This fabulous book trilogy is being made into a movie trilogy, starring Constance Wu. I love this book series almost as much as I love Constance Wu.

If you haven’t read these yet, you are in for a treat.

When I first started trying to be a screenwriter, I read everything I could about Hollywood and the entertainment industry, because you can live your whole life looking at cars and have no idea how the engine works, right? I wanted – no, I needed – to know how the engine worked. Anyway, I’ve written about this before, and I’ve read a dozen other books since that post – but I just read a DOOZY.

Powerhouse: The Untold Story of CAA.

This book is DELICIOUS. Read it, if you like reading about Los Angeles and raw ambition and grown men being whiny little bitches about each other.

I’m with APA. And I love my agent. But I also love, just a teeny weeny bit, Ron Meyer in the 70s.

C’mon. The tan! The hair! The glasses! You totally would.

It’s that time of year again, you guys! Our anniversary. When against all odds, we wake up, shower, dress, get our asses to City Hall, and ask a stranger to take a photo of us kissing, without our children falling off the podium.

Here we have 2017. Errol is five and Ned is three.

Here is 2016. Errol is four, Ned is two and REALLY into it.

Here is 2015. Ned is one, Errol is three. That dress is from Topshop. Where the hell did I put that dress.

Here is 2014. Errol is two and Ned is three months.

NB Ned was a horrendous small baby. See that look of myopic distrust? That is EVERY one of his baby photos. At about nine months he became the smiley little bruiser you know and love, but as a newborn, yeah, he was horrendous. (In fairness to him, he had silent reflux and couldn’t eat without being in pain so was hungry all the time, but WHATEVER Ned, SHEESH.) I don’t know how I managed to finish my last book with him as a newborn, especially with Errol as a toddler and Fox away for work more than half the time, as well as write a spec script and my first movie rewrite gig because I was trying to transition into screenwriting, but I did, and I have a feeling that I was an obsessive nightmare to be around. I will also have a very very high opinion of myself forever more because of it. (Kidding!) (Maybe.)

Here is 2013. Errol is just over a year and a half. He had hair like a newborn chick for a very, very long time. I was superfuckingblond at this point in my life. It almost made me bald. Avoid peroxide, kids.

Here is 2012. Errol is about eight months old.

Here is 2010, our wedding day.

We got married here in NYC, even though we were living in London at the time, because why not. And 2011 is missing as we were living in Zurich for the year for Fox’s job, and I was three months pregnant, so it would have been a photo of me puking and snarling at Fox.

At some point I will figure out how to resize all these photos to be even. Maybe by 2020.

In the lead up to every Mother’s Day, I sing this to myself endlessly.

I never enter competitions. I don’t play the lottery, I don’t play board games, I don’t play badminton or tennis or croquet, I don’t play poker, I don’t throw any hats into any rings, ever.

Until at the end of last year, the WGA announced they were holding a competition to win fellowships with TV showrunners. “That’s what I need!” I thought to myself. “This is what I want to do with the rest of my life, this is reason I moved my tiny family to the USA. But I can’t just keep selling things and hoping they get made, because that’s a 1 in 100 chance. I need to learn from a real live professional showrunner, to ask them advice on a writer-to-writer basis. I need this.”

Because that’s the strange thing about being a fledgling screenwriter. I have been doing it for three years now, more or less, since my fifth and (probably) final book was published. I sold a movie script to New Regency, a TV show to ABC network, I had two TV shows in development with WB and Universal last year, I just sold a spec called RELATIVITY to Universal with a blind deal, I’m pitching more shows and movies and doing everything you’re supposed to do… but nothing has been produced, and moreover, I don’t know ANY professional working screenwriters. None. Not one. Bizarre, right?

So I sent in a spec I wrote last year, FILTHY LIAR. (Basic premise: A cocky British illegal immigrant will do whatever it takes to stay, survive and prosper in NYC. Kind of an updated Vanity Fair, with shades of Holly Golightly.) I figured I might get an interview, might get through to the last 100, the last 30, the last 10… and I did.

In fact, I won. Best comedy.

I didn’t just win best comedy. Mine was – apparently – the only script to get a complete score. It’s a goddamn miracle, that’s what it is.

So ANYWAY there’s going to be a staged table read on May 25, here in NYC, professionally cast. If you’re in the city, and you’d like to come, click here! (And cross your fingers that this gets optioned and made into an actual show. Cross them TIGHT.)