On… the New York Times Leave a reply So this is pretty exciting. A piece in the New York Times on Saturday about BROOKLYN GIRLS. Post-Collegiate Exploits In Brooklyn By BLAKE WILSON Those who find themselves attracted to the Brooklyn bohemia of Lena Dunham’s “Girls” but who can’t understand why its gritty depictions of post-collegiate reality have to be quite so gritty might want to distract themselves instead with “Brooklyn Girls” (St. Martin’s Griffin, $14.99), a sassy summer confection by the young novelist and screenwriter Gemma Burgess. The story stars Pia, an art history major fresh out of Brown with no money, no job and definitely no clue. After a semi-topless photo on Facebook costs her an entry-level gig in public relations, she faces a deadline from her parents: get it together in two months, or move out of the Carroll Gardens brownstone she shares with a quartet of friends, and back home to Switzerland. This being Brooklyn, Pia’s adventures include beekeeping, barhopping and a food truck business called Skinny Wheels. And this being 2013, the plot turns on casual sex and business sense as much as it does on its rather literal Prince Charming. If this sounds like fun, then you’re doubly in luck. The novel includes the first two chapters of a sequel, “Love and Chaos: A Brooklyn Girls Novel,” due out in winter 2014. Goddamn thrilling, huh? I don’t get excited about most book-related stuff – I don’t have book launch parties, I don’t do readings, I don’t tingle when I see them in bookstores, I’d honestly rather just write – but wow, I got excited about this. This is just lovely. Thank you Blake Wilson. One other thing. People are going to keep comparing my book series and HBO’s Girls. They’re both about young women! They’re obviously identical (except being completely different in tone, audience, plot, characters, and as Blake says, grittiness, etc…). Publishing is very, very slow. I conceptualized, got the book deal, and wrote BROOKLYN GIRLS in 2010 and early 2011. The writing process of BROOKLYN GIRLS is updated all through my blog, and the first announcement about the BROOKLYN GIRLS book deal with St Martin’s Press was in Publisher’s Marketplace on January 14, 2011. (The working title was ‘UNION STREET’.) Lena Dunham’s brilliant, hilarious and original Girls premiered April 2012. I finished writing the second book in the series, LOVE AND CHAOS in mid-2012, and it’s out early 2014. Like I said, publishing is slow. Just because two writers notice the same thing (the total lack of books/tv shows about young women starting adult life) – and set it in the same location (because it’s an accessibly aspirational and very interesting place where, duh, a lot of graduates live when they get to NYC) – doesn’t mean there’s some huge conspiracy afoot. Seriously.