Sad Desk Salad

August 6, 2012
Grose, former editor at Slate and at Jezebel, makes her fiction debut with a fun read. Alex Lyons is a writer for Chick Habit, an online women’s gossip magazine. Having been there six months, she is used to the frenzied pace and “‘round-the-clock posting,” and locked into her computer (the last time she stepped away for longer than 10 minutes, a celebrity died). She’s used to second-guessing her own decisions on posts, but the pressure is on to up her views, and Alex has found that it pays to “be a bitch.” When a tip comes in about a genius political writer’s daughter behaving badly, Alex leaps to be the first to leak the story. But the consequences of her action lead to Alex’s life unraveling and her beginning to question everything. Grose (who coauthored Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages from Home) takes what could be a heavy subject—ethical choices and their repercussions—and lightens it. Alex’s rethinking her decision and worry about the consequences strikes a chord, especially considering today’s social networking. An enjoyable debut with a message. Agent: Elizabeth Weed, Weed Literary.

September 15, 2012
Fat celebrity thighs and coke-sniffing coeds are fair fodder in this rollicking tour into the life of a gossip blogger, from former Slate editor Grose. When Alex graduated from Wesleyan, she was hoping for a job in serious journalism. Change the world kind of stuff. But alas, she ended up at an NYC online music journal. When an offer to write for Chick Habit came along (a real salary and the chance to write about real issues), she counted herself lucky. That was before the quotas began--she needs a million hits a month, or else. So goodbye sad stories about foreign ladies, hello Real Housewives. This new numbers game is keeping Alex shackled to her laptop, scanning news feeds all day for potentially sexy stories to blog about. Alex knows things are out of hand when her sweet boyfriend, Peter, begs her to shower. Monday begins with a story about a fallen beauty queen, but then Alex gets wind of a hate blog directed at her: Break the Chick Habit, or BTCH. Alex, Tina and Rel, two other writers at Chick Habit, commiserate over scorpion bowls. Hate bloggers are common, but this one seems to have a lot of intimate information. Tuesday brings Alex a shot at blogger fame when an anonymous link is sent to her email. In the video, Becky West, MIT wunderkind, is shown snorting coke. Hardly unconventional college behavior, but it's newsworthy because Becky's mother is Darleen West, Tiger mom famous for her patronizing parenting books. Alex isn't sure she should publish--does Becky deserve the notoriety? Alex's boss, Moira, herself born of the flames of U.K. tabloids, pushes forward. The next day, the video goes viral, Alex will soon appear on the Today show, and BTCH is threatening to expose some dark secrets. Before she has a nervous breakdown, Alex has to find the missing Becky, track the creator of BTCH, reconcile with a furious Peter and patch up her fading sense of self. A quick-witted insider's view of the blogosphere, media pandering, Internet privacy and the difficulty of being a good girl in a bad, bad world.

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