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Former Hunt Magazine contributor Stacia Friedman interviews her favorite author – herself – regarding her first novel Tender is the Brisket.
Q: Tender is the Brisket is a funny name for a book. Where did it come from?
A: I combined F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night with the pot roast my mother made every Friday.
Q: Oh. So it’s a cookbook?
A: No, it’s a humorous novel about the Sandwich Generation.
Q: Sandwich? That sure sounds like food to me.
A: The Sandwich Generation isn’t something you eat with pickles and chips. It’s the generation caught between raising their own kids and caring for their aging parents.
Q: I thought you said this was humorous. That sounds depressing as Hell.
A: Did I mention that there’s sex? And lots of it?
Q: Well, now, that sounds promising.
A: The heroine is Hollywood TV writer who returns to Manhattan after twenty years and has to deal with her highly dysfunctional family, including a mother with dementia and a cross-dressing brother.
Q: A cross-dresser? How tacky.
A: But he’s an attorney.
Q: Oh, in that case… I’m still not sure I know what to expect. Is this book going to make me laugh or cry?
A: Both. It will make you horny too. The sex is off the charts. It will also make you hungry. I mean, it’s impossible to write about Manhattan without discussing food. I get all hot and bothered just thinking about Zabar’s bakery department.
Q: Something tells me your book is autobiographical. Is it?
A: My legal counsel has advised me to say Tender is the Brisket is wholly a work of fiction.
Q: Ah ha! So it is autobiographical!
A: Let’s put it this way. I worked in the film industry in Los Angeles, as does my protagonist. After my father died, I came back East and cared for my mother who suffered from dementia. That much is true. When it comes to the cross-dressing attorney and the torrid affairs, as I always say, reality is for people who can’t handle fiction.
Q: Do you have any other books up your sleeve?
A: Actually, I have two more novels stuffed into my bra. Nothing Toulouse, a mystery set in France, and The Double Martini Book Club, a take-off on Fifty Shades of Whatever. They’re available on Amazon too. Plus, I’m working on a new humorous mystery.
Q: Can you give us a hint what it’s about?
A: Don’t be silly. If I knew what it was about, would I be talking to myself?
Stacia Friedman is a freelance writer whose novel Tender is the Brisket is now available at Amazon.
