Traitors and Ghostwriters

What I read and watched this week

Hi! Thanks for opening this email! Let’s dive right in:

✍️ The Hollywood Reporter ran this interview with a handful of celebrity memoir ghostwriters and it is a treat. Not only does it take some of the mystery out of the business of ghostwriting and the celebrities they’ve worked with, but it also offers insight into the writers’ own lives. When asked about their feelings around not having their names on the covers of the books they’ve written, it leads to the revelation that several of them grew up with narcissistic parents?! Great read.

🤐 No show has me as gripped as The Traitors does right now. I can’t get enough of the UK version hosted by Claudia Winkleman (and her incredible knitwear). A group of people are sent to a castle in Scotland and a few of the contestants are anonymously selected to be “traitors” while everyone else is “faithful.” The traitors secretly meet every night and can “murder” a faithful. Meanwhile, the faithfuls have no clue who the traitors are and therefore everyone is a suspect. At the end of each episode, all the players vote for a fellow contestant to banish from the castle—ideally a traitor. If any traitors make it to the end, they get to keep all the prize money. There are schemes, secret relationships, backstabbing—it’s great TV. The first season of the UK version is on Peacock and there are also US and Australian versions that I have yet to dip into. I can’t get enough!

🎧 The first episode of Wanna Hear Something Weird dropped this week! Tom tells me about a strange incident in 16th century Germany and we plot a historical romance novel idea. Next time, I’ll tell Tom about a very bizarre case from the 1980s and, frankly, I’ve never heard anything like it before. New episodes drop every Wednesday!

🐕 Ginger of the Week:

looking sweet and innocent after a tiring day of being exceptionally bossy

I’ll be on a break next week—in the meantime, stay warm!

Thanks for reading,
Laura