I'm not Jackie Collins but I play her on TV

So "Bad Girls" was quite a delicious evening. I'd like to thank Bad Boy James, her supreme highness, Cameron Tuttle, my rabid fans, Kevin & Batman who shut down the bar and Desmond, king of the false eyelash.

It should be noted that absolutely NOTHING I'm wearing is a natural fiber so at any given moment I could have gone up in flames. Oh, the risks I take for literary notoriety!

So I've nibbled at the fruits and berries and now it is time to go back into my cave (see below). See you in WONDERLAND, CA.

xxooxx

BAD GIRLS!!

I've been dragged out of my slumber for what promises to be an evening of excitment and fabulous clothes.
InsideStoryTime presents:

"BAD GIRLS"
a lineup of Bay Area 'Bad Girl' authors!
Thursday October 19th
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell Street (Hayes Valley, San Francisco)
7:00-9:00pm
$3-10 sliding scale
drinks and food available for purchase

I will be wearing my bubble gum pink patent leather Courreges minidress. What about you?
See y'all there!! xx

Enjoying a mental break

I hope all of you won't mind while I take some time away from my blog to download my second book.

It's a dark and mysterious process shrouded in secrecy.

If you want all the scoop (when I have it), drips and drabs, the 'director's cut' if you will, please join my FAMOUS LIST.

Until then.

xx

Bestseller List, Hello!!!!

A modern Haiku:

Sleepy Sunday Morning.
In the grips of jetlag.
Ambien just wearing off.
Morning birds chirping.
San Francisco Chronicle over coffee and eggs.
Turn page. Thinking nothing.
There she is.
Shiny and bright.
It's a lovely day.
The Bestseller List. I am on it.
I mean, my book is on it.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Call the world and tell them.
I exist.

Oh, Gay Paris!

My Vuitton train cases are packed. My hats are in big fat boxes. Yes, I'm off to Paris - a wandering boheme's heme away from heme.

I will be buying a new perfume.
I will be flirting mercilessly with smelly French people. I will smoke.
I will stop by and say hello to Linlee at Collette (and leave her The Booster. She's been dying for it!).

I'll see you all upon my return, oui?

xxx

Cleavage GA-Lore

Okay...so how far will a girl stoop to have a feature article written about her in the San Francisco Chronicle? Well...I say just far enough to show the world what she's made of!

Yes---after oodles of badgering, the Chronicle decided that yes, they like me, they really like me!

What does it all mean? I dunno---a hiker stopped me today on Cascade Trail and said "Are you the Famous Author?" I said, "Oh m'gawd...yes! That's me! I'M The Famous Author!"

Is this good or what? Anyway...they noticed my fabulous peek-a-boo shoes and new short shorts and at the end of the day that's all that really matters--right? So please drop me a line and say, YES, it was all worth it, Jennifer, I saw that article and yes...i DO want that Puimond corset and YES, I will check out THE BOOSTER.

I love you all.

xxx--moi.

Look Fabulous in Handcuffs!

I can't believe this slipped by me without a blog mention. Maybe I was too busy with my jet-setting around the world for the fabulous Famous Author Book Tour.

In any case, I'd feel remiss in not pointing out to all my compulsive shoplifting friends that one should always have a roomy white mink poncho on hand for those nasty arrests. A perfect way to hide those unpleasant handcuffs!

So while shopping for your mink, you might begin the countdown to the gorgeous feature on yours truly and The Booster in the Style section of the San Francisco Chronicle. I promise sexy pics (the photographer convinced me to bring out my Custom Puimond Corset) and juicy dish.

Until then.

THE SUREFIRE QUERY LETTER IS HERE!!

Okay...so enough of you have asked me about my patented (well, not really) 4-step plan to a Surefire Query Letter! You've also asked me to share my letter which went out to 12 agents. 22 responded within 3 weeks (many within days), each asking for exclusives. I ultimately went with an agent who never saw the letter.

It worked for me...good luck and tell me if it works for you - jennifer@jennifersolow.com

In any case, here are the 4 steps:

1. Make your first sentence STUNning. Remember that agents get 100's of these letters each day. Grab them by the gullet from the very beginning.

2. Synopsize your book in a quick and compelling way. Find a way to describe your book succinctly. You'll use that description gain and again at every juncture.

3. Offer up a reason why there is a market for your book (even for fiction). In other words, why will your manuscript be sellable. Do this in an uncoventional and tonally appropriate way.

4. Make a connection between the agent and you.
This could take networking and/or creativity. Research your choice agents to death - read their authors, find out where they went to highschool, find some way of making it feel like they're THE ONLY agent for your book. Because why? Tell them.

Everything else is up for grabs. I wrote 2 pages with a LOT of white space (most people write one, crowded page) and didn't send a writing sample. I put it in a big bright orange envelope and printed it out on heavy, expensive paper. I sent to 12 with 12 back-ups in the wings.

Here is my letter to Bill Clegg (now with William Morris). Despite the breezy tone, this was draft 36 and 3 months of revision. Bill responded with within 24 hours.

Bill,

I’d like to profess that stealing a box of Golden Life Henna in the 7th grade was the end of my illustrious shoplifting career, but if we’re getting down to the short hairs here, I also stole a tube of organic toothpaste from Whole Foods less than a year ago.
$12.95! For toothpaste! I mean, c’mon. Gift with purchase, I like to say.

Actually, I wouldn’t mine stealing something right now.

Christ, it’d be easier than writing this letter. Three years of work down to a page, page and a half. The pressure to be charming here is enormous, you must know.

Maybe this afternoon. When I finish the letter.

So my book’s called The Booster and our heroine is not that different from me. Or possibly a more fabulous me. The Carrie Bradshaw I am in my imagination.

Here’s what I say when people inevitably ask me, “so, what’s your book about?”
Upper East Side Jewish American Princess kleptomaniac living the seemingly quintessential Manhattan life, loses job, loses boyfriend, loses housekeeper and winds up (long story short) joining a Peruvian Shoplifting Ring.

It is here our klepto learns what’s truly important in her life. Ahf tsores aside, it’s a happy ending kind of story.

For our 29-year old heroine, shoplifting* is better than orgasms:

“… Her breath pounds out in heaves. Her teeth chatter, droplets of sweat trickle down her side sending out a rank perfume, her nipples harden. She swallows a mouthful of saliva, the gulp of it echoing in her head. A quick slide off with a nimble hand and poof…it is gone.”

Pulizer Prize winning author, Alison Lurie singled out The Booster for praise as “an emerging work” at Sewanee Writer’s Conference, characterizing it as “lively writing, true to the female experience.”

Bill, Augusten Burrows, author and friend, simply insisted (as is his way) that, “Haven Kimmel loves Bill Clegg,” and that I should send you a query. That was good enough for me.

Please send the enclosed postcard if you’d like to see a sample of The Booster.

Thank you for your consideration and time,

Jennifer Solow

*9 million American women shoplift. ‘Shoplifting’ is the new ‘Bulimia’. 9 million dirty little secrets sell a lot of books. And magazines. And t-shirts. And action figures.

--------
TO READ AN EXCERPT OF THE MANUSCRIPT HE SAW CLICK HERE.

A bribe from Seb Carroll. Honey Slave, Labour Organizer.

For any of you who think I might not accept their dare, I bring you Seb, The Brave:
--------
Ok, how about this...

I'm going to talk about someone I know. Virtually. This person is a gifted, gifted writer. One of the best I've ever read, in fact. I'm quite serious. Every word that I have read is precise, necessary, meaningful. Style oozes from phrases like yoghurt being squeezed between your toes. The prose is prosaic, the the style is stylistic, and the rhythm is rhythmic. The metre is metrical, and the yard is yardical. Imagine taking a bath in warm honey, while being fed chocolates by a slave, and having your feet massaged by a professional honey-foot-massager. Well, imagine no longer.

If you want to experience this for yourself, simply click here: sebcarroll's blog.

Does that sound ok? If you could copy and paste it into your blog, then I'll think of something nice to write about your book...

:)
-------
I only hope you can repay me with equal public abandon

It's a mani-pedi. It's a reading. It's a mani-pedi reading.

It was a rough night for a famous author!

FIRST, Bliss Spa invited me to do a reading AT THE SPA, complete with massages, eyebrow waxing and mani-pedis for all who braved the swanky trek up from the ground floor of the W Hotel.

THEN, as if this wasn't all grueling enough, I drank enormous Lemon Drops provided by the all-too-talented, Armand the bartender. I chatted it up with my friends and the local glitterati and received many compliments on my gorgeous but horrifically painful Manolo Blahnik spectator pumps (how very Carrie Bradshaw of me).

In any case, after completing my duties, I went home way too late, pooped and a bit blotto on cocktails and dreamt of Bliss sugar scrub massages.

The Famous Author World Tour

Don't fret. If you missed missed me on tour, our paths may still cross one day. With just a little bit of dry cleaning and a few new pairs of shoes, I may be at it all again.

Perhaps on The Famous Author Summer Tour or The Famous Author European Tour or The Famous Author Mani-Pedi Tour (which begins at Bliss Spa San Francisco next Wednesday, April 19th. Call to reserve a spot: 415-817-4103...it's almost full, so call soon).

If you never want to miss out on another oppotunity again, join my FAMOUS LIST and maybe you will be invited to be a VIP at one of these exclusive (and sometimes rained out) events. You don't have to be famous to be Famous.

xx
Jennifer

IN PEOPLE MAGAZINE!

As if appearing in Harper's Bazaar alongside Madonna is not enough to give this girl a glorious case of hives, this week, yes, oh m'gawd, I'm in People Magazine.

Of course they used the photo that my mother hates, "you're so much prettier in real life, sweetheart," and they angled the book in such a way that it points directly to my boob...but who cares. People Magazine. I mean, what is up from here?

So as you might expect, I'm taking some time off to celebrate - maybe throwing myself a party and watching the entire 2004 season of Nip/Tuck all at once. This takes a lot out of a girl. "Solow steals the show with this energetic debut!"..."Solow's achievement lies in her subtle portrayal of Jillian's motivation for stealing..." C'MON! I love this. This is splendid!

Too Hot for Stores

I thought y'all'd get a kick out of one of the complete REJECT images for the cover. Look, you know me - I LOVED it. I suggested it. The response was complete horrified silence...like, "Oh-m-Gawd! Barnes & Noble would order exactly NO copies of this book, Jennifer!"

Is there something wrong with me? I'm starting to wonder. Why is it that all things completely inappropriate appeal to me? My mother was just visiting and People Magazine (yes, you heard correctly...my Famous Fame increasing as we speak) asked me for a photo. My mother said (echoing the sentiments of my publicist, agent and editor), "You're not going to send that Terry Richardson photograph, are you?" and I was like, "Yeah. What's the matter with it?"

I think there's literally a part of my brain that's missing: the couth part or maybe it's the modesty part or maybe it's just a kind of warped sense of humor that no one else gets. I dunno. So anyway, check People Magazine next week and see who won the argument.

Meanwhile, this week, read the gorgeous review of The Booster in The Boston Globe by my new hero, Carol Iaciofano! Carol (who's a brilliant writer in her own respect and should totally become a Famous Author!) writes, "Jennifer Solow has neatly dropped her literary beach towel near the spot of sand occupied by Kate White and Sophie Kinsella. There's hope in this story, and beach book season is just around the corner."

Is this cool or what?

Ode to Jac

Yes, the day has arrived.
I received a note from the very first person (who is not my mother, my mother's friend, Pam, or my aunt Janie) who has finished the book.

Here is what Jac (an ex-lawyer-turned-writer from New York) says:

"Jennifer- I loved your novel. I read it one day- and refused to leave the apartment last Saturday, the first spring day in the City. I am just embarking on the publishing process with my first novel "Six Minutes In The City."

Now you may think that all Famous Authors are all cool-n-junk, but this one is secretly...well, not cool at all.

Thank you, Jac! I am rendered wordless.

P.S. Can someone publish "Six Minutes In the City" please!

Arianne Phillips was ROBBED!

I finally had a friend who was nominated for an Oscar. This is a glorious time in any Famous Author's life...a time when phrases like, "My dear friend who's nominated for an Oscar..." or "My friend, Oscar-nominated..." etc etc come in handy.

But now that my dear friend lost the Oscar to a lesser movie and was RIPPED OFF of her rightly deserved status as "Oscar-winning-dear-friend" I must protest, though possibly in vain. I, even with my power and influence, can not turn back the clock 24 hours and protest this disgraceful abuse of justice.

Is Arianne (Ari to me, her dear-dear-Famous-Author-friend) Phillips not the greatest costume designer to ever live? Is Hedwig and the Angry Inch not the most fabulously styled and sewn array of hairy bits (she bloodied her poor fingers to the bone on that one) to ever be made into an outfit? Is Walk The Line not an example of finesse and subtlety of cut,color and material? Excuse me? Memoirs of a Geisha? ARIANNE PHILLIPS invented Memoirs of a Geisha (well, stolen from centuries and centuries of tradition and culture).

So here I sit, eating my bon bons and vicariously feeling the pain. Indeed even my Famous Author's photo was my homage to Arianne. If you come and see me on tour you will see an array of Arianne-styled outfits (Madonna's cast-off black Pucci shirt, Gucci, Coureges, vintage Jean Muir) and I must say, while many might feel that Best Movie should have been Brokeback or that Heath was upstaged by another year of mimicry, Arianne was the one I was routing for. She is the uncontested winner in my mind. There you have it.

Madonna and I are like this

Harper's Bazaar hits the stands this week, indulging me, I must admit, in my lifetime dream: The Queen of the Universe and The Famous Author taking the same stage.

There are too many similarities to mention. While they title her piece, "Madonna's Secrets," and talk about her "oxygen facials", "buns of steel" and penchant for "foie gras" (funny that), they name my piece, "Dirty Little Secret", and call my debut "sharp," and a "Hot Pick Read" for April.
(They do not mention my buns of steel or intake of oxygen and overlook my love of goose gullet completely...but you can extrapolate.)

What's next?
Dinner and a day of riding lessons in Dorset-Wilshire?

Where have all the groovy chairs gone?

I've basically been sleeping since Monday. I took a two-pound bag of dried satsumas and a box of Kleenex to bed hoping that 4 or 5 consecutive Ambiens might cure the horror of the New York Magazine gossip column piece about the book.
Did they read THE BOOSTER? Is the story NOT about a kleptomaniac who joins a Peruvian high fashion shoplifting ring? AN ENTIRE BOOK on Donny Deutsch? Hello! Anna Wintour he aint'. Woa is me.

So it got me thinking...remember all those cool chairs they used to have? Remember that album where Bobby Sherman is sitting on that really big red hand? Now THAT was a cover! Remember bean bag chairs when they were fer'real....like beans came out when you jumped on them?

Or maybe I'm just feeling sorry for myself. Maybe I'm feeling a little like Jessica Simpson, caught looking all ugly n' stuff walking out a hotel room wearing the shirt off her one-night-stand's back. Or maybe I'm just thinking about those great Bobby Sherman lyrics (okay, I'm making you think I'm really, really old here, right?)....Being' alone at night makes me sad. Yeah it brings me down all right. Tossin' and turnin' and freezin' and burnin' and cryin' all through the night.

More famous by the minute

Am I allowed to gush for just a little moment?
This morning, THE BOOSTER got a starred review in Publisher's Weekly. Needless to say I feel like putting on a bad gown and screaming, "You really like me!" while running down my street.

Bear with me as I cite the thrilling moments:

First there was the star itself. We love stars. In general, all famous people love stars. Next there was the opener: "Solow's SPECTACULAR debut..."

Then there was a bunch of other stuff that was also really great. I will include the entire review because it IS MY BLOG, and I'm not sure that anyone besides me reads it so...for those of you who are not my mother but might still be interested, read below:

PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY
* Solow's spectacular debut sounds a warning to fashionista shopaholics while providing a healing catharsis that anyone grieving over the loss of a loved one can appreciate. "It is mine. It is mine. It is mine " is the mantra Jillian Siegel repeats before any major shoplifting expedition, believing her hobby is not a crime but her "birthright." The Upper East Sider's addiction to larceny increases after she loses her ad agency job just before the agency acquires the coveted Loevner's department store account. Loevner's had once been owned by Jillian's dying uncle Bingo, a beloved parental figure. As a little girl in bunny fur, Jillian had appeared in the original ad that defined Loevner's upscale glamour. After Shelly, a needy young drifter whom Jillian meets in jail in the wake of a tourist-trap incident, introduces Jillian into a Peruvian shoplifting ring, Jillian becomes the ring's star American booster. "Designer clothes are like armor" providing "protection from the masses," Jillian thinks, but by the thrilling wind-up, Solow, an ad agency veteran, has ripped the tags off this assumption, forcing Jillian to face what compels her to steal. (Mar.)

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FROM US?!!!

While it seems quite fashionable to weigh in on the whole James Frey controversy, to proclaim that writers are cheaters, thieves, deviants and murderers, every one, instead I'd like to discuss the unrealistically extreme expectations of the South Beach Diet.

How on earth is man expected to live without the evening martini? Without the late night gorge on dates, raisin bread, peanut butter and a bottle of beer? Now, as I have said before, this girl don't diet, BUT, if I did, I'd need something that involved pills, some expensive procedure, daily massages and oodles of moisturizer, not the elimination of the necessities.

First, we ask writers not to lie, THEN we ask a bevvy of Americans not to have French Toast with powdered sugar and maple syrup for breakfast! I am hopelessly dishonest and doomed to a life of carbohydrates. I may indeed have to find my culinary and literary freedom in another country.

Integrity

1. I, Jennifer Solow, would do a movie where I had to shave my head.
2. I would not do a movie where I had to wear really ugly outfits.
3. I would do a movie where I had to kiss Kate Nauta.
4. I would do a movie where I had to gain 15 pounds (with physical trainer in contract).
5. I would not do a movie where I had to lose 15 pounds (over that).
6. I would not do a movie where I had to spew vomit.
7. I would not do a movie with Jessica Simpson.
8. I would not do a movie where I had to wear one of those fat suits.
9. I would, despite the bad luck, do a movie with Madonna.
10. I would not do a movie where a bloody woman comes out of the bathtub.

Why I love gay guys

I am back from my fabulous tropical vacation with some horrifying news:
Wouldn't you know it, as the Pina Colada was just making its way to my lounge chair, I felt a little tickle in my throat - a burn, really, a cough and then some sneezing and snot.
I was sick.

But a gay guy knows that this is not the worst of it. He knows that coming home, unpacking the bikini and the diamonds and crawling into bed with a tub of Kleenex With Aloe Moisture is actually the lowest depths of all.

My dear friend and near-personal-stylist (who shall remain nameless unless I get an email from him saying that it's okay to be outted at 30ish in San Francisco), upon hearing the news had some marvelous advice.

I am reprinting it here because I think we all have something to learn.
Print is out. Put it up. Hold it in your heart.
(I love you, honey!)

****************************************************

Watch Oprah. Drink lots of herbal tea with honey. And insist to your man that,
strangely enough, expensive jewelry makes you feel better...

Take care, sweetie.
Call me when you're better - there's nothing more unjust than
being tan and sick at the same time.

****************************************************

Swimming With Sharks

My agent has been warned, the auto-reply button on my email has been pressed, the dieting is done (it will be what it will be when the day is done) and three tanning sessions (high speed bed "Grand Lounge," 6 minutes, then 7, then 8) have been completed.

It is that time - the pre-book-launch vacation of a lifetime. The last time I will perhaps go anywhere without the prying cameras and the nasty literary stalkers. Ambergris Caye, Belize, is a fine place for an escape - in the middle of nowhere, papaya for breakfast, bologna sandwiches on the dive boat for lunch, steamed fresh catch for dinner.

So long you all. Until then.
xxx