I still haven’t signed a contract, but we’ve agreed to sell the option to my book to TBS for a sitcom! (This has been a long-time coming, but apparently things in TV land take forever and I’m tired of not talking about it!) TBS, for those who don’t watch TV, is a Ted Turner-owned basic cable network - the one whose slogan is “TBS: very funny.” They have all the great sitcom reruns - from Seinfeld to Friends to Sex and the City. And soon, hopefully, Naked on the Page!

I’ve met the woman in charge of taking the project forward, Nina Howie, and she is a DREAM. Brilliant and strong and kind. A single woman in her early 40s. We got along immediately and seem to share the same vision. If it goes foward (and I think it has an excellent chance of doing so), I’d be working on it as a consultant - since, after all, it’d be based on my life!

I’ve even had that surreal conversation about who I’d like to play me - something I recommend you all do for FUN, regardless of whether you need to or not. There are loads of great actresses out there in my same age neighborhood: Alison Janney, Edie Falco, Rita Wilson, Holly Hunter… The list goes on! Surely one of them could be convinced that playing a newspaper columnist with love-life issues might just be the ticket to the Emmys they’ve been wanting?

If you’ve read my book, you know how important my friend and former boss Phil Bronstein is to me - and the story. Because he recently had a new baby (he has NO love-life issues himself anymore) he’s feeling a bit fragged these days. So when I asked him which actor he thought should play him in the show, he suggested… Harry Dean Stanton? A fine actor, to be sure, but NOT in Phil’s league, looks-wise. A suggestion from TBS was Tom Berenger, who is certainly a better match…

I don’t know about you, but I think one reason I watch so little TV (aside from the fact that much of it is reality-show crap) is that I never see my life reflected in these shows. Unmarried women living big and interesting lives - the success of SATC proved that there’s an audience for the subject matter. But single women over the age of 45? Call me crazy but I think there’s even MORE of a need out there because there’s more of an audience! And there are no such shows!

Until now, I mean… Stay tuned, and think good thoughts!

xx

I got a really odd review in the LA Times yesterday. It wasn’t very good - but the reviewer (a man, which is an interesting choice) seemed more put out with how I chose to write my book than the book itself. I.e. with the blurred line between truth and fiction, which I fully explain in the acknowledgments. I didn’t disagree entirely with what he said - that my book had a powerful enough message without fictionalizing. But then again, the year in question was just a few back! Those men that I dated are still very much around - some still in my life in one way or another! One must be… judicious when describing events. But in case the critic reads this (which I doubt), he can be assured that every bad date happened pretty much exactly as I described it. Does that help?
Here’s the url in case you missed it.
http://www.calendarlive.com/books/reviews/cl-et-book31mar31,0,6736377.story?coll=cl-books-util
By the way, I’ve been lucky in that I’ve gotten uniformly great reviews so far, so I won’t quibble inordinately with this one. But when I read reviews like this, where the critic bites down hard on one element of a book and shakes the stuffing out of it, I always put myself in the position of the reader/potential book buyer. (Okay, okay - but is it entertaining? Well-written? Worth my $25?)
At the end of the day - hey! It was in the LA Times! So I can’t complain.
Happy April 1!
Jane