her crib; C., your husband carries crib-puking kid to the bathroom so that she can puke in the toilet, prompting you to say, "I don't think that's going to work...she's not in college!" and finally, D., just when you thought everything was back to normal, you pull off the kid's onesie to reveal a horrible festering pustulant rash covering her entire torso, the appearance of which will cause you to scream "DON'T TOUCH HER! NOBODY TOUCH HER!" while frantically dialing your pediatrician and googling the words BABY and FEVER and HORRIBLE FESTERING PUSTULANT RASH on your BlackBerry, which will obediently spit up horrible pictures of the very same rash.

Good news! The rash only lasts a day or two! It will disappear just in time for your kindergartener to get strep throat!

I am waiting for the dog to develop leprosy. Leprosy's next, right?

But, in the meanwhile, I will be part of a group of TV critics and other smart folk live-blogging AMERICAN IDOL over at Throwingthings (it's my husband's blog. They have to let me in!)

And, on Tuesday night at 7:30, I will be at the Free Library of Philadelphia, introducing the much-smarter-than-the-rest-of-us Elaine Showalter, whose most recent book is A JURY OF HER PEERS, a comprehensive history of women writes in America from 1650 to the present. Yes, she writes about chick lit!

2009-03-02T14:01:00.002-05:00

Meet the book I’m loving right now: Ron Rash’s SERENA, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner prize. (The prize was ultimately won by NETHERLAND, a post-9/11 novel about a pair of expatriates, one white, one black and their quest to establish a cricket mecca in Manhattan that, in spite of all the praise, I cannot muster even a scintilla of interest in reading. I don’t know whether that’s because cricket sounds like such a yawn, or the book sounds like it’s got a magical negro problem).

But! Serena! She is Lady Macbeth in Appalachia! She’s an Ayn Rand heroine astride a white Arabian horse, with an eagle tethered to her arm. She is unadulterated will, unalloyed ambition. She’s also pure evil, but who’s complaining, as she smites her enemies, defenestrates the forest, emasculates her husband, and mows down anyone and everything who stands in her way?

Here’s how Rash gets the party started:

"When Pemberton returned to the North Carolina mountains after three months in Boston settling his father's estate, among those waiting on the train platform was a young woman pregnant with Pemberton's child. She was accompanied by her father, who carried beneath his shabby frock coat a bowie knife sharpened with great attentiveness earlier that morning so it would plunge as deep as possible into Pemberton's heart."

How can you not keep reading after that?

I actually did have two smallish complaints about the book. One is that, like Shakespeare, Rash never really gives his lady an origin story. There’s a few references to her family, all dead, back in Colorado, her time at Miss Porter’s (so maybe her snooty boarding school’s to blame?) and her days in Boston, but none of it adds up to a convincing explanation for what fire forged this woman.

The point seems to be that, like the land she’s defoliating, Serena just is; no explanation possible…but it’s interesting to think about a book that would try to explain a woman like that.

The other problem: it’s clear that nobody who’s been anywhere near a fifteen-month-old had a hand in writing or editing this book.

The pregnant girl at the train station survives her encounter with Serena and gives birth to a boy named Jacob. And Jacob is always asleep.

He’s dozing when Mom climbs up on the roof to patch the holes. He’s snoozing, or sitting politely on her lap, and while he’s being photographed, and during sermons at church. He’s drowsing when his mother hides in a boxcar and brains Serena’s evil one-armed henchmen (for real – this book has evil one-armed henchmen!) with a sock full of marbles.

I understand that some of the time the baby’s sleeping because the plot requires him to be asleep, even if that’s not even remotely how a real-life toddler would behave. But in a few of those instances, it would have added much more drama to an already dramatic plot to have the baby wake up, to have poor, overburdened, heroic Rachel fighting for her while trying to keep her son quiet.

But, like I said, minor quibbles. If you like your beautiful sentences wrapped around a brisk, bracing plot with an unforgettable antihero, get some Serena.

2009-02-25T12:03:00.011-05:00

Last week, my neighborhood coffee shop closed.

This is, obviously, a very big deal for the people who lost their jobs. It would be a moderately big deal for me under normal circumstances.

But my circumstances are not normal. The coffee shop was where I worked, five days a week, usually from one in the afternoon until five. I’ve been going there for years. I’d wait until the lunch rush was ending, then take a table by the window, convenient to a power outlet, and plug in my laptop, and sit with my salad, or my gigante cup of lemon tea, and write.

Over the years, I've gotten to know all of the baristas, and most of the homeless people, who I could eventually identify by smell alone. It was my office...my home away from home.

Why not just write at home? Technically, I could – there’s an office here and everything. But the office is where my assistant works. If I don’t go through the physical act of packing my bag, checking for my keys and my wallet and cell phone, and actually walking out the door and going somewhere else, it doesn’t feel like the work day has started.

I come by this honestly: I was a newspaper reporter for the ten years before my first book was published, so I got used to writing out in the open, with a certain amount of noise and bustle and distraction around. I don't mind the music, or other peoples' conversations, or the hiss of steaming milk. And the truth is, if I’m home the kids can smell me. They’ll want my attention, and I’ll feel guilty for not giving it to them, or not cleaning the cupboards or scrubbing the fridge or reading one of those freakin’ Fairy books for the umpteenth time, or whatever else needs to be done.

So when the coffee shop closed, I was sad, but not devastated. I had a back-up plan. The other place I wrote – a gourmet grocery store with a little café off to the side – was still available. True, the light wasn’t as great and the music tended to get a little repetitive, but beggars can’t be chosers, and I figured I'd be fine.

Last Thursday my husband looked up from his laptop. “I have bad news,” he said gravely. He sat me down, took my hands, and told me: the grocery store's closing, too (or, rather, re-inventing itself as a catering-only facility).

So now I’m lost. Displaced. Bereft! A captain without a ship! A rabbi without a shul!

My husband insists that there are many fine coffee shops in our neighborhood. But none of them is right. For example:

STARBUCKS
PROS: Lots of seating, many power outlets
CONS: Southwest-facing floor-to-ceiling windows create impossible glare situation, rendering space suitable only for cloudy or rainy days

TURKISH CAFÉ
PROS: Nearby
CONS: Tiny tables. No power outlets. Dangerous proximity to baklava.

FUNKY INDEPENDENT COFFEE SHOP
PROS: Nice room, good light, interesting art on walls
CONS: Too long a walk; hipsters

OTHER COFFEE SHOP
PROS: Nearby
CONS: Small, dark, has hookah out front (I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t look very conducive to writing).

There was the place that's always too crowded. The place that's mysteriously empty. And that's not even getting into Coffee Shop with Weird Smell, or I am Not Walking Six Blocks to Sit in the Place that Plays the Beatles Nonstop.

So, for the time being, I am writing…in my closet.

Full disclosure: I have a pretty big closet that has turned into a kind of de facto library/used children's clothing storage facility, because I don’t have that many clothes (but my five-year-old does, and my plan is for the little one to wear all of her hand-me-downs), and I do have lots and lots of books.

The closet came complete with a lighted mirror and a little vanity where I think I'm meant to comb my hair and put on my face cream at night. But now I'm writing here.

So far, so good.

2009-02-18T17:25:00.002-05:00

Things you will pack to amuse your five-year-old for a three-hour flight to Florida:

Coloring books.
Puzzle workbooks.
Crayons.
Two Junie B. Jones books.
One “Color Fairy” book.
One Cam Jansen book.
Healthful snack of whole-grain crackers, cheese stick and raisins.

Thing your five-year-old will be interested in during flight:

Fruit Roll-Up type item (now with two percent fruit!) that she traded Junie B. books for in waiting area

iPod’ed episode of “National Geographic” depicting lion pack devouring baby elephant. (“See, mommy, first they cut the babies off from the herd, then they pounce on its back, and then the baby cubs drink the blood!”)

What your five-year-old will say when you tell her you really don’t want to watch it because it’s violent and disturbing:

“But, Mommy, it’s the food chain! If the lions didn’t eat, then they would starve!”

What your husband will say when you inquire as to how violent and disturbing “National Geographic” episode ended up on the iPod in the first place:

“It’s got the guys from Zooboomafoo. I thought it was okay.”

Activities available for five-year-old at hotel:

Swimming!
Beach!
Face-painting!
Balloon-animal making!
Water games!
Tennis!
Sandcastle-building contest!

What your five-year-old will want to do at hotel:

Swim
Play Wii bowling in hotel game room
Watch iPod’ed episode of National Geographic lions-eat-baby-elephant (“No, honey, the iPod accidentally erased that.”)

Proposed sleeping arrangements:

Mom and Dad in bed, five-year-old on pullout couch, toddler in crib

Actual sleeping arrangements:

Toddler and five-year-old sprawled across bed after toddler refused to lie down in crib and five-year-old declares that she is “so lonely” in living room; Mom clinging to edge of bed, Dad on pullout couch.

Number of books you will pack to read poolside:

Three

Number of books you will actually get to open, as you attempt to keep toddler from bear-walking into the shallow end and chase Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost-hued five-year-old around with a can of SPF-50 sunscreen while hollering “Hold still!” while husband makes "important work phone calls":

One (briefly)

What husband is actually doing:

Watching video of lions eating elephants on the iPod ("after you've seen it six times, it gets funny!")

Number of diapers you would, ideally, have stashed in diaper bag for flight home:

Six

Numbers of diapers you realize you actually have, once you’re through security and it’s too late to get more out of the suitcase:

One

Time into flight when you discover that your one remaining diaper is a swim diaper and, as such, useless:

Ninety minutes

Minutes your husband will spend laughing when you announce your intention, via suggestion from helpful Facebook friend, to use a sanitary napkin if situation becomes dire:

Five

Seconds it takes husband to stop laughing when you tell him that it’s either a sanitary napkin or his shirt:

Three (approximate)

Thing you are glad about:

Spending a few days in the sun with the people you love (especially now that it’s snowing)

2009-02-13T19:35:00.001-05:00

A reader (and Facebook friend!) writes: what’d you think of Janet Maslin's review of "Death by Leisure," which includes the line "[f]ast and funny, “Death by Leisure” has the high spirits of a chick book, because its author is interested in chick-lit things: dates, celebrities, vanity and shopping. But it is also a tale of real woe."

What is THAT???? my reader wonders. The "but" says it all. What jerks.

I thought, why yes, that is odd!

You know what else it is? Familiar.

Come with me, won’t you, on a trip back in time. The year was 2008. The critic: Janet Maslin. The piece: a generally dismissive round-up of popular chick-lit titles.

The only book to escape being damned with faint praise (or just plain damned?)

Michael Tonello’s BRINGING HOME THE BIRKIN, which Maslin calls “the most adorable chick-lit book,” even though it’s “a work of nonfiction, and it’s written by a guy.”

The book “may break the mold a bit, but it does a fine job of fulfilling this genre’s basic requirements. It’s smart. It’s fizzy. It’s amusingly snarky, with attitude to burn.”

Huh.

Full disclosure: I adored Tonello’s book, which was a hoot, even for someone who can’t tell a Birkin from a merkin (I know – I’m a traitor to both my genre and my gender!) Also, Janet Maslin has said a few not-entirely-dismissive things about a couple of my books.

But it’s interesting: the other titles in the round-up – books by Jane Green and Emily Giffin, Elizabeth Berg, Janelle Brown and Lauren Weisberger, among others – barely merit a sentence or two apiece. Often, that sentence isn’t very nice (Giffin is praised – sort of – for being “a dependably down-to-earth, girlfriendly storyteller,” while Green is petted for producing a “pleasant new book.”)

Also interesting: not one of the lady books got a full treatment in the Sunday section, the way Tonello’s did.

Which makes me wonder: is the only way to escape the girlie taint of writing fizzy, funny books that may or may not include dating, shopping and happy endings to write them as non-fiction, oh, and also, be a dude?

Also: girlie taint. I think I’m going to be getting a lot of accidental visitors this weekend. Thanks, Google!

In other news, you know how last week I was talking about all of those sad-sack Debbie Downer ladies writing tragic stories about dead kids? Can I point you toward Ann Hood’s excellent and heartbreaking "10,000 Steps," and take it all back?

2009-02-09T12:19:00.002-05:00

It’s been almost a week since I wrote to Brian Tierney, head of the Philadelphia Media Holdings and publisher of both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News with an offer to sponsor the Inky's book coverage...and, even though I made a bunch of new Facebook friends, not a word yet from Mr. Tierney.

The phone’s not ringing. The in-box isn’t chiming. Ladies, I think we all know what this means.

Brian Tierney: he’s just not that into me. (Unless, perhaps, there are lots of people with innovative ideas and open checkbooks offering to help the ailing papers, and I'm just somewhere toward the end of the line).

Even though I'm getting the old cold shoulder from the Inky's new boss, I still think my idea has some merit.

Last week, both the Daily News’ Stu Bykofsky and Time’s Walter Isaacson wrote that the only thing that will save print journalism is getting readers to pay for the reporting and commentary that they’ve gotten used to getting for free.

Which is exactly what I want to do. I want to pay for content.

True, I would also want to occasionally dictate what that content should include…but really, would that be so different from the way things are now?

Newspapers are always beholden to someone, whether it’s shareholders screaming for higher profits, readers threatening to cancel their subscription because the font in “Funky Winkerbean” is too damn small, or p.o.’d PR guys hollering that they'll pull their ads unless the paper starts writing puff pieces about their clients.

If you've got to be in bed with someone, why not me? I'll be gentle. I'll only ask for the weird stuff every once in a while

Plus, I guarantee, if PMH gets that $10 million it's seeking from the state government, those gentlemen would be a hell of a lot more demanding than I could ever dream of being. Do we really want a paper where every reference to Ed Rendell includes the phrase “as handsome as he is powerful?”

In other bookish news, I have pinpointed the method by which a lady memoirist can guarantee herself ample and admiring coverage from the New York Times.

Step one: If you can't be an important male writer, at least arrange to edit important male writers.
Step two: Be British.
Step three: Die.

Finally, my new favorite blog, a must-read for Times junkies, newspaper aficionados, or students of eschetology: the Nytpicker. Want to know why David Carr keeps quoting the same "expert" (and giving him a different title each time?) Can't remember what accuracy-challenged TV critic Alessandra Stanley called "Everybody Loves Raymond?" (It was "All About Raymond.") Who's that guy writing on the paper's book blog, and why does he hate romance novels so much? The Nytpicker knows!

2009-02-03T12:37:00.004-05:00

Dear Brian Tierney,

I never thought I’d be writing you this kind of letter. But last night, I was reading the Wall Street Journal (online – sorry!), and I was shocked to learn that, under your leadership, the region's two newspapers, the Inquirer and the Daily News, are seeking a $10 million bailout from the state government.

As anyone who’s ever worked for, subscribed to, or glanced at a newspaper can affirm, this is not how journalism is supposed to work.

Newspapers are not publicly-funded institutions, nor are they charities. They are watchdogs, not lapdogs; afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted. They should not take money from the people and institutions they are supposed to be reporting on, lest those people and institutions expect favorable coverage in return for their cash.

Then I thought, hmm: favorable coverage in return for cash…

Favorable coverage in return for cash…

Then I got distracted by my wedding ring. Shiny.

Then it hit me!

What if a consortium of Philadelphia writers and ex-Philadelphia Inquirer staffers turned novelists and non-fiction writers banded together to sponsor the paper’s book coverage?

I can’t speak for John Grogan, Steve Lopez, Buzz Bissinger et al. But personally, I’m always looking for a pretty quote to decorate my paperbacks. Maybe they, are, too! (“GROGAN’S DEAD DAD: JUST AS MOVING AS GROGAN’S DEAD DOG.” Or “FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS: THE BEST TV SHOW YOU AREN’T WATCHING IS BASED ON THE BEST BOOK YOU MAY NOT HAVE READ.” Or “CERTAIN GIRLS: PINKEST BOOK IMAGINABLE – AND WE MEAN THAT IN A GOOD WAY!”)

Authors need coverage.

The Inquirer needs money.

As you management types like to say, I see an opportunity for some synergy.

And so, Mr. Tierney, I would like to make you an offer of cash in exchange for my mostly-silent sponsorship the Inquirer’s book coverage.

Obviously, I will want some changes made.

First, give Frank Wilson his job back. He’s smarter than you are. He’s smarter than everyone!

Let him hire who he wants to hire... and if Frank doesn’t want to run roundups, Frank doesn’t have to run roundups. That’s what we’ve got Entertainment Weekly for.

As matron of the arts, here are some things I don’t want to read about: new books by Philip Roth (I prefer the old ones, which were funny). New books by Cormac McCarthy. New books by any male writer prone to complaining about the indignities of old age, either general or prostate-specific, or or having his male protagonists do the same.

New short-story collection by Alice Munro. Instead of wasting eight hundred words, just say it’s every bit as wrenching and finely wrought as the last short-story collection by Alice Munro, and be done with it. Chances are, I’ve already read most of the stories in The New Yorker, and I know that they are wrenching and finely-wrought (unless, of course, the new collection gets a ridiculously tarty cover, in which case, you can make fun of that for eight hundred words).

In fact, no more reviews of books by any of the dour, humorless, literary lady-writers. Let them peddle their arid tales of marital angst, suburban anomie, dead or drug-addicted children and their husbands’ enlarged prostates to Oprah magazine.

No more considerations of gross-out memoirs by middle-aged male journalists detailing their debauchery, drug buys, masturbatory predilections or intestinal outrages. This is not because I’m not interested, but because these books are guaranteed lots of attention elsewhere, and I probably know about them already.

If a book has been reviewed twice by the Times, I’ve probably already decided whether I want to read it or not, so we can feel free to ignore.

Likewise, if a book has been reviewed twice and its young male author was the subject of a flattering profile in the Times Sunday magazine or the Style section, not only do I not want that book reviewed, I don’t even want its author mentioned in the unlikely event the book makes the best-seller list. Just leave a blank. I’ll figure it out.

Oh, and no more hiring some prize-winning big-name author to write a review for the publicity it’ll generate. Readers can smell a stunt a mile away, and they’ll know the review was intended to generate publicty, not to help them make up their minds. And no, I don’t care if the big-name author needs the money. We’re running a newspaper, not the WPA.

Here are some things I do want to read about: new books by Stephen King and Susan Isaacs, Nicholas Christopher and Peter Straub, Margaret Atwood and Marge Piercey. Pretty much anything in the horror/fantasy genre, like Kelly Link, Elizabeth Hand and Margo Lanagan. Thrillers and mysteries and romance.

Contemporary women’s fiction (duh!) reviewed by people who do not think that contemporary women’s fiction and/or contemporary women themselves represent a pox upon the land. Reviews of books people are actually reading, instead of the ones the critics think we should be reading.

Women’s memoirs, especially funny ones about birthing and raising babies. Anything by Jennifer Belle, Jennifer Crusie and Jen Lancaster; Carrie Fisher, Nora Ephron and Fran Lebowitz (how about a regular feature on Authors Who Haven’t Written Anything Lately, and Should: Katherine Dunn, anyone?)

Graphic novels (did you read “The Alcoholic” or “Fun Home?” So good!) Books in translation. Poetry. Young adult fiction (“The Hunger Games” was one of the best things I read last year). Literary trend pieces – for instance, now that the Kindle is changing the way we read, how long until it changes the way we write? Are any of those much-discussed Japanese cell-phone novels any good? Anyone in publishing willing to defend the Sarah Silverman/Tina Fey book deals as fiscally sound?

Also, I have this great idea for a column called Authors: They’re Just Like Us, where the Inquirer can challenge the myth that writers are superhuman glamazons who live on top of some literary Mount Olympus (aka, New York City/Brooklyn/Iowa), emerging only for well-attended, star-studded readings and long boozy lunches with our agents.

So I think we should run pictures of local authors doing ordinary things, like feeding parking meters, or singing karaoke, or screaming at some hapless blogger on HBO. I want Duane Swierczynski scooping poop, and Christine Weiser picking up her dry cleaning, and Elizabeth Gilbert, eating, praying and loving over in Frenchtown.

I know that the notion of taking cash from the people you’re covering objectively is abhorrent and strange and goes against every journalistic principle you can name…but, Mr. Tierney, if you’ve already abandoned your principles, gotten over your abhorrence and decided to pass the hat, why not pass it my way?

Drop me a line at jen -at- jenniferweiner.com. Better yet, friend me on Facebook, and we’ll talk.

2009-02-01T21:14:00.004-05:00

Sunday on the Phone with Fran

"Did you see the paper?”

“Yes, Jenny, and I am not moving to a double-wide on a street named after a goddess in a lesbian separatist community in Alabama.”

“Not even if it would be really good for my fiction?”

So! Lots of people talking about those dirty white boys. I believe Galleycat linked to my post about the rash of full-disclosure male memoirists. Under “feuds!” Which is weird, because I don’t write memoirs, and I’m not sure who I’m supposed to be feuding with. Lord knows I’m not messing with David Carr. He knows people.

But I have been thinking about what’s considered a shameful revelation from a woman versus what’s considered shameful from a dude: why, for instance, Katha Pollitt's admission of cyberstalking gets her spanked by the Times, whereas David Lozell Martin's talking about actually stalking a woman gets him a glowing review in the same paper.

I also found Elizabeth Hayt’s website, and an article she wrote for the Times in 2002 about the then-emerging genre of books about maternal ambivalence, which included this quote from Peggy Orenstein (who, of course, would go on to write a memoir about motherhood herself):

"It was almost furtive for (writers) to admit motherhood is not fulfilling,” Ms. Orenstein said. ”It actually makes me feel deviant and anti-mother to say that. But I’m not. It’s like being anti-American. Motherhood silences women. The kryptonite words for women are fat, slut, bad mother and selfish. The words make us lose our powers just like Superman loses his in the face of kryptonite.”

My first thought: okay, but if you get called all four of those things in the same article, do they cancel each other out?

Then I wondered: has anything changed since 2002? Can an ’09 lady write a funny memoir about a series of one-night stands that ended badly without losing your powers? Because it seemed to have worked out okay for Chelsea Handler, no? Is “funny” the key? Do women memoirists have to be self-deprecating, cutesy and charming (or just plain cute) to avoid getting killed by the critics?

Also, on perhaps a more serious note, where is my Rock of Love?!?!

2009-01-22T16:03:00.002-05:00

I was watching “30 Rock,” where a vacationing Liz Lemon relaxes with an ice-cream cone and a book with a pink cover featuring a stiletto heel and a Cosmo glass. Its title? “Novel for Women.”

At first I was all, like, “Oh, ha! That Tina Fey, with her rapier wit and her trenchant commentary on the state of publishing today!”

Then I thought “I bet some publisher’s actually checking right now to see if that’s been an actual title with an actual cover, and if not, whether they can use it.”

Then I thought, “What if it’s my publisher checking?”

Ironically, these days, I am not reading Novels for Women. I am reading Nonfiction by Men.

I started with AMERICAN SUCKER, New Yorker film critic David Denby’s rueful accounting of how his marriage and then his finances fell apart.

I moved on to BEAUTIFUL BOY, west coast journalist David Scheff’s rueful accounting of how his marriage fell apart and his kid is a meth addict. This, it emerges, is very hard for Scheff, and his new wife and new children. Presumably, it’s hard for the drug-addicted son, too.

Next, I picked up NIGHT OF THE GUN, New York Times writer David Carr’s rueful and, post-James Frey, investigatory accounting of how he and his girlfriend were addicts and he wound up raising their twin girls, only he was still doing crack, which he would occasionally purchase while his daughters slept, bundled up in the dead of winter in the backseat. Then he got married and landed a series of great jobs. Then he got arrested for drunk driving again and still sounds like kind of a mess (albeit a mess with a job at the Times).

After Gun, I decided I’d enough of reading about well-connected white guys of a certain age detailing their screw-ups in endless, sheepish detail (and even with the sheepishness, there’s a certain wolfish gleam to the writing, a whiff of boastful braggadocio, of Look at what a big, huge mess I made of everything, like a cadre of oversized Dennis the Menaces posing in front of broken cookie jars).

But then, dammit, I got pulled back in by Dwight Garner’s approving review of David Lozell Martin’s LOSING EVERYTHING, a novelist’s rueful accounting of how his marriage broke up and he went crazy and lost all his money and ended up broke and homeless and diabetic and with horrific gastrointestinal problems, too.

A few questions about the dirty-white-boy books (and yes, as far as I can tell, the genre of the male midlife drugs-sex-and-losing-everything confessional is populated entirely by white guys.)

Are journalists more likely to have their lives implode, or just more likely to have their accounts of said implosions published?

Why is the Times so fascinated by these stories (two of the four that I read had their first lives in the pages of the Sunday Times Magazine)?

What would happen if a woman wrote the same kind of confessional memoir about busting up a marriage, shucking her kids and spouse like old clothes, diving into drugs or porn and/or ending up homeless? My guess is that the critical reaction (curated, as it is, mostly by middle-aged white guys) would not be nearly as approving.

But why guess?

Here’s what the New York Times had to say about Katha Pollitt, who confessed to much milder sins (Google-stalking an ex) in her collection of essays, LEARNING TO DRIVE. “She has decided to wave her dirty laundry (among which she found unidentified striped panties) and confesses to “Webstalking” her longtime, live-in, womanizing former boyfriend. (Take that, you rat!),” tut-tuts the paper. “It’s hard to tell if she’s coming into her own, trying to sell more books or has lost it entirely.”

Here’s the Times on Elizabeth Hayt’s I’M NO SAINT, A Nasty Little Memoir of Love and Leaving. “Managing to combine psychobabble and designer name-dropping, Hayt charmlessly recounts her coke habit, eating problems, abortion, Botox injections, struggles with motherhood, aversion to 12-step programs and hollow promiscuity…. a graphic account of one woman's capacity for greed, vanity and loveless physical intimacy.”

So, just to be clear, if you’re a lady and you ‘fess up to an unhealthy online interest in an ex, you may have “lost it entirely.”

If you’re a dude and you write about, say, smoking pot with your prepubescent son, scoring coke with your daughters asleep in your car, or spewing uncontrollable diabetes-related diarrhea all over your son’s back seat, well then you, sir, have written “a bruising survival story,” or a “brave, heartfelt, often funny, often frustrating book.”

If you’re a chick who sleeps around and lives to tell (and sell) the tale, you’re greedy, vain and charmless. If you’re a guy who spends nights on end looking at Internet porn and days investing in drug companies that overcharge cancer patients for their cures, then you’re “formidably smart.”

Another question: how are these memoirs of male, middle-aged madness meant to be experienced? As entertainment? As cautionary tales? Do people read them to feel better about their own choices, and the messes they’ve made?

The Times suggests that LOSING EVERYTHING can function as a kind of roadmap for the downtrodden in our current hard times, but surely there’s a difference between losing your job, your investments, or even your house, and losing everything, up to and including your dignity (and yes, if you’ve written an entire chapter about being so constipated that a nurse had to stick her entire greased arm inside of you, the dignity ship has sailed without you aboard).

Last note: under no circumstances should aspiring writers read LOSING EVERYTHING. I t contains a scene even more horrifying than the one with the constipated hero, broken and moaning and crapping himself. It occurs after Lozell Martin, luckless, loveless, ill and broke, appeals to the court of last resort: his publisher.

“I told (my publisher) that I needed a book contract. I hadn’t hit bottom yet – that was to come in an emergency room some months later – but I was close. I needed to know I would have at least one more book published before I died. Having lost everything, I needed one last time to be a writer.”

There’s no book on offer. No outline, no first three chapters, not even the idea for a book…and yet, there’s cash on the barrelhead.

Then again, maybe the publisher figured that there might be a story in Lozell Martin’s reduced circumstances…and that he'd be guaranteed some nice coverage from the Times.

2009-01-07T15:41:00.004-05:00

Happy 2009, y'all!

New year, old news...

Publishing: still in the crapper! (layoffs, houses that have stopped acquiring books, and the end of the Caribbean sales conference and the long lunch).

Dudes: still not reading fiction! This essay is a hot mess of apples-to-coconut comparisons and poor, poor, pitiful me-ism that.

Instead of trying to explain, for instance, that Jonathan Tropper, while a fine and funny writer, is not the second coming of Cormac McCarthy and need not be treated as such, or that all the Guernsey Potato Peel book has in common with the Friday Night Knitting Club is that they’re both by women, about women, and reference domestic arts in the title, I will simply quote Tayari Jones, who says that author Chris Goldberg comes across like a dude slinking through the drugstore who’s been shamed into buying tampons for his ladyfriend. Note to guy readers: picking up a book with pink on the cover or references to "family" "friendship" or "feelings" on the flap copy will not give you cooties. Or menstrual cycles.

Moving on!

Oprah: fat again! Does anyone else wish that she'd gathered all of the Best Life Know gurus and gur-ettes who got her down to 160 lbs and then fired them, because clearly whatever they were doing didn’t take. Maybe she could have even roughed a few of them up, or had one executed during sweeps week. She's Oprah! She can do that!

Current reading: Poe’s Children, a short-story anthology edited by Peter Straub. New Andrew Vachss. OLIVE KITTERIDGE, which I’m going to follow with THE MS. HEMPEL CHRONICLES, making it a twofer of short-story collections about schoolteachers. Does anyone know of a third?

And, by far, the best news of the new year: Rock of Love is back! And skankier than ever!

For Seasons One and Two, I wondered where VH-1 found its contestants. By now, I’m more interested in trying to figure out where the contestants get their plastic surgery. Imagine the conversation:

Plastic surgeon: Hello, miss, what can I do for you today?

Rock of Love contestant: I’d like implants as big as my head, please!

Surgeon: Are you sure that’s wise?

Contestant: You know what? You’re right! I’d like implants as big as your head!

Most of the chatter’s been about the infamous shot-in-the- hoo-hah scene, but I cannot get over the implants, the Botox, the lip filler and the hair extensions. These women don’t look entirely human anymore…but I can’t stop watching.

Finally, I will be rocking the JCC in West Hartford next Thursday night, discussing about my latest adventures in Hollywood and motherhood and my new book, BEST FRIENDS FOREVER, coming this fall. Click here for tickets (the event is currently listed as sold out, but I'm pretty sure there's a waiting list). Hope to see you there!

2008-12-09T19:18:00.004-05:00

Six Short Stories about My Mother

One: The Fran Muffin

One summer morning my husband went on a baked-goods run. Upon his return, he was disappointed to learn that, instead of the cran(berry) muffin he’d ordered, he had received a bran muffin.
“Good thing you didn’t get a Fran muffin!” said my friend Joyce.
“What would a Fran muffin taste like?” asked my husband.
I thought for a minute. “It would probably taste one way for the first two-thirds, and then turn into something completely different.”

Two: The Six Million Dollar Fran
Last spring, my mother got her first knee replaced, and in September, she had the second one done. After major orthopedic surgery, you go home with physical therapy exercises, a cheap metal cane, and prescription painkillers. I know Fran is taking the drugs when I get emails like this:
Fran: happy hands at home.
Me: “What?”
Fran: diane johnson
Me: “Fran, what are you talking about?
Fran: weren’t you asking for funny books by women?
Me: Yeah, like a month ago. And it’s “Loving Hands at Home.” What’s with the e.e. cummings capitalization? Are you on drugs?
Fran: do not forward to siblings

Three: Franded

Last month Fran flew to Florida to visit Nanna for Nanna’s birthday. She went to the airport to fly home after four days in Century Village to learn that there’d been a mix-up: instead of being scheduled to fly home on Saturday, she was booked on a Sunday flight.
So she did the first thing anyone would do under these circumstances: she called me.
“They want a hundred dollars for rebooking!”
“So pay them. You’ve got a credit card, right?”
Pause. “It’s a hundred dollars.”
Me: “Why don’t you just go back to Nanna’s for another night?”
Pause.
“You don’t want to go back to Nanna’s?”
Silence.
“You don’t want to go back to Nanna’s, but you don’t want to spend a hundred dollars to have them change your ticket.”
Seething silence.
“And so now, basically, you are trapped between the rock of your cheapness and the hard place of Century Village.”

"Jenny, I am warning you,” she said, her voice low and furious. “Do NOT call your siblings about this.”
So of course, I call my sister Molly, who calls my brother Joe, who left a message for my other brother Jake, then conferenced us in with Fran on the line, so we can mock her. “You’re stranded!” says Molly.
“You’re Franded!” I said.

Four: Squish

Isn’t writing a slashing evisceration of John Grogan’s newest memoir kind of like sharpening your bayonet, pulling on your boots, and marching off to put down the s’more rebellion?

Is the Times seriously not going to review Wally Lamb’s new book? Are they just going to lump a few sentences’ worth of plot summary into a roundup alongside the sequel to the balls-of-yarn book, while giving anal sex enthusiast Toni Bentley two pages to write about movies or something?

Is Wally Lamb a girl now?

And speaking of girls, and how they are catty and competitive and just want to read silly ladybooks, except when they don’t, perhaps you saw the New York Times’ recent piece on battlin’ book clubs?

It was laden with sexist stereotypes (poopy diaper talk! Passive-aggressive scone-making! Cat fights! Cartoon illustration of harridans lobbing hardcovers!), lazy generalizations and the obligatory digs at popular fiction, Dan Brown, Oprah's book club and “bad chick lit and worse chardonnay.” I expected all of that.

What I did not expect was to find out that you can, as one Esther Bushell does, make a living as a “book club facilitator,” charging between $250 to $300 per club member, per year.

Seriously? This is a job now?

And if it is a job, shouldn’t the lady doing it be able to lead a discussion about THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, with topics including but not limited to girl-on-girl rivalries in the workplace, gender versus generational loyalties, the choices the screenwriter made in adapting the novel for film, and how the book fits in to the evolution of the single-girl-in-New-York narrative from Lily Bart through Carrie Bradshaw? I mean, I could lead that discussion, and I am not even a trained professional charging between $250 and $300 per club member, per year!

Okay, that was not about Fran. Apologies!

Five: Rick Roll

“Oh my God,” said my husband, staring incredulously at his Blackberry. “Everyone. Come quick. have to go watch the Macy’s parade right now. They have rickrolled the parade!”
I hurried into the TV room to see. Fran limped along behind me. “What is rickrolling?”
“Well,” I began, as a remarkably well-preserved Rick Astley gyrated on our screen. “Say somebody sends you an email with a link that says “click here to see a great video.”
“I wouldn’t do it,” she said instantly. “I don’t know how to play videos on the computer.”
“Okay. Theoretically, if you did know how, you’d click on the link...”
“No, I wouldn’t! It could be a virus!”
“It’s a video that you really want to see.”
“It could be identity theft!”
“It’s Amos Oz and J.M. Coetzee, and they’re talking about death and the Holocaust. So you click on it...”
“There’s no video like that.”
“It’s Shirley Caesar singing “No Charge” for Mother’s Day.”
“Is there a video of that? You should send me the link!”
“But you wouldn’t click on it.”
“I would click on that. That I would click on.”
“Okay, so you click, only instead of the video you wanted, it’s Rick Astley singing ‘Never Gonna Give You Up.’ That’s rickrolling.”
Fran thought this over, frowning. “I don’t understand.”
“See, instead of the video you want to see, it’s something totally different and irrelevant!”
“But why would someone do that?”
“Because it’s funny!”
“But...”
My sister cruised into the room and took in the scene. “Give it up,” she advised me, “or you’re looking at forty-five minutes of your life you’re never gonna get back.”

Six: Weird Numbers

My brother Joe Weiner once met a young lady at the mall. She was in line behind him at H&M and he observed as Mrs. Fields’ bag in her hand.
“Do they still weigh the cookies?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?” asked the young lady.
“The cookies are sold by weight, so when you buy one, they weigh it to figure out the price. Haven’t you noticed that whenever you buy a cookie there the price is always different, and it’s always some weird number?”
The young lady considered. “Yes,” she said, “you’re right!”
Joe smiled. “You want another weird number?”
“And then I handed her my business card,” he reported.
“And she called you?” Fran asked.
Joe smiled.“Oh, yeah.”
Meanwhile, Molly told the story of a guy she’d been out with a few times, and didn’t want to see again. “I told him I was going to visit you, and he wrote ‘have fun in Philly, my funny, foxy lady,” only he spelled everything with “ph.” “Phunny, phoxy...”
“So what’d you do?”
“I wrote back, “Phuc you.’”
“Oh, Molly...” Fran sighed.
“And he’s still texting me!”

2008-12-03T19:05:00.003-05:00

I had all kinds of deep, lengthy thoughts on everything I’ve been reading lately, but I’m editing the new novel, so I will offer short thoughts instead.

Didn’t Alex Kuczynski's Sunday Times Magazine story make gestational surrogates sound just like tampons for rich ladies? “You can swim, you can ride horseback , you can swill expensive bourbon and go to downhill ski-racing school, and not have to worry about losing your figure or going gray!” I know there was a paragraph’s worth of pro-forma denial tossed in there about how women would never, ever pay someone else to carry a child merely for the sake of convenience, but her whole piece – not to mention the photographs of her un-spat-up-upon little black dress, yoga-tended body, surgically perfected face, and uniformed baby nurse standing at the ready on the plush lawn of her house in the Hamptons -- read like an argument in favor of doing just that.

Wasn’t Maureen Dowd’s Vanity Fair piece on Tina Fey about as deep – and every bit as annoying – as a paper cut? OMG! Tina lost weight! Her husband sews and cooks! Do you know that she is skinny now! Also, sometimes she shows some cleavage! I offered her a cupcake, but she would not eat the cupcake, such is the Teutonic death-grip of her will! Yeesh. More than a whiff of “a woman who is ambitious and hard-working is sort of freakish and strange!" up in there.

I also wondered if Dowd’s fascination with Fey’s husband’s domesticity wasn’t – ahem – a little generational. Women my age pretty much expect their men to be schooled in some of the domestic arts…particularly if they managed their own meals, loose buttons, and dry cleaning prior to wedded bliss, and barely consider it worth noting, let alone going on and on and ON about, if a hard-working woman's husband mixes her a drink.

Isn’t it a little hypocritical for Caitlin Flanagan to complain in the Atlantic about YA books that are “about female empowerment as it’s currently defined by the kind of jaded, 40-something divorcées who wash ashore at day spas with their grizzled girlfriends and pollute the Quiet Room with their ceaseless cackling about the uselessness of men" and point specifically to "the raspy-voiced best friend, bleating out hilarious comments about her puckered fanny from the next dressing room over at Eileen Fisher,” given that she wrote a piece for O Magazine – which is, let’s face it, the in-print version of the Eileen Fisher dressing room, all nubby oatmeal-colored linens and forgiving elastic waistbands – that was basically a transcript of Flanagan and her ladyfriends sitting around cackling about life, and love, in middle age? No bleating over fanny-puckers, but I bet if you poured enough wine there might have been.

Thanksgiving update coming soon!

2008-11-17T20:37:00.002-05:00

For the past two weeks the baby has been doing the thing of waking up at 2:15 every morning and staying awake until oh, five or six o’clock.

Nothing works. We’ve tried rocking with her, sitting in her room while she’s in the crib, bringing her to bed with us, walking with her, putting her in the stroller. Nada. Last night we decided to let her cry it out, figuring that after an hour, tops, she’d be so exhausted she’d fall asleep. Didn’t happen. She pulled herself up and clung to the top of her crib railing, weeping. Then her eyes would close, and she’d start to drift, and she’d slip sideways, jolting herself back to wakefulness, and the whole thing started again.

After two weeks of four hours of sleep a night, I am, as they say, at the end of my rope (on the plus side, sleep deprivation = cheap legal high, so I also sort of feel of like I’m on acid...or at least like how I imagine being on acid would feel, Obama administration vetting committee!)

Today the baby and I went to our playgroup for “Your Second Child,” or as I affectionately call it, “Your Second Child, Whatsherface,” and I asked the other mothers – some of whom are indeed on their second baby, some of whom have three – what to do about my predicament.

“Are you giving her Tylenol?” asked one mommy.

“Well, I don’t think she’s…”

"Forget Tylenol!" scoffed another mother. "Motrin's better."

“What about Benadryl?” chimed in another mom.

“The thing is, I’m not sure…”

“You know, you can give her both of them together!” said a third. “My doctor says it’s okay!”

Mommy One sat down beside me. “What are you doing when she wakes up?

This I could answer. “I go in, pick her up, check to see if she’s wet, and make sure her humidifier’s working.”

“You see, that right there’s your problem,” said the other mother, in the tone of a plumber who’s just extracted a gross, soap-scummed clump of hair from your shower drain. “She sees you. She knows you’re there.”

I was puzzled. “Where does she think I am at two in the morning?”

“You can’t go in there!” the mothers chorused. “She has to learn to soothe herself!”

“So just to recap,” I said, pulling a crayon out of my daughter’s mouth. “We’re proposing drugs and neglect?”

“It works,” the mothers assured me.

We shall see. In the meantime, I have to figure out how to get the first-time mothers from music class together with the second-time moms from playgroup to see if any heads actually explode.

2008-11-11T08:51:00.002-05:00

Starting in September, in order to have some cold-weather activities and to keep her from feeling hopelessly neglected, I signed the second baby up for a music class, a tumbling class, and a playgroup.

A lot of the other mothers in our classes are first-timers. This has led to some interesting conversations.

For example, the other day one of the mothers was telling the group that she bought her baby a set of musical instruments. Then she read on the toy company’s website that they don’t inspect ALL of their toys for lead. They just do random checks.

So she went online and found some sort of swab, where she can test all of her child’s playthings.

I must have been making a face, or rolling my eyes, or maybe mouthing the words “found some sort of swab” in an audible and incredulous tone, because the first-time mother looked at me and said, “You wouldn’t buy a toy for your kid that was dangerous, would you?”

Helpful hint to mothers: if another Mom asks you that question, the right answer is “No.” The right answer is not, “Depends. Is it on sale?”

Also, all of these first-time mothers make their own baby food.

I understand that this is now a done thing. I know that even Nicole Richie steams little Harlow’s parsnips. Personally, my feeling is that if the good people at Earth’s Best want to spend their days cooking, mashing and canning organic butternut squash and selling it in handy, portable jars for extremely reasonable prices, who am I to stand in their way?

The problem is, I keep talking about it to my second-time mom friends (“These crazy first-timers! They all make their own baby food!”), hoping for sympathy. Instead, my second-time mom friends say, “Actually, I made/make my own baby food, too.” (Usually they’ll try to throw in some nonsense about how their kids were picky, or allergic, or not gaining weight. This doesn’t help).

Cleary, I needed to find someone with no babies who would understand my dismay.

So yesterday I had lunch with a baby-free friend. I was telling her the swabbing-for-lead story, and how the first-time moms sanitize every surface their babies could possibly touch, and how they travel with anti-microbial shopping-cart cozies and disposable cling-form placemats, and I’m lucky if I’ve got a spoon in my pocket and a baby wipe in the diaper bag. Then I segued into, “And they all make their own baby food!”

She looked at me. “If I had a baby, I’d make my own baby food.”

“Well, yes,” I said gently. “That is because you are a freak.”

“I already make my own dog food,” she continued. “I make lentils and quinoa.”

My jaw dropped. “Your dog is a vegetarian?”

“She’s never been healthier,” she said.

“Oh my God. Dogs are carnivores! They’re not meant to eat lentils and quinoa! You’re gonna be like that lady in France who needed a face transplant after her dog tried to eat her face!”

Friend (giggling) “No I’m not.”

“What do you think’s going to happen if there’s a plague that wipes out all the humans?” I continued (I think about things like this. Somebody has to). “My dog’s going to be chasing down rats and squirrels. Your dog’s going to be wandering around looking for someone to steam her some quinoa.”

In non-food news, I’m going to be very interested to see whether Wally Lamb has a career without Oprah. Or, alternately, if Oprah’s going to go three-for-three with his books. And the best book I’ve read in a while: THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins, which Stephen King recommended (hey, he’s got a new book out today!)

2008-10-13T12:36:00.003-04:00

Wow. Sorry for falling off the face of the earth there. Work! Work got in the way! That, and we all got sick with this awful virus that ricocheted from my husband to the girl to me to the baby to the girl again.

So what's new? The Swedes gave the Nobel Prize in Literature to a writer nobody's ever heard of. Oprah Winfrey anointed a writer everyone's already heard of (her twelfth guy in a row since resurrecting the book club in '05, for those keeping score at home...but Toni Morrison has a new book out soon, so maybe there's hope for the ladies).

Scientists found that girls enrolled in a weight-loss program who read a young adult book with a plus-size protagonist and a "weight loss story line" lost a little bit more weight than girls who just read regular books, or girls who read nothing at all.

On the one hand, yay for young-adult fiction that has a big girl in the leading role, instead of as the sassy sidekick/butt of jokes. But good fiction never sets out to make a point, or reduce the reader's BMI, as much as it tries to entertain and enlighten and tell a good story.

So will we start seeing doctors prescribing books the same way they prescribed amphetamines or phen-fen? Will we endure a rash of didactic "and then Sally swapped her Ring Dings for carrot sticks and lived happily ever after!" books, rice cakes between hardcovers written by people who have no clue, or ability to imagine, what it's like to live as a big girl, and who are writing not to entertain or enlighten, but just to...lighten? Yikes.

What else? Exciting news about blog fave Dwight Garner!

You remember Dwight, right? The guy who writes the "Inside the List" column for the New York Times that manages to hardly ever be about books that are actually on the bestseller list? The fellow who could barely manage a stunned "huh?" when asked why the Review covers sci-fi and thrillers and mysteries, but not romance? One of the editors, who, presumably, couldn't come up with a single lady who brought the ha-ha when the Times editors tried to list the funniest novels ever?

Well, Publisher's Lunch reports that Garner's leaving the Book Review, and is off to become a critic at the daily paper. Could it be that leaving the stuffy, laddish confines of the Book Review will liberate him, and we'll be treated to the dawning of a brand-new Dwight? After all, Garner did once admit to liking Stephen King's THE STAND. His recent review of the Gorgeous George bio was nimble and fun, and showed a decent appreciation of pop culture (and anyone who can work the phrase "tune up his blondeur" into a book review can't be all bad). Finally, the daily paper has a different mandate than the Sunday Times, insofar as its critics have to review those pesky, popular books about dogs and Lincoln that the Review's allowed to snub.

And hey -- maybe the Book Review will replace Garner with someone smart and funny who doesn't make the knee-jerk assumption that "books that are actually read by lots of people" and "books that are written and read by ladies" equals "books that are bad."

Finally, Connecticut has legalized gay marriage! Are those wedding bells I hear? (Mother: "I am not getting married just to amuse you." Me: "Why not? People get married for worse reasons than that all the time!")

I think she should tune up her blondeur and tie the knot. I have already volunteered to help write the vows.

2008-09-15T21:10:00.003-04:00

The editors of The New York Times Book Review set out to list the funniest novels ever and couldn't come up with a single title by a woman.

That's hilarious.

These days, much of the funny-lady stuff is in the non-fiction aisle: Chelsea Handler's MY HORIZONTAL LIFE, Jen Lancaster's BITTER IS THE NEW BLACK, even Katha Pollitt, whose story of cyberstalking her ex in LEARNING TO DRIVE was both, as they say, hilarious and heartbreaking.

And, of course, there's Fran Lebowitz, who doesn't exactly write fiction (or, sadly, much of anything these days), but should be remembered, always, for her categories of people who should not exist ("You Are A Poet and You Are Not Dead.")

There are plenty of women-written, women-centered books that I love that have funny/sharp observations (everything by Susan Isaacs), or funny/zippy dialogue, or funny set pieces in novels dealing with serious topics (there's a great date-gone-wrong in Anna Maxted's GETTING OVER IT, and some very funny defloration/sex-with-hippies scenes in Lisa Alther's KINFLICKS), or funny narrators (Izzy Spellman in "The Spellman Files," Isadora Wing in "Fear of Flying.")

My nominees? BRIDGET JONES' DIARY (I honestly did LOL, at the scene where Bridget pees in the museum installation), Nora Ephron's HEARTBURN, Gail Parent's SHEILA LEVINE IS DEAD AND LIVING IN NEW YORK and -- shout-out to all the other parents of five-year-olds! -- Barbara Parks' Junie B. Jones books, which are very funny indeed.

Who you got?

2008-09-08T13:16:00.003-04:00

I'm in the process of revising my 2002 advice to writers, and thought I'd post it, piece by piece, on the blog (once the whole thing's done, it'll replace the existing document here). Old text is italicized; new stuff is normal, and if it's a tad incoherent, forgive me: through the miracle of the Google, I just discovered that a certain high-minded, tres cerebral thrice-wed literary author who used to teach at Iowa and is not so much a fan of my work has two daughters with the exact same names as my two girls (although her daughters are like thirty years older) and I am deeply, deeply freaked out.

Anyhow: the introduction. Now with extra cynicism!

So you want to be a novelist?

There's no one path to take. Novelists come in all shapes and sizes. They're men and women, wunderkinds and retirees.

Well. Yes. Technically, yes. But publishing, like pretty much everything else in the world, tends to favor the young, the cute and the well-connected.

If you’re young, the logic goes, your publisher can look forward to building a long, profitable career with you over decades and dozens of books, while if you show up with your first finished manuscript in hand at sixty, that’s less likely to happen. If you’re twenty-eight and just happen to be bff’s with Dave Eggers, if you're the son of Anne Rice or the daughter of Arthur Miller, expect to meet with a happier reception than our theoretical sixty-year-old who wouldn’t know Dave Eggers if Dave Eggers bit him on the butt.

As for looks, they shouldn’t matter in publishing and mostly, they don't. Every once in a while a rumor will rock the blogosphere that such-and-such a publishing house is demanding to see headshots and/or meet potential authors before offering a contract. These rumors are, as far as I can tell, just that -- rumors. In general, if a publisher wants to meet an author in person before putting cash on the table, it's less to make sure that he or she is a potential model and more about making sure that he or she will not spray spittle on Barbara Walters while describing how the Pentavirate controls the world. Beautiful is not a prerequisite; presentable and reasonably sane both are.

However, in a climate where there’s decreasing amount of coverage for books in general and debut fiction in particular, youth and good looks don't hurt (do they ever?) No publisher ever kicked a potential author out of bed for eating crackers if the potential author was a babe. Hot author = coverage, even if the coverage consists largely of snide, dismissive mentions of the author’s alleged attractiveness (snide, dismissive mentions of alleged attractiveness, of course, being better than no mentions at all).

So! Anyone can be a writer, but if you can try to be under thirty, easy on the eyes, with famous parents and a bunch of bestselling friends, that’s going to help. And if you haven’t managed to pick your parents well, if Dad is not a New York Times columnist and Mom isn’t a best-selling author of memoirs or mysteries, if you’re an old dumpy misanthrope from the middle of nowhere, well, then, you’re probably used to everything being more difficult than it is for the young, hot and well-connected, right?

And if there was a single magic bullet, or a list of steps to follow that would guarantee publication, believe me, someone would have published it by now. What follows is just my take on the question - a completely idiosyncratic, opinionated, flawed and somewhat sassy consideration of what it take to get published. Important caveat: I have only written two books, (now six, going on seven) and I'm thirty-two (heh. Not any more), which, as my mother would hasten to point out, means I am probably not qualified to give advice to anyone about anything (my Mom still says this).

If you're looking for lessons from the life masters - people who've made long careers in the world of fiction - then run, do not walk, to your local bookshop and buy Stephen King's On Writing and Anne Lamott's utterly indispensable Bird by Bird, and Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings and Ursula LeGuin's Steering the Craft.

These are all great books. I re-read Bird by Bird with every publication, marveling at the wisdom and the prescience of Anne Lamott – like Tiresias, she has foresuffered all, so she can tell you, from personal experience, how to deal with an unmanageable first draft, the tense and terrifying months/weeks/days prior to publication, and the crummy review you will get in your hometown paper (yes, you will get a crummy review in your hometown paper – it’s a guarantee! Free with your contract!).

However, in terms of the nuts and bolts of breaking into publishing, there is now a wealth of invaluable information available for free, online. Start with Miss Snark's (sadly defunct) website, on which an anonymous working literary agent spent years answering every question her readers could throw at her in her own inimitably forthright style (and by 'inimitably forthright,' I mean 'with curse words.') If you’ve got a question about query letters, royalty statements publicists, book tours, anything at all publishing-related, chances are, Miss Snark answered it…and you can search her archives to find out what she said.

If Miss Snark is too snarky for your blood, let me introduce you to the woman who emailed me to complain that there was too much sex and in GOOD IN BED (and also lesbians! She was shocked!) Then check out Kristen Nelson’s blog pubrants for a kinder, gentler take on some of the same questions. Sharp advertising/marketing advice for the published and would-be published alike can be found at M.J. Rose's Buzz, Balls and Hype. These days, many authors have a website/weblog/Tumblr/Myspace/Facebook presence, and some of the friendlier ones will answer email, take questions, offer advice, and/or recount the saga of their own road to publication.

Different genres also have their own hangouts. Aspiring mystery writers should bookmark Sarah Weinman's Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind; sci-fi and speculative types will enjoy John Scalzi's Whatever, because it is funny, chick-litterateurs should read Trashionista and Conversations with Famous Writers, and all of you high-minded, pedigreed, Great American Novel-writing types...well, what are you doing here anyhow? Are you lost? I was going to tell you to go bother a certain tres intellectual former Iowa professor, who of course has no website because she is far too intellectual to trouble herself with anything as declasse as that, so I Googled her and found out her kids' names and now I have to go lie down.

Anyhow!

All would-be author should invest in a subscription to Publishers Weekly and Publishers Marketplace, for daily dispatches of industry news, and should read Mediabistro’s Galleycat to follow trends, job changes, publishing gossip and business news (what does this have to do with writing a novel? Not much, but knowing at least the basics of how the industry works has everything to do with getting that novel published).

More revised advice coming soon, including why having an unhappy childhood is essential to a writer's success, but discussing it is probably a mistake, and why you should never pay to take a writing class from someone who can't get her own fiction published.

2008-08-25T18:17:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago, flush from my triumph in the triathlon (and by “my triumph” I mean “surviving,”) I decided to attempt another feat of athleticism and endurance: kayaking from Truro to Provincetown.

I recruited my sister and one of my brothers to join me. I packed a picnic that could have sustained the three of us through an entire season of “Survivor,” loaded my Camelback with sports drink and lathered up with sunblock, and set off across the bay.

I have no idea how far the actual distance was – by car, it’s a ten-mile trip, and I figured it was maybe three miles across the water. We paddled out toward Pilgrim Monument, skimming over the little wavelets underneath a cloudless sky. We passed sailboats and motorboats and a few big, terrifying, whale-watching boats. We saw schools of silvery fish swimming underneath us and, once, came within an oar’s length of a big, black seal as it swam along beside us. For long stretches of time, the only thing we could hear was the sound of our blades dipping in the water, and the waves slapping the sides of our boats, and my sister, asking if we were there yet. It was a perfect summer adventure.

By 11:30 we were having sandwiches, and swatting at greenheads, on the deserted beaches at Long Point. We swam, and sunbathed, and then another hour’s paddle brought us into shore.

Exhilerated, flush with triumph and sunburn, we hauled our boats up onto the sand and waited for my mother. Eventually, she drove up in the minivan and squinted out at the water. “Just three hours, huh?” she said, and tugged on her lifejacket. “Maybe I’ll just paddle home.”

Note to self: feats of athleticism and endurance are considerably less impressive when your sixty-four-year-old mother turns around and replicates them.

In literary news, a reader writes: how about updating that Advice to Writers thing?

And I thought, yes! Because I believe that Advice to Writers thing is still telling people that a good way to become a novelist is to get a job at the local newspaper! While this may have been viable advice in 2002, I would not recommend it at present.

So: updates coming soon.

In the meantime, here is a long profile of old-school agent Molly Friedrich...and bad things can happen if you take a publisher's money and then don't turn in your book.

2008-08-10T20:11:00.003-04:00

If you’re looking for a good book to take to the beach, I recommend Jennifer Haigh’s THE CONDITION, which reminded me a lot of THE CORRECTIONS, in very good ways.
Beside the title (and I wonder whether that was a deliberate echo?) both of the books take as their subject two generations of families with two sons, one a flaky academic, and a daughter.

Both books deal with the way illness can effect a marriage and the relationships between parents and children; husbands and wives. In THE CORRECTIONS, it’s the patriarch’s Alzheimer’s; in THE CONDITION, it’s something called Turners syndrome, a chromosomal abnormality which keeps youngest daughter Gwen permanently the size, and body shape, of a twelve-year-old.

Gwen will never hit puberty, never top five feet, never have children: but she’s not the only member of the McKotch family with a defining and, at times, debilitating, condition. One of the sons is gay and closeted; another diagnoses himself with adult A.D.D. after his boy gets kicked out of school. Mom is as chilly as the house she keeps at 55 degrees, the better to maintain her antiques; Dad can’t keep it zipped, and everyone worries about poor Gwen, and what kind of life she can possibly have.

The book is wonderfully written; the characters, and the worlds they inhabit are beautifully drawn, from the oldest son’s just-so sushi dinners to the younger son’s messy, kid-infested ranch, and the cheaply-built McMansion his wife covets. Romance bloom, marriages crash and burn, children and friends and lovers slip in and out of the story, all of them the beneficiaries of Haigh’s generous heart: she’s found something to love about all of her characters, even the horrible ones, or the ones who do horrible things. There’s a juicy romance, a devastating betrayal, and a bittersweet, entirely rewarding ending…which, like the book’s opening chapter, is set on Cape Cod.

I saw it in a bookshop in Provincetown right next to Andre Aciman’s CALL ME BY YOUR NAME. Are faceless swimmers the headless bodies of the oughties?

On a lighter note, I devoured, and adored BRINGING HOME THE BIRKIN, the story of how one man turned the fashionable set’s obsession with Hermes’ signature handbag into a handsome, globe-trotting career (he figured out a formula for obtaining dozens of the coveted bags that did not involve languishing on a two-year-long waiting list, then sold them on eBay). It’s got fun, fashion, scenic locales (Capri! Paris! Luxembourg!), mouthwatering descriptions of posh hotels and fine dining, and a non-purse-person-friendly explanation of why the Birkin is, you know, the Birken, and why there are people in the world who will pay upwards of $20,000 for a place to stash their keys and cell phone.

I tried to be a bag girl, a few years back. In Los Angeles, on the advice of my sister-in-law’s BFF, who works as a stylist, I plopped down big bucks for a pink Marc Jacobs bag. It was pretty, but never super-practical (I like hobo-style bags with one long strap that are big enough to hold a few books, keys, wallet, cell phone and, if necessary, diapers, extra baby/kid clothing and/or a change of shoes).

Then I left an uncapped Sharpie rolling around in there, and the bag’s interior got all marked up with black ink.

Then I read somewhere that Marc Jacobs will not cut clothes bigger than a size 10 because he doesn’t want the fats to wear his garments…and after that I never felt right carrying the bag (this could totally be an urban legend, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Marc Jacobs garment bigger than a 10).

So my Nanna inherited the Marc Jacobs, and these days I’m all about Tano bags, which are chic and comfortable and not crazy expensive, although my current bag is a bright cotton floral print that I picked up for $9.99 at Marshalls.

Finally, lit-land’s buzzing about this piece about the blurb hunt, in which a well-connected literary novelist seems honestly perplexed, and seriously pissed, that her published peers did not elbow one another out of the way in order to sing her praises. Best section:

I made a list of the kind-of-famous writers I kind of know and went to work. As luck would have it, I spotted one that very week at a book party for a novelist held in a swanky gallery on the Upper East Side. My target was a midlevel, moderately successful novelist who wrote the kind of smart, sophisticated books I imagined my reader might enjoy. The daughter of a famous novelist herself, she had no idea what total obscurity looked like, but I'd known her vaguely for years and we shared at least one mutual friend. Fortified by a glass of white wine,
I made my way toward her. "Hi," I said a little too brightly. Was it my imagination, or was she already moving away from me? After a few forced pleasantries, I brought up the book and asked if she might be willing to read it. The expression on her face -- part horror, part sneer -- was exactly what I would have expected had I released a large fart and asked what she thought of it.

"I'm really busy right now," she answered, turning her back. After that, I stuck to e-mail. Electronic humiliation is so much more tolerable.

Huh. Do you think after she approached the writer, she wandered over to a dentist, said, “My molar’s been bugging me,” then tilted back her head so she could take a look? Did she interrupt a dermatologist, mid-bite, to complain about her oozing rash and ask for an appointment the next morning?

2008-07-21T09:28:00.003-04:00

I Was Told There'd Be Other Fat People

A Race Report

6 p.m.: After several wrong turns and two scary rotaries, my friend Alexa and I arrive at the race site the night before our first sprint-distance triathlon: a third of a mile swim, followed by a nine-mile bike ride, with a 3.2 mile run for dessert.

Goal: To finish, on my feet, without requiring medical attention.
Supersecret Goal: To finish in under an hour and a half.

We stand in line with our driver’s licenses, waiting to register. My fellow competitors range from whippet-thin to standard skinny to older racers who look like strips of beef jerky in Lycra unitards. I am disappointed. If there’s a book called Slow Fat Triathlete, doesn’t that imply that there is a population of slow fat triathletes? Where are my people?!?

Hmph.

6:30: We collect race numbers for running, numbered stickers and tags for our bikes, numbered swim caps and timing chips to loop around our ankles. I immediately start obsessing that I will lose/misplace/forget about my timing chip.

7 p.m.: Dinner. Conversation consists largely of Alexa, a half-marathon veteran, explaining to me how nasty the facilities typically are at events like these, and the steps we should take in the morning to avoid having to use them.

10 p.m.: Hotel. “Am I the only one here who had to pack a bike pump and a breast pump?” Alexa agrees that this may well be the case. “You know what someone should invent? A pump that does both!” Alexa tells me this would probably serve a very small niche market.

11 p.m.: Lights out.

11:15: That ocean looked pretty rough.

11:45: Also, the bike course was a little more hilly than I’m used to.

12:15: And I’ve never run longer than three miles, and I’ve never done a long run after a bike ride.

12:45: Why am I doing this again?

4:45: Alarm clock. Oy.

5: Mix packet of oatmeal with hot water from in-room coffee machine. Double-check gear: running shoes, sunglasses, visor, biking shoes, gloves helmet socks goggles swim cap. Loop timing chip securely around ankle. Squeeze into sports bra and snazzy (if skimpy) triathlon outfit). Spray on sunscreen. Load bikes onto rack, load bags into car, glide toward empty downtown, offload bikes and coast a mile to the start/transition area.

6 a.m: Wakeup call perhaps too conservative: we’re basically the first people here. Lay stuff out on colorful towel, as directed by three dozen triathlon books, websites and advice columns we’ve read. Meet neighbors: normal-looking women in my age range, most of them also mothers of young children. I tell them I have a five-year-old and a seven-month-old. Rack-mates are impressed.

6:30: Body marking! Alexa and I have matching bodysuits, bought on sale at Sierra Trading Post. “Are you two a team?” asks the Sharpie guy as he writes my number on my arm. “No,” I say. “We are lovers. We are racing for love.” Guy appears completely unfazed. I remember that this is Massachusetts and he’s probably wondering why our wedding rings don’t match. “Also, did I mention my six-month-old?”

7 p.m.: Announcer starts talking, in greatest Massachusetts accents of all time. It’s like our race is being emcee’d by Peter Griffin from “Family Guy!” At his instruction, we depaht from the transition area and make our way to the swim staht. I consider offering him the $20 I stuck in my backpack to say the all-time best word to hear in the Massachusetts accent ever, which is “Parmalat.”

Instead, I walk through the chutes with a woman in my age group. She’s got a six and a four year old. I tell her I’ve got a five-year-old and a newborn.

7:30: We pick our way gingerly over the rocks toward the edge of the ocean. Wave One, the elite racers, get in the water. The countdown begins, the gun goes off, the rest of the crowd cheers, and the elites start slicing through the chop like they’re paddling through a hot tub.

7:32: First elite racer finishes (not really, but it looked that fast). Wave Two creeps over the rocks into the water. My wave – wave five – inches forward. “Excuse me,” the woman behind me says. “Is it true you just gave birth six weeks ago?”
“More or less,” I say modestly.

7:49: In the water. “Thirty seconds,” says the announcer. “Five…four…three…” And we’re off! Water’s warmer than I thought it would be. Also more sea-weedy. Swim seems to be going okay. Nobody’s kicked me yet. Stroke, breath, stroke, breath. Can’t believe I’m actually doing this. Hey, it’s the first buoy already!

7:50: OMG, the woman swimming next to me is topless!

7:51: And she’s got really hairy nipples.

7:52: It’s a guy. Never mind.

7:57: Out of the water. Wobble up the beach and into the parking lot. Dip feet in kiddie pool to rinse. Trot to bike. Cap and goggles off, sunglasses, helmet, gloves, shoes and socks on. Trot with bike through orange cones to start, and I’m on my way.

8:10: Racecourse is lovely, running along the edge of the ocean, then through a neighborhood of manicured lawns and lovely gardens, up a hill to a beautiful lighthouse. At least, the course was lovely yesterday, when it was clear and sunny, but today it’s gray and foggy and there’s sweat dripping in my eyes. Neighbors stand at the edge of their driveways, clapping. “Am I winning?” I ask one group.

8:20: Because I am such a pathetic runner, my strategy on the bike is to go as hard as I can. Goal: Not to get passed by anyone in groups behind me.

8:21: Unless they are guys.

8:22: Or women on fancier bikes than mine.

8:23: Or Libras.

8:40: Back into transition. Guy in front of me wiped out on tight turn into the parking lot. Proceed cautiously so as not to fall on top of him. Bike shoes, gloves, helmet off; running shoes and race belt on…and we’re off!

8:40: Run. Legs feel like wet concrete, and I am sloooow. People from waves that left after mine are passing me. Kids on scooters are passing me. Inanimate objects are passing me.

8:48: Back hurts.

8:52: Front’s not feeling great either.

9: Turnaround. Oh shit. I just got lapped by Jogging Granny. Seriously, I think I can see Depends under her shorts.

9:10: Goal: To finish without walking.

9:15: Except through stations where they’re handing out water.

9:30: Finish! Broke the 90-minute barrier with 23 seconds to spare! Munch complimentary bagel. Call loved ones to tell them that I was not hospitalized. Then back to hotel room for wonderful hot shower.

3 p.m: Race results posted. Time for bike is an inexplicable six minutes longer than my cyclometer indicated. Fire off email to race commissioner demanding explanation; recompense.

4 p.m.: Race commissioner writes back to tell me that bike time included transitions, so my bike time began it began the moment I crossed the mat out of the water and ended the minute I crossed the mat to start the jog. Maybe I had a hard time getting out of my wetsuit?

Except I wasn’t wearing a wetsuit. Hmph.

4:15 p.m: Write back to race commissioner thanking him for clearing that up, and that also they should maybe take a look at the 75-year-old woman who finished one place ahead of me, because probably she’s doping.

2008-07-16T21:02:00.003-04:00

Dani Saperstein had been living in Philadelphia for six months when she got her first email from the dead.

I've got a short story in Who Can Save us Now, an anthology of brand-new superhero origin stories edited by Owen King and John McNally, that I think is pretty nifty (the book in general, not my story in particular...although I really like the title of my story. It is called "League of Justice (Philadelphia Division)," and is based in part on the premise that all of the superheroes with really cool talents have moved to New York.)

For all of you Bostonians who asked for a reading, why not blow off work/school/family obligations and spend a day at the beach? On August 5 I'm doing a lunchtime event at the swanky Chatham Bars Inn, sponsored by Where the Sidewalk Ends, with Michael Tonello (Bringing Home the Birkin) and Elin Hillebrand (A Summer Affair).

Finally, a reader asks: how goes the triathlon training?

The good news: I am pretty sure I will be able to finish the thing without hurling or expiring, even though coming in last remains a distinct possibility.

The bad news: every day I find something new to worry about.

For instance, I thought I'd be just fine with the swimming part. Then my friend who I'm doing this thing with did a group swim, and went into lengthy, vivid detail about the horrors of hacking through the water with hundreds of other people, getting kicked, getting punched, getting swum over, getting your goggles knocked off your face...oh, and by the way, did I read about the shark sightings on Martha's Vineyard?

And then I started thinking, if you can't bike any more, you can coast, and if you can't run any more, you can walk, but if you can't swim any more, you can drown...or you can get pulled out of the water in front of everyone, which might possibly be worse.

I'll report back post-race...or if you come to Chatham, you can ask me for details in person!