Bell, Book and Candle is not the title of my book.
Book, Beast, and Crow comes out two weeks from today, but who's counting?
This is a picture of me, my sister (looking at the camera), and two of my best friends from elementary school getting our books signed by ANN M. MARTIN on the best day of my life up to that point. I think I was ten here, in my favorite outfit, with my white pleather wristwatch, looking like I'm about to meet the pope. Which to ten-year-old me, I basically was.
My first office job after college was as an editorial assistant and I worked on the same floor as Jean Feiwel, the editor who came up with the idea for The Baby-Sitters Club, along with her author, Ann. Every time I saw Jean in the elevator, or when I was rinsing my mug in the kitchenette, I was basically like, DERRRR, totally star-struck. One time she complimented my boots (brown leather, knee-high, riding-esque) and I wore them until both heels fell off and the zipper began to fray.
Anyway, I'm about to see my second novel come out in the world, an actual, for-real-life, dream come true to both my ten-year-old and twenty-three-year-old selves. I've been stressed about promotion--feeling like I'm never doing enough--but then I was like, What would ten-year-old me do? I can tell you: she would crimp her hair and put on her white pleather wristwatch and frickin' DANCE down the street in joy. So then I was like, What if I, thirty-eight-year-old me, celebrated instead of worrying about promoting? What would that look like?
For the next two weeks, I'm going to try to answer that. Right now the first thing that comes to mind is: cake.
I did have this realization, and I do mean to take it seriously and honor my ten-year-old self’s wishes (minus crimping my hair), but there is also a lot more to the story. In addition to ordering a cake—or at least cupcakes—here is what else I’m doing in the penultimate week before my book comes out.
waking up at 11 pm to fill my dog’s water bowl, only to come back to bed and find her sleeping in my place
placing a grocery pickup order at 7 am while answering my three-year-old’s questions about a Mickey cartoon he’s seen at least twice
thinking about things I’ve been meaning to look up, like: Nancy Drew once used perfume to clean a wound, maybe a snake bite. Is that legit first-aid?
answering the Mickey questions inadequately and being forced to watch it all the way from the beginning and “pay attention”1
rescheduling a dental cleaning for the third time
enrolling my son in pre-school for next year, which is almost like a dress-rehearsal for doing my taxes; it’s like the PSAT2
watching Bell, Book and Candle, which is taking me four nights and counting.
I get asked a lot if Book, Beast, and Crow is a reference to Bell, Book and Candle and the answer is no, because I haven’t seen it until this week. I knew it was about a witch (Kim Novak) who falls in love with a human (Jimmy Stewart), but that’s all I knew.
Well, well, well! First of all, it came out in 1958. Fine. Lots of movies did. In fact, that same year, Kim and Jim also starred in Vertigo, which is extremely different in almost every way, except for the whole misogyny-as-storyline trick.3
Anyway! Kim and Jim are love interests despite their twenty-five year age difference. She’s attracted to him and bewitches him with the help of her familiar, a cat named Pyewacket. Jimmy is so spellbound that he calls off his wedding (to Kim’s nemesis from college, lol, just an added bonus) and they spend every minute together for several weeks. There’s a lot of nice scenery of NYC in the snow. It begins on Christmas Eve, but it’s an anti-Christmas movie, and that’s maybe the one thing I’ll give it in its favor.
I didn’t like it…but I didn’t not like it. Kim Novak’s character is named Gillian,4 but with a hard G, so all her friends call her Gil, which is my son’s name. Every time I heard someone like Jack Lemmon say “Gil,” it felt like swallowing too big a sip of seltzer and almost choking on the fizz.
Gil wears gorgeous clothes and I know that if I had first watched this movie in high school or college, I would’ve watched it many times again to try to emulate her style. Lots of cigarette pants, all black or black-and-red outfits, leopard print, hooded capes, and she’s barefoot most of the movie, which is a detail I did really like.
And all this time, the viewer knows that she’s sort of stringing Shep (Jimmy) along because witches can’t fall in love.5 So fast-forward—I’m about to ruin it for you, stop reading if it matters—she falls in love. And she finds out because her familiar rejects her and runs away and she chases Pyewacket through traffic and it is genuinely the emotional climax of the movie. I felt very sad for her. When she realizes that Pye has abandoned her, she cries, and that’s how she knows she’s in love.6
Oh, did I mention that when a witch falls in love, they lose their powers?
I’m gonna stop recapping. I’m just getting worked up over this dumb movie and anyway, I still have to:
buy fish for dinner that, most likely, will only be consumed by me
cook the fish
put the clothes in the dryer because I said that I paused to do it, but then I just kept writing
I just stopped making this list because I remembered that there’s been a load of laundry waiting to go in the dryer since the hour of the Mickey incident, so I went downstairs and did that.
Any mention of the PSAT will always make me think of the episode of Dawson’s Creek when Andie steals the test and memorizes the answers and CHEATS because she’s under so much PRESSURE for the PSAT, and then I don’t remember why, maybe Pacey takes the fall for her, but he gets kicked out, and Dawson stands up and walks out with him in solidarity. Of the PSAT. Bada$$.
Oldest trick in the book, am I right?
Like Gillian in Practical Magic. Coincidence??
They also can’t cry for some reason. Jkjkjk, the reason is that crying is a feminine trait and witches have power and power isn’t a feminine trait, dummy! Keep studying for the PSAT!
Barf. She wasn’t in love, she was heartbroken.