Category: what’s lit

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what's lit

‘Queen Sugar’ TV Review: Where My Body Stops or Begins

Queen Sugar -- Ep 401 -- "TBD" -- Photo Credit: Skip Bolen / 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved

The season so far is wrought by the impact of Nova’s (Rutina Wesley) book that the family didn’t see coming.

The episode starts with Micah (Nicholas L. Ashe) returning from vacation with Nova’s book in hand, in which his mother Charley (Dawn-Lyen Gardner) is questioned about why she paid her ex-husband’s mistress millions to keep quiet and working for the sugarcane company ran by descendants of the owners of the Bordelon family’s ancestors. Tough questions indeed.

In the next scene, Nova is asking her agent what to wear for an interview with an audience of psychologists when she gets word of The New York Times review for book that’s called “a love letter” on race, culture, and identity. The critics love the book putting a microscope on the Bordelons.

Nova is soon sitting on a talk show similar to OWN’s Iyanla, Fix My Life with a family asking for guidance on how to mend a sisterly relationship. They want advice on how Nova and Charley became closer. Of course, that relationship is strained over the contents in the book yet the general public doesn’t know it yet…

Meanwhile, Charley is arguing over her shareholder voting status at the company. Again, the company Nova criticized her for being a part of because of their family’s slavery history. And Charley is given the how-you-should-be-grateful-to-be-in-the-room-since-you’re-a-black-woman speech by her colleague about her dividends.

Violet’s shadow-lurking surprise guest, who gave her such a fright that she fainted in her restaurant, appears to be her abusive ex-husband named Jimmy (David Alan Grier). Elsewhere, Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe) tells Darla (Bianca Lawson) that the revelation of him not being Blue’s (Ethan Hutchison) biological father is in Nova’s book. “I didn’t read much after that part. I couldn’t,” he tells her as Darla gets teary about the thought of little Blue discovering the truth.

Jimmy comes back to Violet’s house later and demands to talk to her. He says he wants them to get on the right track, and Violet is hypnotized (in a bad way) by the sight of him. She shrinks, then speaks up. “You’re the last person who can talk about dignity, Jimmy Dale,” she yells. “Get out of my house!”

Nova appears and asks Jimmy why he’s there. Jimmy says it’s nice to see Nova again, which has Violet questioning if they had spoken recently.

“Whatever you did to bring this to my doorstep, it cannot be explained,” Violet tells Nova. Then Nova shoves Jimmy away from Violet until the women are pushing him out the door. But luckily Hollywood, Violet’s new husband, approaches from the driveway and repeatedly punches Jimmy on the lawn.

Nova says she had visited Jimmy for her book to get his point-of-view on his marriage to Violet. “My intention wasn’t to hurt anyone” is her pathetic excuse.

Violet tells Nova that her late parents would be ashamed and told her to leave her home. “I don’t want to look at you. I don’t want to talk to you. Not right now, not tomorrow, what I’m feeling in 10 years can’t put enough distance between us… This is the last time I let you in this house, Nova Bordelon.”

Nova leaves the house. But the greed to craft that Ta-Nehisi Coates-like memoir and using her family as a prop to fetch the fame and status as a culturally woke critic is so overpowering in this episode. Nova brought back someone who obviously was abusive to her beloved aunt. Maybe she didn’t think Jimmy would show up at Violet’s door, but the traumatizing fear a woman may have over an abusive partner returning from the grave she mentally placed him in was shown brilliantly in those scenes.

Another matter was how Blue, who’s about 7 years old, will learn maybe before he should about his true paternity that could send him into a tailspin, questioning the only family he’s ever known. While on the other hand, Micah is a teenager, so him finding out about his mother’s actions against his father’s indiscretions sure would leave a bad taste in his mouth but he’s mature enough to understand the product of the NBA world his family had been in for so long.

This season is wonderfully showing how one’s memoir could ignite a fire with the power to destroy a family. When a memoir is written, do we later see the aftermath from others who are in the story? Is there a sufficient post-memoir describing the interactions between friends and family during the memoir’s release? It’s an interesting concept that writers may not take into consideration because they own their stories, but others may feel violated by that ownership.

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what's lit

‘Younger’ TV Review: The Unusual Suspect

"Younger" Ep. 603 (Airs 6/26/19)

The overarching theme of the season is Kelsey (Hilary Duff) taking over the publishing house as a millennial woman and picking up the pieces of the financially strapped company.

The episode starts with Liza (Sutton Foster) and Charles (Peter Hermann) acting in a true crime fantasy at an art museum according to the story on the popular Exonerated podcast.

From last week’s episode, investor Quinn (Laura Benanti) has been experiencing best-seller list bliss for the past three weeks to Kelsey’s dismay after the Lean In-like book, Claw, failed to reach audiences during a pre-sale experiment. Quinn notifies Kelsey about the book trending on Twitter and her plans to be interviewed for The Cut. She then requests Kelsey to interview her.

“How does the book everyone hated made it debut at No. 10 on the best-seller list and continues to rise?” Kelsey poses the question to Liza and Diana (Miriam Shor) after Quinn leaves her office. An smh moment.

They go into a meeting with Audrey Colbert (Willa Fitzgerald), the alleged murderess in the Exonerated podcast. Diana skips the meeting out of fear. “Do you think I did it?” Audrey asks an anxious Kelsey and Liza. She emphasizes she needs a publisher who trusts her and doesn’t think she committed the murders since she’s now an international supervillain. The book can clear her name. After the awkward meeting, Kelsey and Liza learn later that they weren’t the only ones being pitched Audrey’s book, but so was half the major publishers.

Audrey’s agent, the nosy Redmond (Michael Urie), later tells Kelsey that Claw has suspicious sales with bulk purchases and Chinese bots inserting the title all over social media. He lets them know that’s the real gossip on the street.

Kelsey and Liza approach Quinn at the fancy Ardmore Club, disbeliving she’s being blamed for phony sales. When they tell her they have evidence from their peers, Quinn admits she faked the best-selling novel for her senatorial campaign since that shiny New York Times best-selling sticker will be on every cover of her book. Kelsey says this will ruin the business while Quinn argues the book will pump millions into the company. Quinn then threatens Kelsey about showing up at The Cut event for the book.

“No one will work with us if we throw an author under the bus,” Liza says.

When Liza gets home, she finds papers on the dining room table listing prices for the home. She asks Charles why he’s moving money around, and he says he just needs to with his unemployment. Like in the previous two episodes, it seems like Charles and Kelsey’s sometimes beau Zane (Charles Michael Davis) are in cahoots as if they’ll create their own rival publishing house.

At The Cut event, everything seems to be going smoothly until the Q&A part of the fireside chat. One woman tells Kelsey and Quinn about the dagger next to Quinn’s best-selling status, and the dagger means suspicious bulk sales. Quinn laughingly says it’s due to colleges and universities requesting the book to use for syllabi, then she moves the spotlight to Kelsey.

Kelsey maintains her composure. She admits to the bulk sales, but they’re also due to forthcoming events as Quinn plans to throw her hat in the California Senate race. It sparks applause, when Quinn and Kelsey faux hug where Quinn threatens Kelsey about what she’s done since that type of announcement is reserved on a stage of higher magnitude. Kelsey just tells her to enjoy the applause.

The next day, Kelsey, Liza, and Diana learn Mercury nabbed the Audrey Colbert deal. They never heard of this competitor until Redmond lets them know Zane is the publisher of Mercury and the deal stands at $800,000. Their men were in cahoots building their own company! Then the episode ends with Liza’s eyes popping open because she knows Charles had something to do with it. Her boyfriend whom she got hooked onto Exonerated.

Yes, Kelsey’s and Liza’s love lives got more complicated with the clandestine creation of competitor Mercury by their men. An extra episode highlight is Nicole Ari Parker guest starring as a post-childbirth vagina support group leader who Maggie (Debi Mazar) meets after being traumatized by Josh’s (Nico Tortorella) green card wife having a baby in their Uber.

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what's lit

Women Authors Donate to Immigration Nonprofit Amid Deportation Reports

Jodi Picoult, Celeste Ng, and Mindy Kaling are some of the famous author voices who’ve donated to Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services amid reports the Trump administration plans massive deportations in two weeks.

Authors For Families seemed to have inspired the matching campaign to benefit the 501(c)(3) nonprofit known by its acronym RAICES, which is the largest immigration legal services provider in Texas. Asking for authors to donate services from query critiques to signed books for its next fundraiser in July, Authors For Families, a group of authors and publishing professionals raising money to reunite immigrant children with their parents, plans to raise money to also benefit National Court Appointed Special Advocate Association or CASA, Women’s Refugee Commission, Kids in Need of Defense or KIND, and The Florence Project.

Jodi Picoult, the best-selling author behind A Spark of Light and My Sister’s Keeper, tweeted she and her supporters raised $50,000 for RAICES.

Celeste, whose two novels Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere became runaway hits, was one of those supporters.

Circe author Madeline Miller continued matching with her supporters reaching $10,000 with her bump.

Mindy, who celebrated her birthday Monday and recently announced an Amazon Publishing follow-up to Why Not Me? and Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns), asked what causes she should donate to for her 40th birthday. She first donated $10,000 to RAICES.

Last summer, RAICES raised $25 million after a photo of a 2-year-old girl at the border in a pink jacket crying up at adults went viral.

If you’re an author, do you have a passion you would use your platform for? Or how would you feel as a reader when your top authors stand on a platform you’re not for?

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‘Little Fires Everywhere’ Rounds Out Casting for Hulu Adaptation

Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon star and produce the Hulu adaptation of "Little Fires Everywhere." Instagram

Celeste Ng’s best-selling novel, Little Fires Everywhere, is gearing up for its TV debut as casting decisions are being finalized.

According to Deadline, the last major character from the book, Bebe Chow, has been casted and will be played by Chinese actress Huang Lu. Joshua Jackson, originally of Dawson’s Creek fame and recently of When They See Us, was also one of the last to round out the cast and will play Bill Richardson, the workaholic attorney patriarch of a family in crisis when the novel opens up to his youngest daughter, Isabella, missing as their home burns. Intricately weaving the tale of the Richardsons with matriarch Elena and the four children and their relationship with their new vagabondish tenants, Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl, the story also evolves into a custody fight between another two mothers that has divided Elena and Mia along with the 1990s Shaker Heights, Ohio community.

Before the novel was released in 2017, Reese Witherspoon bought the rights, which she had first done with Gone Girl. It has become her specialty: to buy the rights for television and film purposes before the book hits shelves. This time it will be with her Hello Sunshine brand, most known for its monthly book club. Currently starring in the second season of HBO’s Big Little Lies, which already reached the deadly ending of Liane Moriarty’s novel of the same name, Reese is working on the Little Fires Everywhere project with Scandal star Kerry Washington.

This will be Kerry’s first major project with her production company, Simpson Street. It was behind her most recent Broadway play, American Son, which is the debut of playwright Christopher Demos-Brown and directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon.

Celeste, Reese, and Kerry will be executive producers for the eight-episode limited series. According to IMDB and Deadline, the casting for the major characters are complete.

Elena Richardson will be played by Reese Witherspoon.

Mia Warren will be played by Kerry Washington.

Pearl Warren will be played by Lexi Underwood.

Bill Richardson will be played by Joshua Jackson.

Izzy Richardson will be played by Megan Stott.

Lexie Richardson will be played by Jade Pettyjohn.

Trip Richardson will be played by Jordan Elsass.

Moody Richardson will be played by Gavin Lewis.

Bebe Chow will be played by Huang Lu.

Linda McCullough will be played by Rosemarie DeWitt.

Restaurant manager (where Mia and Bebe work) will be played by Paul Yen.

Little Fires Everywhere landed at Hulu following a multiple-outlet bidding war and will also be under the umbrella of ABC Signature Studios along with Hello Sunshine and Simpson Street. Liz Tigelaar (Casual, Life Unexpected), Lauren Neustadter, Pilar Savone and Lynn Sheldon will all executive produce. Award-winning mystery novelist Attica Locke is also one of the writers, as seen in the show’s Instagram account, fresh from working on Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us.

“At Hello Sunshine, we strive to shine a light on female-driven stories that are rooted in inspiration, emotion and truth – all of which form the bedrock of Celeste Ng’s ingenious work,” Reese said in the March 2018 Hulu press release first announcing the project. “Hulu has a rich history of transforming groundbreaking literature into groundbreaking television, and we are confident that their talented team will use this story to spur a long-overdue dialogue around race, class, and what it means to be a mother. With Kerry Washington, Liz Tigelaar and now Hulu, Hello Sunshine has brought together a dream lineup of creative collaborators, and we are privileged and humbled to have the opportunity to work with them to bring this important project to life.”

“As producers, we at Simpson Street are so proud to be part of this team to tell this extraordinary story inspired by Celeste Ng’s phenomenal novel and we are thrilled to be embarking on this journey with Hulu,” Kerry said in a press release. “As an actress, I am floored to have the opportunity to work alongside Reese Witherspoon exploring the rich themes of this story playing these dynamic characters.”

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what's lit

‘Younger’ TV Review: Flush with Love

"Younger" Ep. 602 (Airs 6/19/19)

How much should an investor on a publisher’s board get involved in the business when she wants her book to be published? That’s the question highlighting the season’s second episode.

Quinn (guest star Laura Benanti), the chief financial officer-type from last week’s episode, turns out to be an investor on the board. She wants her book to be the first release of the revamped publisher. In the beginning of the episode, Diana (Miriam Shor) asks why is the company now looking at focus groups for their books. It turns out Kelsey (Hilary Duff) wants to ensure the success of her first book release as CEO.

The focus group loathes the book with a passion. One woman asks why is the author being given a voice while another is crying about how she wants to un-read it. Liza (Sutton Foster) says her edits weren’t taken seriously therefore didn’t happen, so the book may stay rough and unlikable.

At lunch, Kelsey and Liza invite Quinn to a fancy restaurant where Quinn gifts them with gold-plated business card holders. Then Kelsey suggests holding Quinn’s self-help empowerment book Claw for the spring since it needs more edits when at the moment it’s coming off as “anti-woman.”

Quinn brushes it off and emphasizes how her vote brought Kelsey to her CEO role.

“If a writer doesn’t want to take notes, they might as well self-publish,” Liza hints aloud.

Yet Quinn, determined, remains steadfast that her book is fine. She then starts slamming the table with a cheer: “Guess who wrote a masterpiece? It will be our first release!” The rumble gets louder with diners looking their way at the commotion. Kelsey is confused while Quinn says the cheer rhythm is from her 1998 cheer competition, which Liza brings up the incessant mentions of high school in the book. Quinn keeps going with the cheer until Kelsey and Liza join her to stop it. After lunch, Kelsey asks what happened. Liza interjects it from Chapter 3 of Claw called “Charm and Disarm.”

Now working to save the company from not publishing Quinn’s book first during her new stint as CEO, Kelsey has been in talks with Reese Witherspoon about a screenplay she calls “sexy, millennial and set in the fashion world.” The screenwriter can produce a novel in a month after submitting a test chapter. Liza is uncertain about the quick change of events, but Kelsey is convinced that the simple mention of Reese Witherspoon will force Quinn out of the way.

Later on, Liza drops that she told her current boo/former publisher Charles about the work drama with Quinn. Kelsey doesn’t like the sound of this. She takes it as her actions being scrutinized for her not being prepared to be a CEO since she’s 28. She tells Liza to schedule a dinner with her and Quinn alone.

At the dinner, Quinn reveals she can’t have her book pushed to the spring because she plans to jump-start her senatorial campaign in California. Her book will help her become the “strong, independent voice.” But Kelsey resists.

“Every book that comes out of Millennial has to be the best it can be,” Kelsey pushes. Then she adds, “Board members don’t tell publishers what to do.”

Quinn dares Kelsey to publish Claw or she’ll never hear from her again. Kelsey puts a ballpoint pen in front of Quinn because she wants that in writing.

Other storylines include Josh (Nico Tortorella) becoming a father after a balloon mishap at the gender reveal party and Diana writing a magazine article about how much she loves her plumber boyfriend who usually gets the independent woman burn from her.

The last season, similar to the turn of events in last week’s premiere, show the series emphasizing the book pitches coming to the the publishing house will somehow relate to businesswomen empowerment with Kelsey as a millennial CEO. The series, again with its title, surrounds Liza lying about her age to compete in the publishing industry but also shows how younger people like Kelsey and her competitive boo Zane (Charles Michael Davis) are taking the helm with their pure diligence and ambition. Zane and Charles also seem to be secretly building their own publishing company, so hopefully that storyline turns out to be true in a future episode and cause even more havoc in their career goals and romantic lives.

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‘Younger’ TV Review: Big Day

"Younger" Ep. 601 (Airs 6/12/19)

The sixth and final season of Younger started with Millennial Imprint boss Kelsey taking the helm as the youngest publisher in New York City from longtime editor Charles, who gave his career up for his perpetually age-lying girlfriend Liza. The episode returns to Kelsey taking over as CEO and how her struggle may be reflected in the books the company will publish.

Younger centers around 42-year-old Liza (Sutton Foster) lying about her age with subtracting almost 25 years off to make it in the publishing world when she had taken time off to raise her now-college-aged daughter. She works with Kelsey (Hilary Duff), an actual 28-year-old taking the publishing world by storm, especially in this season with taking over their storied publishing house.

After Liza gets emotional seeing a facility worker unscrewing Charles’ (Peter Hermann) name plaque from his office and placing one with Kelsey’s name, she and Kelsey learn from their chief financial officer that Page Six plans to expose why Charles abandoned the company. It says he left for a 28-year-old whom he was having an affair with (he’s in his 40s with an estranged wife), which they all knew could be interpreted as Kelsey, diminishing her meteoric rise to CEO. Liza yells to the entire office that she’s the one Charles is dating. This rubs her former boss Diana (Miriam Shor) the wrong way, as she doesn’t know Liza’s secret of her real age and sees her as an opportunity-stealing millennial. And with Kelsey now being the boss also doesn’t sit well with Diana.

Later in the day, Kelsey learns the company’s finances are in trouble with revenue slipping away every day. After that meeting, she meets with a potential author, surprisingly a black woman since the diversity in the cast reflects the real publishing industry, who pitches her book, The Glass Cliff. It focuses on boss women and how they’re set up not to win. She gives the example of women usually inheriting the CEO role of distressed companies. Kelsey gulps at the mention of this, knowing she’s living that life.

Other plots pop up in the episode with Diana threatening to quit but being lured out of the decision with a Dolly Parton 9 to 5 karaoke stint, Charles buying a bed for Liza and him now that they’re more official, and Josh (Nico Tortorella) finding out he’s going to be a father to the Irish woman he had green card marriage with. But the overarching theme focused on Kelsey and how rising to the top is not what it’s cracked up to be. This will even extend in their book decisions like with The Glass Cliff and next week’s episode preview showing Kelsey trying to explain to her CFO that her book pitch sucks.

Like other shows, Younger produced a novel, Marriage Vacation, and the book review is available.

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what's lit

‘Queen Sugar’ TV Review: Pleasure is Black

For Show Promotion Only
Queen Sugar -- Ep 401 Photo Credit: Skip Bolen / 2019 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved

Queen Sugar returned for its fourth season with Nova Bordelon (Rutina Wesley), the activist journalist of the sugarcane business family, preparing for the launch of her book and realizing her family might not be ready for it.

In the beginning of the episode, Nova is creating a video about Blessing and Blood, looking confident while vaguely describing her “American family.” But minutes later, she’s at a restaurant chugging wine and telling her agent that she’s nervous about the impact of her memoir because she failed to prepare her family for its contents, even though she’s learned the New York Times plans to review the book.

“They know it’s coming, but they don’t know what’s in it,” Nova says.

Back in Louisiana, in their summer attire with umbrellas, the family parades up to aunt Violet (Tina Lifford)‘s new restaurant, Vi’s Prized Pies & Diner, where Nova’s antisocial demeanor stands out.

“This is the last we’ll see her serve anybody,” a woman tells Prosper (Henry G. Sanders), who works with the sugarcane business, as they chat with Nova serving behind the counter. She goes on to add her sister saw a billboard in New York City advertising Nova’s book that’s being compared to the works of Roxane Gay and Ta-Nehisi Coates. “What’s the book about? Can we get a little preview? Or a taste?”

Violet’s new husband, Hollywood (Omar J. Dorsey), overhears the conversation. As Nova turns to the kitchen, Hollywood whispers his thoughts on the book to her.

“When do we get to read your book?” Hollywood asks. “You ain’t been shy about nothing you did. Something not right about that book.”

Nova hesitates.

Hollywood adds the family should’ve been prepared for what the memoir would entail because he has a feeling that family secrets have been spilled without permission.

Outside in the dining area, Violet expresses her dislike for her nephew Ralph Angel (Kofi Siriboe) passing his son Blue like “day-old bread” in his custody exchange between his ex Darla (Bianca Lawson), who recently revealed he’s not Blue’s father. 1990s teen R&B sensation Tevin Campbell made his high-profile appearance singing at the festive opening as a Bordelon cousin.

Guiltily, Nova ambushes Charley (Dawn-­Lyen Gardner) at work the next day while her sister, dressed impeccably in a taupe pantsuit ready to head to women’s conference panel, is confused by the surprise. Nova hands her sister a copy of the manuscript and later visits her brother Ralph Angel to leave a copy as she wipes a tear away.

At the conference, Charley is getting revved up during her inspirational speech while receiving a leadership award until a reporter bombards her with questions in the crowd. The reporter claims she received an advanced copy of Nova’s manuscript and it read Charley had secretly paid off one of her basketball player ex-husband’s mistresses, which happened two seasons ago. Once Charley gets home, she pops the cork on a bottle of wine and chugs as much as she can before laying her eyes on the manuscript.

In the morning, she calls Ralph Angel to warn him to not look at the manuscript until she talks to him. On the car ride to talk to her brother, Charley calls her lawyer to send her sister a cease-and-desist over the book.

Meanwhile, Hollywood picks up the manuscript on Violet’s desk and reads the first page to see it disparages Violet calling her a self-proclaimed “strong black woman” but saying how she lived her life doesn’t show that evidence.

Elsewhere, Ralph Angel, intrigued by Charley’s warning to not look at the manuscript, decides to look at the manuscript. He reads the paragraph about how he has a “fragile ego” as it criticizes his drama with Darla for never questioning Blue’s paternity when she is a recovering drug addict.

Nova visits her father’s mausoleum at the cemetery, laying a fresh bouquet of flowers.

“I’m afraid, Daddy, that everybody will not understand what I’m doing, but I’m offering up my work to see that, to be better,” she cries on the ground. “Because I grew up with too many secrets. You did, too. And it’s time for us to be as free as you wanted us to be. Please give me the strength to see this through.”

The episode ends with a telling preview for the rest of the season with the memoir tearing the family apart while the audience waits to see what these secrets are. It’s interesting to see a TV series based on a book have a storyline where a personal story could be destructive to a family. The impact of memoirs doesn’t seem to be brought up in the book world as authors most likely don’t touch on the subject with their families or generally say their families are supportive. Queen Sugar, with the vision brought to the forefront by main producers Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey, will be a standout this season on examining the impact of a published book on a family.

“This is the last time I want to look at you,” Violet says to Nova in the preview.

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Celeb Bookwomen Announce Their June Book Club Picks

Reese Witherspoon / Hello Sunshine

Here’s a quick roundup of the celebrity-helmed book clubs and their June books:

Actress and producer Reese Witherspoon chooses The Cactus by Sarah Haywood for Hello Sunshine.

“Susan, our main character, navigates a love triangle, family drama, and being pregnant for the first time at 45. Hope y’all love Susan as much as I do!,” Reese said in the announcement.

 

Sarah also wrote an exclusive essay for Hello Sunshine about the themes resonating through her novel.

 

NBC correspondent and former first daughter Jenna Bush Hager chooses Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok for Today Show Book Club.

“It’s a mystery,” Jenna said in the announcement. “Sylvie Lee is the main character and she’s a golden child. She disappears. The story unfolds as her family copes and discovers all the secrets surrounding her life.” She added the team unveiled the book club pick later than usual because the book was released on June 4.

Belletrist, the book blog administered by actress Emma Roberts and producer Karah Preiss, also chose Searching for Sylvie Lee for June with its branded digestible interview with the author.

Actress Emma Roberts’ Our Shared Shelf on Goodreads is still reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, a book the bimonthly book club chose in May. The book also is a National Book Award Finalist and now available in paperback.

“Min Jin Lee is unabashedly a feminist and her resilient female characters propel this riveting story,” the book club wrote in its announcement. “Lee has written a moving, historical saga that is also a timeless masterpiece; almost 500 pages long, and we didn’t want it to end. This brilliant, eye-opening novel is about outsiders, minorities, the disenfranchised and yet somehow embraces us all.”

Indie rock pop band Florence + The Machine is reading three books for its Between Two Books club: Read and Riot by artist, activist, and Pussy Riot founder Nadya Tolokonnikova; My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter by Aja Monet; and The Terrible by Yrsa Daley-Ward.

 

“The title of Yrsa Daley-Ward’s book, ‘The Terrible,’ can mean different things to each reader. It can be a feeling you can’t quite word. It can describe depression. It can refer to the things you fear,” the book club tweeted June 6.

 

Side note: Florence + The Machine’s 2011 album Ceremonials is a wonderfully lyrical and musical album for a writing session.
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Mystery Novelist Attica Locke Lends Writing Talent to Netflix’s ‘When They See Us’

Five teens from Harlem become trapped in a nightmare when they're falsely accused of a brutal attack in Central Park. Based on a true story. / Netflix

Acclaimed novelist Attica Locke joined a National Association of Black Journalists Los Angeles panel Wednesday in Hollywood along with actors Niecy Nash and Blair Underwood for their new Netflix series When They See Us, featuring the true-life stories of the boys who had become known as the Central Park Five.

Based in Los Angeles, Attica has written award-winning novels The Cutting Season, Pleasantville, Black Water Rising, and Bluebird, Bluebird, which was picked up by FX in 2017 for a TV series. A sequel titled Heaven, My Home will be out in September.

Attica Locke / Mel Melcon, Los Angeles Times

As a writer and producer, Attica said the Ava DuVernay project, which includes Oprah and Robert DeNiro as producers, was the highest outlet for her talent with the social justice aspect. The four-episode series available on Netflix this weekend surrounds the New York City case convicting five teenage African American and Latino boys over the rape of a white investment banker who received the moniker of Central Park Jogger. The 1989 event and the subsequent trials revived racial tensions within the city and country, infamously including an $85,000 New York Times ad from Donald Trump calling for the death penalty for the boys. The woman, who was later revealed to be Trisha Meili in a 2004 memoir, survived the attack though still experiences cognitive difficulties.

The case is now examined by journalism scholars who find the media coverage 30 years ago had a racial tinge with most articles never saying these boys—Antron McCray, 15, Kevin Richardson, 15, Yusef Salaam, 15, Raymond Santana, 14, and Korey Wise, 16—”allegedly” committed the crime, a necessarily placed word to let the masses know their innocence was probable. Terms such as “wolf pack” and “wilding” dominated headlines along with “bloodthirsty,” “animals,” “savages” and “human mutations,” according to the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism and research organization. It added newspaper columnists such as New York Post’s Pete Hamill wrote the teens hailed “from a world of crack, welfare, guns, knives, indifference and ignorance…a land with no fathers…to smash, hurt, rob, stomp, rape. The enemies were rich. The enemies were white.”

In 2002, after the boys became men in prison from sentences ranging from 6 to 13 years, convicted murderer and rapist Matias Reyes admitted to the rape. His DNA matched the samples collected from the crime scene, and detectives said he knew details about the crime that was never released to the public. He’s serving a life sentence.

The next year, the five wrongfully convicted men filed a civil lawsuit against New York City for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination, and emotional distress. The charges against them were vacated, and they eventually received a $41 million settlement in 2014.

Reams of articles from the time were prepared by the When They See Us staff for the actors to know the real people they will play on screen, the panel said. Attica added that watching the actual “confession” videotapes from the boys, who say they were coerced into those confessions for a crime they didn’t commit, “fucked her up.” She said it was difficult to watch the children without their parents saying they were a part of the crime when their statements contradicted each other. Niecy brought up in the discussion that mental health hotlines were available to the cast and staff over the emotionally heavy material, adding she had never seen an emphasis of self-care on a production set.

In November, Attica led a social media campaign against the Mystery Writers of America’s decision to bestow a lifetime achievement award to Linda Fairstein, the Central Park Five prosecutor who pushed for the convictions of the teens and eventually became a successful mystery novelist. The literary organization rescinded the award for the first time in its history after it said many members were also against the decision.

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Mindy Kaling Teams Up with Amazon Publishing for Next Essay Collection

Next summer, Mindy Kaling shares her charming and intimate reflections on life changes—big and small—from the past few years in a forthcoming essay collection from Amazon Original Stories, available free for Prime members. (Photo: Business Wire)

Actress and comedienne Mindy Kaling announced this week she will be joining the Amazon Publishing family with a new essay collection on her parental adventures.

The collection will be released via Amazon Original Stories in summer 2020 and free for Amazon Prime members with the audiobook narrated by Mindy. It will focus on her life as a single mother in Hollywood and working around other celeb bookwomen such as Oprah and Reese Witherspoon. Amazon Studios is behind Mindy’s new movie Late Night, co-starring Emma Thompson, which had a premiere Thursday night and opens nationwide in theaters on June 7.

“It’s so exciting for me to share the secrets of how I balance being a professional writer, actor, and single mom in a new collection of essays,” Mindy said in a statement. “I mean, it would be so exciting to share those secrets. I don’t have them. Like, not even close. This morning I bribed my baby with a remote control to get my car keys back. But I do have funny stories about my life and I can’t wait for you to read them.”

The e-retailer has controversially taken the book industry by storm, with gearing business toward indie authors and now successful traditionally published authors. Other recent well-known authors on the Amazon Publishing roster include Congresswoman Jackie Speier, N.K. Jemisin, and Veronica Roth.  Amazon Original Stories and Amazon Studios have had joint acquisitions, such as with a climate fiction, or cli-fi, series by Lauren Groff, Jane Smiley, Jess Walter.

“Working with Mindy Kaling is an absolute dream project for Amazon Publishing, where every day our guiding light is to strive for the best not only for our readers, but for our authors as well,” said Mikyla Bruder, publisher of Amazon Publishing, in the same statement. “Whether she’s delighting fans on-screen or on-the-page—as The Office’s Kelly Kapoor, The Mindy Project’s Mindy Lahiri, Molly Patel in the upcoming film Late Night, or as a New York Times bestselling memoirist—Mindy is guaranteed to entertain. We’re privileged to be a part of bringing Mindy’s deeply personal essay collection to life, and can’t wait for readers to laugh, cry, and fall in love with her all over again.”

Penguin Random House published both of Mindy’s previous essay collections, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) in 2011 and Why Not Me? in 2016.

Founded in 2009, Amazon Publishing has a staff of mostly female editors with what looks like to be at least five women of color.

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what's lit

A Bibliophile’s Guide on How to Marie Kondo Your Bookshelf

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Already a best-seller list mainstay, Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up revived new interest in conscious cleaning via Netflix this spring. But book enthusiasts riled against the KonMari method—the official name rather than the author’s name becoming a verb—that recommends only keeping around 30 books in the home, a range too minuscule for people who actually read.

If the number of books don’t matter yet your bookshelf looks disheveled, these tricks should help you declutter.

Donate books you are never going to read

You really wanted a book and bought it only for it to still be on your bookshelf five years later—unread. The book industry is lit right now, therefore the book you wanted to read five years ago may be stomped by another book released this year. Adding both would be contributing to clutter, so reconsider books that you’ve bought in the past that have been left unread. If you feel you can read it the next few months, then keep it, but when you read the synopsis on the back and you don’t get the warm feeling inside anymore, throw it in the donation heap.

Donate books you don’t absolutely love

Sometimes, we get into what society thinks about a book. You might have a book on your shelf that you did read but admittedly didn’t get why it won all those awards or spent all those weeks on the best-seller list. Unless you feel it might come in handy in some way like you refer to it for guidance, then to the donation heap it goes.

Books autographed by the author that you paid full hardcover price and attended the book launch are difficult choices: should they stay or go? Your name is penned inside with a note from the author, and depending on how you connected with the author, it might be a personal note. How to deal with those books may be a future post. What do you do with those books?

Donate books you know others need

The Free Black Women’s Library recently launched in Los Angeles, looking for gently used books written by black women. That’s one example of a charitable group looking for specific books. If you have a book like a children’s book that doesn’t hold as much meaning anymore, maybe a children’s hospital would appreciate it. Book donations can carry more meaning when it benefits a mission-oriented nonprofit if you’re not feeling the corporate Goodwill donation route. And donations could mean giving a book to a friend or a family member as long as it’s not taking unnecessary space on your bookshelf.

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what's lit

Best-selling Author Ann Patchett Breathes Digital Detox Lifestyle: Could It Help Your Literary Goals?

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Award-winning novelist and indie bookstore owner Ann Patchett is on a media tour for her first children’s book Lambslide, but when she stopped at ABC’s Strahan & Sara, she described her lifestyle—a lifestyle that might benefit other writers and readers.

On Thursday’s telecast, host Michael Strahan posed the question of the day for the show’s guests and audience in the studio and at home: “Have you ever looked at social media and it’s made you jealous of something or what someone else doing or having?”

Gleaming, Ann—whose best-selling novels include Commonwealth and State of Wonder—seemed like she couldn’t wait to answer the question.

“I’m so glad you asked me this question because I have never once in my life looked at social media. I don’t have a cellphone. I’ve never sent a text. I don’t watch television. I’ve never seen this show.”

What? Though it’s a good idea to watch a TV show you will be on to promote your work, it’s so astonishing that someone well-known doesn’t have a smartphone or social media that Ann added she felt like she was surrounded by smartphone-addicted zombies when in public. Then Michael called her a “unicorn.” A segment for a book with the mention of zombies and unicorns is literary in nature. It even ended with Ann inviting Michael to sell his book, Wake Up Happy: The Dream Big, Win Big Guide to Transforming Your Life, at her indie bookstore, Nashville’s Parnassus Books. Authors supporting authors with guaranteed book sales.

A digital detox is defined as a period of time during which a person refrains from using electronic devices such as smartphones or computers, regarded as an opportunity to reduce stress or focus on social interaction in the physical world. Ann probably uses a computer for writing her novels and submitting them via email and cloud programs to her publisher, but living the partial digital detox life may spark creativity simply based on the time take-back component.

The average American dedicates 30% of leisure time to perusing the web, according to Digital Detox, while 67% of cellphone owners find themselves checking their device even when it’s not ringing or vibrating. The access to this information is deriving from a website, but that’s another philosophical conversation. (What are other ways to get publicity without a digital screen? By pigeon? Or snail mail the press release and pamphlets? Then that contributes to our paper overconsumption…)

How would time away from constant digital consumption affect your writing and reading goals?

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what's lit

The Celebrity Bookwomen Who Took Over the Met Gala

The Costume Institute / The Met

Tonight’s 2019 Met Gala focused on “Camp: Notes on Fashion” with over-the-top glam with sequins and glitter, but some of the celebrities who arrived on the pink carpet know the written word. Though gala favorite and imprint manager Sarah Jessica Parker was absent this year due to her traveling schedule, here are some of the celebrities with books on their résumés.

Lupita Nyong’o

The Academy Award-winning Black Panther star recently announced she would be an author with the debut of her children’s book Sulwe about a young girl with the “skin the color of midnight” trying to overcome self-esteem and beauty issues in the face of colorism.

Serena Williams

The tennis superstar told her story through 2010’s My Life: Queen of the Court and 2009’s On the Line with having numerous more titles dedicated to her.


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Gabrielle Union

We’re Going to Need More Wine topped the 2017 memoirs that describes the actress’s rise to stardom from her humble beginnings from Northern California and Omaha, Nebraska to Hollywood.


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Mindy Kaling

The Mindy Project star has a series of comedic memoirs Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and Why Not Me? She also starred in the Disney film version of Madeleine L’Engle‘s fantasy sci-fi novel A Wrinkle in Time alongside celebrity bookwomen Reese Witherspoon, the queen of adapting books into film and TV, and Oprah, the queen of transformative book clubs.

Janet Mock

The multiracial transgender activist has detailed her journey into becoming a woman through her memoirs, Surpassing Certainty and Redefining Realness.

Ashley Graham

The plus-size supermodel and fashion expert turned author released A New Model: What Confidence, Beauty, and Power Really Look Like in 2017.

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Lena Dunham

The co-creator and co-writer of the HBO drama also wrote her memoir Not That Kind of Girl. She shut down her popular e-zine Lenny Letter last year known for providing a digital platform for female writers and their works.


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Emma Roberts

The niece of Julia Roberts has grown from childhood actress to literary lover with her  booky blog, Belletrist.

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what's lit

Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Picks ‘From Scratch’ for May Book

Reese Witherspoon / Hello Sunshine

I only knew that after five years of widowhood, I had a story inside that gnawed at me. And that, if I didn’t commit it to the page, I would suffer another kind of grief..And I wanted to share all that through a prism of food, with the island of Sicily as a central character. Strange as it may sound, I also wanted to write about lentils.

Reese Witherspoon’s book club, Hello Sunshine, has chosen From Scratch: A Memoir of of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home by actress Tembi Locke as its May selection along with publishing a personal essay from the author.

The memoir centers around the author’s grief of losing her Sicilian chef husband to cancer while returning to his homeland to feel his roots. She finds comfort at her mother-in-law’s dining table with a family that didn’t accept her at first as an African-American woman living in Los Angeles as an actress. But now as family and raising an adopted daughter, she narrates her journey through heartbreak and restoration.

Locke, according to her Simon & Schuster biography, has appeared in over 40 television shows and films, including NCIS: LA, Animal Kingdom and Dumb and Dumber To. She also delivered a TEDx talk on being a cancer caregiver. She lives in Los Angeles and summers in Sicily with her daughter.

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experiences what's lit

How to Work the LA Times Festival of Books

Los Angeles Times

The magnificent Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is approaching this weekend, and since almost every top author of the moment will be in attendance, aspiring writers and enthusiastic readers could turn the event into a networking mecca.

Every year, the festival is on the University of Southern California campus where parking on-site is $12 with bus and Metro stops nearby. It’s a walking-intensive event, which not only means comfortable footwear is a must but also an undetected corner either inside or outside may translate into a missed opportunity.

Attend specific panels

The festival is free as in the outdoor activities are accessible to everyone, but most of the specific panels, which usually happen inside the campus buildings with well-known authors, have tickets ranging from $2.50 to $30. The $2.50 is the service fee of buying tickets on Eventbrite.

Authors highlighting these panels include Erica Jong, Tayari Jones, Terry Tempest Williams, Elizabeth Acevedo, and Ibi Zoboi, just to name a few, and many have a theme like the genre the authors write in.

Top events such as the discussion with former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett comes with the VIP membership packages at $40 and $125.

Visit selective booths

Outside are the hundreds of booths occupied by bookstores, authors, nonprofits and the likes trying to reach the book-loving audience.

Since it will feel like an endless labyrinth, it will also be beneficial to exercise (physical with the walk and mental with the analysis) by checking out the booths that catch your eye. Though it gets crowded, walking close to the middle and switching sides of the aisle often may work with quick scans. There will be so many local book-related outlets from indie publishers to book clubs that could spark an interest. And buying the books the groups are selling could help them move their missions forward, so you might want to be selective with what you buy because that will leave a larger impression, especially with a smaller group that may recognize your sale if you want to connect later.

Establish connections with like-minded people

While at the booths and in the panels, only a small fraction of participants actually approach the people behind the booths and panelists and get the information they want.

To make an impact, for example, while listening to the panelists, prepare questions for the one or two you would like to meet. Meaningful questions as in ones that were not asked during the panel, so you don’t waste the panelist’s time, or worse, fail to make an impression. You want the panelist to light up at your words and better yet exchange contact information.

At a booth, if truly interested in the mission the organization is promoting, discuss it with the people more with on-the-spot questions. Other event attendees will be stopping by the booth every few seconds or minutes, so the people behind the booth are hurriedly catching up with everyone who stops by. Take their marketing materials to ask more questions later. The average time at a booth that you might have an interest could be 1-2 minutes, and if you’re buying a book, it could be another 2 minutes. Minimize time at each booth mainly because there are way too many booths and a lot of attendees split their time at the indoor panels scheduled at various times, meaning the day could become a harried mess if not careful about managing time.

Luckily, the festival provides a planner you can create ahead of the event as well as a long list of exhibitors to mark whoever commands your attention before struggling with a map on campus.

What’s your strategy?

If it’s your first time attending the festival or umpteenth time, drop your advice on mastering this book festival and others. When you love books, an event like this becomes overwhelming but satisfying.

 

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what's lit

Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Picks ‘The Night Tiger’ for April Book

Reese Witherspoon with The Night Tiger / Hello Sunshine

Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine book club selected The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo for its April monthly pick.

A fourth-generation Malaysian of Chinese descent, Choo lives in California like the two previous authors whose books were chosen by Hello Sunshine, Taylor Jenkins Reid of Daisy Jones & The Six in March and Jasmine Guillory of The Proposal in February.

The Night Tiger is described by its publisher MacMillan as:

Quick-witted, ambitious Ji Lin is stuck as an apprentice dressmaker, moonlighting as a dancehall girl to help pay off her mother’s Mahjong debts. But when one of her dance partners accidentally leaves behind a gruesome souvenir, Ji Lin may finally get the adventure she has been longing for.

Eleven-year-old houseboy Ren is also on a mission, racing to fulfill his former master’s dying wish: that Ren find the man’s finger, lost years ago in an accident, and bury it with his body. Ren has 49 days to do so, or his master’s soul will wander the earth forever.

As the days tick relentlessly by, a series of unexplained deaths racks the district, along with whispers of men who turn into tigers. Ji Lin and Ren’s increasingly dangerous paths crisscross through lush plantations, hospital storage rooms, and ghostly dreamscapes.

The publisher adds the book would greatly appeal to fans of Isabel Allende and Min Jin Lee, author of recent best-seller Pachinko.

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what's lit

The ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’ Well-Read Black Girl Storyline

Netflix

Halloween weekend bingeing was at its height with the premiere of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix, the latest incarnation of the beloved Archie Comics character, Sabrina the Teenage Witch. While Sabrina battles demons living in the mortal world as a half-witch, the show managed to insert a well-read black girl storyline.

Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) is adjusting to high school in the mortal realm with her three friends, who are conveniently battling their own demons: Susie (Lachlan Watson) is being bullied by the football players for identifying as nonbinary, Harvey (Ross Lynch) is reconciling flashbacks of a demon he had seen as a child in his father’s mines, and Roz (Jaz Sinclair) is trying to read as many as books as she can before she loses her vision to a degenerative eye condition.

When a black girl appears onscreen in a recognizable story, I get excited. Especially when the comically sweet ’90s Melissa Joan Hart version of the TV series spent a season disastrously failing to make Sabrina have a black friend named Dreama. So seeing Roz in the new Sabrina was a great surprise, and even greater when she asked the school administration to incorporate Toni Morrison’s classic, The Bluest Eye, into the literature curriculum.

The administration says no. Of course, this upsets Roz. She asks Principal Hawthorne why students can’t read such a masterpiece, and the principal rattles off other books not allowed in the curriculum such A Clockwork Orange. Roz leads the gang to the school library where they look for books they feel should be there but can’t find them. The librarian tells them a “purge of bad books” had occurred years ago.

Devastated, Roz later confides in Sabrina and Susie that she’s losing her vision — the reason why she’s fighting for the books. But in a turn of events, Sabrina’s secret witch teacher Mrs. Wardwell helps the girls organize a secret banned book club. 

Schools across the country are still dealing with banned books. This year’s list of banned books can be found here. Many books are by marginalized writers with content surrounding race, culture, sexual orientation and other so-called controversial issues. This clever statement of a storyline spans a few episodes but eventually does get swallowed by the demon haunting of the characters. 

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what's lit

‘Younger’ TV Review: #LizaToo

TV Land

TV Land’s literary dramedy Younger returned tonight to kick off its fifth season, and finally goals have been reached and secrets have been spilled with the #MeToo movement looming in the background.

Younger is about a 40-something woman posing as a millennial at a publishing house after becoming a divorced empty nester. So her life is a lie.

The episode starts with the Empirical Press’ knockoff George R.R. Martin character Edward L.L. Moore having a soon-to-be-released series surrounding a scantily clad “Game of Thrones”-like princess. But it turns out he directed a sexually charged comment to a female fan in his made-up language at an event. When Liza realizes she would have to dress up again like the princess for Comic-Con, she remembers the author had made some crude remarks to her in the past as well. 

Meanwhile, the Millennial imprint gets snubbed on the “Marriage Vacation” novel with an Empirical badge on the spine. The novel is written by the estranged wife of Charles, the senior editor at Empirical, who Liza is clandestinely in love with though Liza worked with his wife on the book. And the novel is real complete with the fictional author’s name on the cover. 

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TV Land

Amid the book announcements, the company has to undergo sexual harassment training. Before the session, Liza, like in many episodes, runs into someone who knows her as a suburban New Jersey mother. It turns out to be her daughter’s roommate’s father. At the salad restaurant near her office. So it’s no surprise when the father shows up as the lawyer conducting the training back at her office. She hides under the desk and crawls out to the restroom. 

At Comic-Con dressed as Princess Pam-Pam, Liza receives another crude remark from L.L. Moore. As she assembles other women dressed in the same outfit who were previous princess performers, she asks the group if they heard any off-color comments from the legendary wheelchair-bound 60-something author. They say yes. So Liza breaks the news to Charles, and since it doubles down on the earlier accusations, he postpones the book in front of the fans upset by the turn of events. 

Though the princess series is canceled, Liza finds a way to alter the three-month Times Square advertisement to promote “Marriage Vacation” instead. But L.L. Moore, busy with his legal team, does an investigation on his accusers and presents evidence to Charles. With Liza’s birth and marriage certificates in hand, Charles can’t believe the millennial publishing assistant he’s fallen in love with is actually an age-appropriate liar. 

Liza’s secret is revealed! 

To Charles, the boss she’s in love with! But, of course, the episode ends, so Liza’s reaction to be continued. 

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what's lit

‘Jane The Virgin’ TV Review: Chapter Seventy-Three

Michael Desmond / The CW

After a hiatus on the book-related themes, CW’s Americanized telenovela Jane the Virgin returned to having Jane go into crisis mode over being a published author. This time, she’s dropped by her publisher then eclipsed by the book offer her son’s father’s other baby mama gets.

The episode starts with Jane announcing to her family that her publisher dropped her since her first book wasn’t selling (the episode of her mediocre reviews was a few months back) to the point where the publisher declined the option for a second one.

This storyline is all too real as the success of being an author, or even publishing that second book, is low. 

Then Jane’s rant turns to the hardship of being a published woman of color author. “We don’t get a second chance like our peers,” Jane cries. Again, too much truth. As a novelist querying my work, it’s disheartening to see authors — sometimes 50+ — on a webpage of a literary agency with everyone being white except maybe one racially ambiguous author. 

But Jane recovers! Rafael, her son’s father as she was artificially inseminated which is the premise of the show, gets his ex-wife, Petra, to hook Jane up with a meeting with a book agent friend. At the meeting, she fails to capture the book agent’s attention with her first two ideas in the romance genre — one with reincarnation and the other with vampires — rejected because they already had authors writing those ideas. Then she comes up with a “Fifty Shades of Grey”theme with a character reversal of the heroine starting the erotic adventures. The book agent says sure to the idea until Petra appears. 

Petra is also Jane’s hotelier frenemy. The book agent recalls her Ocean Drive feature to his business partner, and they coin her the “non-evil Ivanka” while casually offering her a lifestyle book deal. 

Of course, this creates a rift between Jane and Petra since Jane is already a published author who had writing dreams forever while Petra has never written. As Petra tries to make peace with her “moral compass” Jane, she offers the gig to ghostwrite her book. Jane agrees. This again happens to authors where the second book idea still needs baking so they take a ghostwriting job in the meantime to pay the bills. 

Will Jane actually do the ghostwriting? Will Jane’s second book idea come to her in the next episode? Will her old publisher somehow change its mind and take her back? Stay tuned. 

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what's lit

‘Younger’ TV Review: The Gift of the Maggie

TV Land

Though this week’s episode of Younger — the TV Land series surrounding a 41-year-old woman lying about her age to enter the publishing industry — was about main character Liza’s artist roommate Maggie slashing a millennial rival’s interpretation of her artwork, it really put a spotlight on the romance genre.

The episode started at a photoshoot for models posing for a romance book cover for a famed romance novelist who unexpectedly died in the previous episode. Then the conversation turned to finding her successor, or a ghostwriter to continue her stories under her moniker. Interviews ensue with all the wrong candidates until one walks in — a Columbia professor with kids heading to college — who expresses her wish to kill the HEA aka “happily ever after.”

At the art show where Maggie slashes her repurposed art, Liza runs into her ex-boyfriend Josh and asks that he stay in her life (even though she cheated on him last season). It inspired her to tell her boss Charles that readers need HEA. 

But does HEA need to be in every romance novel? 

Many argue yes. It’s a part of the formula of creating a romance story. With my next idea entering that genre, I came up with a new plan that would incorporate HEA, which has been nonexistent in my other stories. So it was a sign to start the romance novel sooner than later. 

Also, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books got a shoutout, so not only did viewers get insight on romance, they also learned about a new blog/podcast.