Psst — I’m revealing a huge new bonus for Book Launch Hero that solves every storyteller’s biggest problem, so read to bottom! 👇 Reader! I went to see a friend’s one-woman show last week. She’d been working on it for years and got it into a festival at a theater on 42nd Street — a real triumph. I’m always apprehensive about theater. Especially small-production stages where you know the person and fear being the only one fake-laughing through the punchlines. The intimacy is so awkward. You’re...
3 days ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader, I woke to two bits of news this week. One, that the US (and world) economy was in a tailspin. OK, that’s news we’ve been getting on the hour. But anyway. Two, that I dropped out of law school. What’s that? You didn’t know I went to law school? Well, guess what — NEITHER DID I. But when I checked my IG notifications, I saw I’d been tagged in a post all about me. What a lovely burst of dopamine to kick off my day! Then I clicked and feasted my greedy eyes on the first slide. Oh my....
14 days ago • 4 min read
Hey! I’m proud of something. Haven’t talked about it, I don’t think — though I did at the retreat for my mentoring group, Shrimp Club. During a Q&A, one of the Shrimpers asked about my recent activity surge on Instagram — because I’ve been posting like a mofo. So, GOOD, YOU BETTA NOTICE! There’s a lot more to the story, which I’ll tell soon, but on January 3rd, while I was on vacation, my friend Susie posted a story inviting her audience to join her in a 90-day challenge. Hers, she said,...
17 days ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader, I puked a lot yesterday. No idea why. I didn’t have a fever or anything, just an upset stomach. All I did was lie on the bed and binge-watch MAX’s The Pitt. (A very graphic emergency room show, it’s a tough one to stomach, especially on a bad stomach. But it’s also highly addictive, and I had 11 episodes saved up, so my day consisted of me saying, “Maybe just one more.” Yes, I watched them all.) I also did plenty of scrolling on social, and came across a video of Jon Stewart that...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Hey Reader, I hopped on a trend. Kind of. I’ve seen everyone posting, “I asked ChatGPT to be my drunk bestie and describe what I do. Here are the results.” It’s a great way to post about what you do in glowing terms that don’t feel all conceited an’ shit. A high-tech humble brag, if you will. I was kinda tempted to try it, but I have an issue: I hate the voice of the “drunk bestie.” She (I assume it’s a she, definitely femme) just says “omg” and “like” a lot — and uses the words “wizard,”...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hey Reader, The trend of incorporating a croissant into some other food and putting “Cr —” at the start of the name probably started with Burger King’s “Croissan’wich” in 1983. (I remember the ads. I didn’t speak French but I knew they were pronouncing the “croi” part wrong.) The trend didn’t really take off till 30 years later, in 2013, with Dominique Ansel’s “Cronut.” People lined up around the block in Soho to get their mouths on the croissant-donut hybrid. Some even hired a Taskrabbit to...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Hey Reader, Our first time at an Anguilla restaurant we’ll call Pepper, the maître d’ asked me and Steven if we were celebrating any special occasion. We looked at each other and shrugged. “No, just vacation,” we answered. During dinner, a group of servers brought a big slab of red velvet cake with a flamboyant sparkler to a nearby table — a woman sitting alone. They sang Stevie Wonder’s Happy Birthday, guests at other tables clapping along. How sweet, I thought. They must have decided to...
2 months ago • 3 min read
In Tuesday’s email about big career changes, including mine, I mentioned my resume. While writing that email, I gave in to one of my worst writing habits. I’m sure there’s a German word for it. I guess the closest in English is “research.” Shorthand for, “I wonder if I have that in photos somewhere, let me spend the next two hours looking for it and then coming across pics of a trip to Spain in 2005 that send me down yet another rabbit hole of pics from before I colored my hair, when it was...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Hey Reader, Don’t be mad, I swear I was planning to give you an inner-circle heads-up about this, but tickets sold out in like 10 minutes. 🤯 So, I’m doing a thing with Jean Hanff Korelitz, NYT bestselling author of The Plot, The Sequel, The Latecomer, and You Should Have Known (adapted as HBO’s The Undoing starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant — that one where Nicole Kidman wears all those excellent coats). Jean runs a pop-up book club series in New York called BOOKTHEWRITER, which I attended...
3 months ago • 2 min read
Hey hey! First things first: my heart is with LA right now. Thoughts ‘n’ prayers don’t stop fires or undo tragedy, but I still like to let people know I care. Friends have had to flee and don’t know whether their homes are still there. The images are out of a Mad Max movie. I’m devastated for everyone who’s lost their homes (or more) — even ridiculous humans and circa-2006 gossip-blog fixtures Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, who, bizarrely, were the first public faces of “celebrity” home...
4 months ago • 2 min read
