Backmatter: Carrie, what is this hat?
This week's favorite things—vampires, wine and the can't-look-away mess of the Sex and the City franchise. Backmatter is a news dump for writers, readers and everyone in between.
It's called fashion. Look it up.
I'm not a fashion dude. I have fantasies of a vast suiting budget and traveling the world's outdoor cafes with my laptop, writing my next literary gem in three-piece Boateng. But that's not my reality. However, I'm not so removed from the fashion discourse that I don't understand how much it plays a part in Sex and the City, its spinoff films and its revival And Just Like That. Fashion, as much as New York, is a character, and watching Carrie and her friends play with their looks is a joy of the series—so much that when the plots themselves are trash, the show's fashion provides enough visual fantasy to help the story go down easier. But you can't save a story with a hat like this. [Pajiba]
Paging the Queen
Speaking of book to series, my guiltless pleasure has always been Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. AMC's Interview With the Vampire has been, from start to finish, one of the best shows on television. If you're reading this and haven't seen it, I'm confident it has something for you. Going into its third season, it picks up on the events of Book 2, The Vampire Lestat, where the title character forms a rock band whose catalog makes one too many gestures towards protected vampire history. This book introduces self-proclaimed "Queen of Heaven", Akasha, progenitor of the vampire race. Queen of the Damned (Book 3) was published in 1988 but her prime directive couldn't be more relevant today. Akasha wants to wipe out the world's male population, for the sake of eternal peace, you know.
That said, it raises the question of casting. Interview with the Vampire, the TV series and Queen of the Damned starring Aaliyah, were both agile with race. Akasha ruled Kemet but she was a foreigner, most likely Iranian and therefore not Black. For those of us who are precious about Aaliyah's legacy, this puts the casting department (who already race-swapped Louis) in a tricky position. They may choose to stick to the text or give us another Aaliyah. I will not be on Twitter whenever that casting is announced. Season three begins filming in June. [Nerdist]
The mixed blessing of the linchpin novel
"When I think of my wife, I always think of her head. The shape of it, to begin with." Gillian Flynn's last full length novel Gone Girl was released in 2012 and started with that killer opening. What followed was a phenomenon the author herself found hard to top, but a new book is finally on the way. “Gone Girl is just lightning in a bottle, never gonna be replicated. So I have to kind of accept that and finish writing the dang book.”
This, at least for me, raises the question of having a "linchpin" novel, the one that sells no matter what came before or after it, the one that pushes the rest of the catalogue. Think of Lauren Weisberger, who between 2005 and 2021 released seven novels, all marketed with "from the author of The Devil Wears Prada." It doesn't matter how good or bad that book is (the movie is better) but the likelihood is slim that her more recent, better-written books will ever reach the status of her debut. Books like Gone Girl and The Devil Wears Prada are basically retirement plans at this point, something an indie author can only dream of. [People]
Relevant to my interests:
People recently published their best books for the month of May. Mainstream book lists don’t really excite me, but I saw this cover for Lush and immediately sat up. The marketing gestures towards The Bear and Sweetbitter. As someone who regularly sells wine (by the glass, mind you) this is in my wheelhouse. [People]
Don't listen to me, listen to them
As of this post, I have a grand total of ONE published title under my belt, so I'm not exactly positioned to provide expert advice. That's why Draft2Digital's Youtube is valuable, especially when they feature prolific authors who can shed light on self-publishing. In "5 Things Indie Authors Should Know", Alessandra Torre breaks down her thirteen year trajectory with all of its ups and downs. The most valuable lesson for me is that you can still earn on a flop and for a lifetime.