Tomorrow: Collingswood Book Festival!

A reminder that the Collingswood Book Festival is indeed happening tomorrow! The weather gods have thrown a little fit, so due to the rain, the festival will move to the high school. From the website:

Due to the weather forecast for this Saturday, October 1, the festival will be held at Collingswood High School, 424 Collings Avenue, Collingswood, NJ. Enter through the high school gym building on Eldridge Ave. If you’re not vaccinated for COVID, mask up!

https://www.collingswoodbookfestival.com/

Saturday, October 1 – Adult Authors

NEW LOCATION: Collingswood Middle School, Main Auditorium (second floor)

10:00 a.m. — Ann de Forest, Ways of Walking

11:00 a.m. — Town Book Presentation: Jo Piazza, We Are Not Like Them

12:00 p.m. — Sannii Crespina-Flores, Machetes are Forged in Soft Rivers and Faleeha Hassan, War and Me

1:00 p.m. — Riley Sager, The House Across the Lake and Sung J. Woo, Skin Deep

2:00 p.m. — Mike Sielski, The Rise: Kobe Bryant and the Pursuit of Immortality

3:00 p.m. —Beth Macy, Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis (sequel to Dopesick)

October 1, 2022: Collingswood Book Festival!

Super excited to take part in the Collingswood Book Festival on Saturday, 10/1/2022!

I’ll be on a panel with NYT bestselling author Riley Sager that day at 1pm. The festival folks were kind enough to write up a profile for both Riley and myself, so please check it out!

Essay to TV! Modern Love: Mumbai, Season 1, Episode 3: “Mumbai Dragon”

Amazon Studios has adapted my Modern Love essay!!! (I feel three exclamation points are warranted for this bit of news.) It is episode 3 from Modern Love Mumbai, entitled “Mumbai Dragon.”

So of course I knew about the Modern Love series on Amazon Prime, but I didn’t know they have branched out to culturally specific versions of Modern Love. From Wikipedia:

In April 2022, Prime Video announced the Indian version of the series in three different languages — Modern Love Mumbai in HindiModern Love Hyderabad in Telugu and Modern Love Chennai in Tamil. A Japanese version of the series, titled Modern Love Tokyo will premiere worldwide on October 21, 2022.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Love_(TV_series)

Can you guess which of these stills is my episode? If you guessed this one…

Me and Mom, TV-ized

…you are absolutely correct!

So for those with Amazon Prime, which seems to be just about everyone I know, you can watch this episode whenever you wish (turn on the English subtitles!). I would recommend you either read or listen to the essay beforehand, so you can see all the changes that took place in the adaptation:

Now for some questions and answers:

  • This was released almost three months ago — how come you are just posting this now? That’s because I wasn’t made aware of it until this past Friday! The Modern Love folks at the Times were waiting to tell the authors until the financials were worked out. They were indeed worked out, so ergo, I was notified. 🙂 Frankly, I’m glad I wasn’t aware of this until now, because if I had come across it when it came out, I would’ve been very much in the mold of, “Now wait a minute…this sounds a little too familiar…”
  • I just saw the episode, but where was your name in the credits? Yeah, that’s just the way it goes. If you look at the first Modern Love series, you’ll notice that only the episodes that hew very closely to the original essay give credit to the author. Mostly those were the stories that were super popular/went viral. Mine did not, so the writing team made many, many changes to tell their own tale. I knew this before watching, so I was prepared for it to be a very different story — but I was absolutely thrilled with the way it turned out! Much of my essay did make it in the episode, and the theme/spirit of my piece is totally there. The director of the episode, Vishal Bhardwaj, is a legendary filmmaker in India, so I lucked out big time. And the performances are top notch, too. There were three people in my essay — my mother, my wife Dawn, and myself. The same trio stars in the episode, modified — mom the cook, son the singer (!), and sagacious girlfriend.

    So long story short, no official credit. But hey, there can still be an unofficial credit, right? Thank you, IMDb!
  • Now that your essay has been turned into a podcast and a TV episode, what’s next? Isn’t it obvious? Broadway, of course! Somebody please write a musical, pronto…
Dawn and Mom, TV-ized

Lots of people loved the series and this episode in particular — check them out.

https://www.apotpourriofvestiges.com/2022/05/modern-love-mumbai-review-another.html
“The third episode titled ‘Mumbai Dragon,’ directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, is perhaps the most interesting of the lot. Set against the backdrop of the Indian Chinese community, it tells the story of Sui, a single mother who overbearing love for her son gets threatened when he shares his portion of love with his girlfriend. The mother played by Yeo Yann Yann is easily the best thing about entire anthology.”

https://abstractaf.in/modern-love-mumbai-review-mixed-hotpot/
“This was easily the BEST of the lot! Directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, the short focuses on familial love.”

https://www.leisurebyte.com/modern-love-mumbai-review-warm-comfort/
“I perceived Mumbai Dragon as a story of how stubborn most Indians are when it comes to love. They want their children to marry someone from their community. More than the happiness of their children, what matters to them is their pride. Even though the ending is predictable, the delicious food, performances and tuneful music keep you going through the end.”

https://www.highonfilms.com/modern-love-mumbai-season-1-review/
“Vishal Bhardwaj is, to put it simply, eons ahead of anyone in the people in this anthology web series. His direction is so expressive, so vibrant, so lively, so dynamic that it’s unfair for everyone else. He brings out the best in Yeo Yann Yann, Meiyang Chang, Naseeruddin Shah, and Wamiqa Gabbi; giving them ample room to visualize their characters’ feelings with words and sometimes, without them.”

One last thing — this is an embarrassment of riches, but another artist on Instagram reached out to me with a third take on my essay this morning! Andrea can be found on Instagram and her website.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cg8kQ0cs8Ts/

A Second Illustration to My Modern Love Piece

So many years ago, the Times published my Modern Love piece. That story was illustrated by Brian Rea, who’s been doing all the MLs for a while now.

Today I received a notification from an Instagrammer, Joyce (@paperie.pufferies), who is currently taking classes at the School of Visual Arts and chose my story for her own illustrative take. How cool is that?

@paperie.pufferies, https://www.instagram.com/p/CfovvAxr5Lk/

There are two details of this graphic on her Instagram, so check them out, and her site, too!

The Lefty Awards!

Exciting news! Skin Deep, my first mystery, has just been nominated for the 2021 Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery Novel, by Left Coast Crime. How cool is that? Now for the rest of my life, I can refer to myself as the “Lefty-Nominated Mystery Writer.” I’m gonna put that on my business card, if I had business cards.

Seriously — this is really super kind of these folks, because to be nominated in the same category with the likes of Carl Hiaasen and Ellen Byron is nothing short of amazing. Huge congrats to the rest of my awesome fellow nominees, Jennifer J. Chow, Cynthia Kuhn, and J. Michael Orenduff.

The winners will be announced on April 10, 2021!

11/3/2020 12:30PM ET: First Chapter Fun with Hannah & Hank

So something momentous is occurring a week from today, November 3. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?

Of course you are. That’s the day that Hannah Mary McKinnon and Hank Phillippi Ryan will read from Skin Deep. You can watch it via Facebook Live or Instagram Live. I’ll be watching, too!

And yes, if you haven’t done so yet, VOTE!

A Nice Shout-Out

Thank you, Double Skinny Macchiato, for enjoying Skin Deep!

There’s a running joke in Skin Deep where its Korean-American narrator Siobhan O’Brien, who was adopted by a Norwegian mother and an Irish father, has to explain her Irish name to almost everyone she meets. It’s not really funny, of course, but Siobhan deals with it in the same droll fashion she does almost everything. As the novel opens, the owner of the private investigation company where Siobhan is training dies leaving the agency to Siobhan. There isn’t a lot of money or much in the way of assets, but an old friend soon hires Siobhan to search for her missing daughter, a student at the exclusive Llewellyn College. The college recently admitted its first male students, a move which has not been well received by all parties, and the more Siobhan investigates, the clearer it becomes that there is something rotten in the state of Llewellyn — and plenty of very strange characters. At times, the bonkersness of it all did get out of hand, but the mystery is complex and well-plotted, and Siobhan is a great character: funny, smart and independent. This is the first in a series of Siobhan O’Brien novels, so if you like her, stay tuned!

https://www.doubleskinnymacchiato.com/2020/09/top-five-books-august-2020-brit-bennett-tana-french-kiley-reid.html