Posted on August 4, 2009 by betsylerner
We interviewed a new intern today. She just graduated from college, moved from Florida to New York City to pursue her dream of working in publishing. It could just about break your heart. She was nervous, eager, open. I thought of all the kids I’ve interviewed over the years, the bluster and insecurities, the earnestness and ambition. Once, I asked a candidate if he had any special skills. He looked me directly in the eye and said, “I could kill you with a pencil.”
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Posted on July 5, 2009 by betsylerner
I’m not going to say anything about our move, all the things that went wrong, or how Comcast has taken out a restraining order on me. That’s between me and my internet provider.
What I will say is that my new home office is beautiful. It’s a third floor attic room with a pretty alcove just big enough for the sculptor’s stand I found in the attic of my old house. And atop it, my beloved American Heritage Dictionary.
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Posted on July 1, 2009 by betsylerner
When Betsy asked us to write this post we were very estatic to have this wonderful and amazing opportunity. All though we had to cancel a bundle of important events that we had our personal secretaries arrange, we cancelled due to the noteworthiness of this cause. While we were pondering what to write about, we took a stroll down memory lane. We remembered all of the dull novels that were mandatory for us to scrutinize. As middle schoolers, we sensed the library selection was less then acceptable and barely up to par, not to mention the appalling obligatory books. We undoubtably value reading classics, it’s great to read books that have the finger prints our family’s past engraved into the surface of the pages. Reading modern books is appreciable too, but why would we want to read random books that only some ignorant librarian would want to waste their time on. NO YOU DIDN’T. Oh yes we did. With all of the school work we encounter, we need utilize the precious time we have to dive into a well written book that is enthralling as well. Luckily we will be deparating from the from the uninspiring, colorless orbit of nothing… as you can see it might be relatively hard to fathom the dislike that we behold for this selection of literature. But hard to decipher or not, it’s the truth. We believe that people should not underestimate the juvenile community and value their opinions on written works. We have high expectations and they must be met by all of you middle school librarians and teachers out there. So please, value our opinion because we our the future of all literary greatness.
Luv,
Your Best Friendz
M&R (age 12)
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Posted on June 12, 2009 by betsylerner
It wasn’t Take Your Daughter to Work day, but I brought mine. Her school ended on Wednesday and she wanted to come to the city, pledged to help me. Highlights included:
- Our very hot intern took her to Sephora and they both came back looking like hookers; intern also gifted her with free samples.
- Ran into old friend/agent AW at Spoon (our local coffee place) who acted as if my daughter were an Obama first child, swooning over her like mad.
- While walking around the city, my daughter pointed out men who sported “man purses.”
- Okay, I wasn’t going to give her your manuscripts to read or contracts to negotiate it, but she did make a ton of new files for me that had been piling up and, nation, the girl can fire up the label maker.
- The guy at TKTS kiosk described Avenue Q as “muppets with a South Park mouth.” Maybe he can help me pitch my books.
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Posted on May 21, 2009 by betsylerner
Maybe I’m elevating, but NYC, my giant ashtray, looked so beautiful this morning on my walk to work. I take the same route every day, but today everything is in high relief: a 9/11 sky, the baked red bricks of a crumbling building, a beautiful woman whose left cheek twitched as if the cricket from Times Square got in there. Even my shuffle offered up a perfect slate of rock anthems. Something has lifted.
Maybe I’m crashing, but a quick glance at my inbox spells trouble. Agh. What’s worse, so many little headaches or one huge migraine? One piece of great news, though, Columbine goes back up two spots on the NYT bestseller list. The list thing, it’s like an EKG. Of course so is everything else these days: blog stats, bank accounts, Amazon rankings, and of course, the master of all gauges of self worth: the scale.
Tomorrow, I will get back to answering publishing questions. And I also want to talk about the mystery wrapped in an enigma.
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Posted on May 19, 2009 by betsylerner
First of all, I didn’t get picked for jury duty. Didn’t even get to the voir dire stage of the selection process. Painful flashbacks of camp socials watching everyone pair off to Color My World.
Next: what people are reading? Mostly the New Haven Register, USA Today, and the NY Post and Daily News. No one reading on a Kindle. The few books I saw:
- Atlas Shrugged/Ayn Rand
- All He Ever Wanted/Anita Shreve
- The Bible
- The Secret Life of Bees/Sue Monk Kidd
- Invisible Prey/John Sandford
Not a single My Booky Wook or Silas Marner in the crowd. C’mon New Haven!
What did capture my imagination, however, was Judicial Marshall Josh. On the day that he was born, the angels got together and decided to create a dream come true. Beyond his broad sloping shoulders, his powerful chest, his badges, his sexy voice and fully loaded belt, Judicial Marshall Josh wears nerdy glasses. Is Judicial Marshall Josh…bookish? I wonder if Judicial Marshall Josh has an astigmatism, like me.
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Posted on May 18, 2009 by betsylerner
Tomorrow: jury duty.
The last time I was on jury duty, everyone was reading the same book. Everywhere I turned I saw a black dust jacket with the red thumb print. It was 1987 and, of course, the book was Presumed Innocent.
Tomorrow, I will report back on what they’re reading at the courthouse now, in 2009, in downtown New Haven. I know, I can’t wait either.
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Posted on May 4, 2009 by betsylerner
I’m at the Blue State, the liberally named cafe in the heart of Yale Country. Every kid in here is behind a computer. I wonder if they’re doing school work, or on-line shopping, or having e-sex with an assistant professor, which I suspect is the case with the girl on my right who is wearing the equivalent of pajamas (comfy!), Uggs (why?), and knows how to use a tube of cherry lip gloss. I am working on a proposal that hopes someday to grow up and become a book. The yellow stick in my hand is a pencil.
Just a side note, I am usually a superb parallel parker, but for some reason today I got all tense parking in front of Blue State where three guys were standing. And I fucked it all up. One guy even said, “Do you want me to park that for you?” Was that necessary? Then I stayed in the car and did email on my Blackberry until they left. I know, one minute a power agent, the next a major pussy.
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Posted on April 29, 2009 by betsylerner
5:40 Metronorth to New York. The sky still darkened by clouds, pale blue off in the distance. I sit in the last seat of the last car every day. I nurse a medium decaf with skim milk from St. Dunkin’s. And I think about the exciting day I have ahead of me in publishing.
Every day, in the aisle in front of me sits a man with a gray-haired crew cut, his knees pressed up against the seat in front of him. In his lap, a pile of newspapers. With hawk-like concentration, he circles and underlines with a blue Bic. Then he tears, folds, and inserts the articles into a deep pocket in his trenchcoat. On the platform at Grand Central, he will hover over the recycling bin snatching newspapers from commuters as they leave the station.
Now, I have to read Les’ memoir.
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Posted on April 23, 2009 by betsylerner
Last night at the Mid-Manhattan Library, 100 or so people were gathered to hear a panel discuss paranormal mysteries. My client Stacy Horn was among the panelists and, frankly, she kicked ass. Am I partial? Besides the fact that everyone there seemed to have descended from the Starship Enterprise or the Good Ship Lollipop (okay, I know, shouldn’t sterotype the kids in the Paranormal Club), but how could you not love a woman who wrote a book called Waiting for My Cats to Die.? Who followed that up with a wrenching investigation into some of New York’s grisliest unsolved cold cases in The Restless Sleep. And who then spent a year in the basement at Duke University, home to the oldest parapsychology lab in the country, where she combed through every dusty box to tell the story of the men and women who devoted their lives to proving the existence of life after death in her latest, Unbelievable.
Here are some of my favorite outtakes from the Q&A:
“What says Christmas more than werewolves?”
“A lot of people hear voices and not just mentally ill people.”
“Sensitives are like that.”
“You know, the run of the mill Dracula tropes.”
“I do therapeutic harp.”
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Betsy Lerner 
