Renée Rosen's new novel is Park Avenue Summer.From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: Why did you decide to focus on Helen Gurley Brown in your new novel, and how did you come up with the idea for her (fictional) assistant, Alice?Visit Renée Rosen's website, blog, and Facebook page.
A: I knew I wanted to set a book in New York City in the 1960s and I wanted it to be centered around a glamorous industry. Mad Men already had the corner on advertising, so I went with magazines. Initially I was thinking of a fictional magazine and a full cast of fictional characters. It wasn’t until I had a conversation with my editor that we realized we had to tell Helen Gurley Brown’s story.
That led to the next dilemma--whose point-of-view should the story be told from. There were so many non-fiction books already out there about HGB, even some that Brown wrote herself. I didn’t want to just fictionalize what had already been done and so beautifully before, so, enter Alice Weiss. I wanted to show HGB’s influence on a typical “Cosmo girl.” Using Alice as a vehicle also enabled me to...[read on]
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--Marshal Zeringue