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The News Journal, Wilmington, Del.
Tuesday, Dec. 7, 2004
Life & Leisure Section
DOVER FRIENDS ALWAYS FINISH EACH OTHER'S THOUGHTS, DECIDE
TO WRITE A BOOK
By Christopher Yasiejko
The author Libby Street makes her professional debut today, but
her story begins one January day in 1981, when a fair-haired 5-year-old-girl
moved with her family to Dover.
They were of the Air Force breed, a transient sort. SO were many
in their adopted neighborhood. As military families came and went,
so did their homes on Liberty Drive.
Emily Morris had just moved into the first of three houses on the
street she would inhabit for 10 of the next 13 years. She approached
her neighbor’s door and was greeted by Rocky Bushweller.
“Do you have any kids my age?” Emily asked.
“Yes,” said Bushweller, mother of five. A moment later,
4-year-old Sarah, her youngest was on the doorstep.
For three years, Emily and Sarah were inseparable. Sure, there were
other friends, but this is a story about these two girls, how their
tight friendship would evolve into authorship, a book deal and new
hopes for the future, and how Libby Street would become the pseudonym
that represents the best of both.
The time came for Emily to move. Alabama this time. Sarah first
flew on a plane during the fourth grade, alone. She left Liberty
Drive, albeit temporarily, to visit her best friend.
Before they knew it, three years had passed, and Emily was back
in Dover.
The next seven years, their last together on the street, would solidify
their bonds. They would become teenagers. They’d write a (bad)
screenplay about their (fantasy) beau, Harry Connick, Jr. They’d
learn to finish each other’s thoughts.
That last one would come in handy.
Imagine them in college. Sarah was a senior at the University of
Pittsburgh; Emily was working toward her master’s degree in
screenwriting at Ohio University. They’d kept in touch over
the years. Still were best friends. They’d each read “Bridget
Jones’s Diary” and couldn’t relate to the heroine.
Sarah and Emily shared in regular phone calls their literary disappointment.
They were tired of looking for a character who would speak to them.
“It seemed like we were always having the same conversation,”
says Sarah, 27.
“Wouldn’t it be great,” they said to each other,
“if we just wrote the story we’re searching for?”
For a while, the mere idea was enough. Then Emily tired of grading
papers and writing screenplays for classes. “I just wanted
some other outlet,” she says.
She wrote 10 pages and e-mailed them to Sarah. “Read them,”
she said. “Add to the story, and send it back.”
Sarah did that. Emily followed. It was therapeutic. “At first,”
Emily says, “I think we just wanted to see if we could do
it; the only real goal was to make the other person laugh.”
But they noticed something more. Emily had moved with her parents
to San Francisco. Sarah had moved to New York City. Their unique
process—the e-mails, the epic phone calls—was yielding
a good story.
Emily was quick with a joke, an underrated skill that stemmed from
her screenwriting education and is useful when writing dialogue.
Sarah tended to take a more serious tone, which helped keep the
plot moving and the characters growing.
Cross-Country Creation
By September 2001, they’d decided to make a novel out of their
work.
Geography never was an issue, Emily says. And their friendship always
trumped the book. During their telephone story conferences, held
several times each week, they’d talk for 20 minutes about
the novel. The rest of the three hours was assigned to everything
else in life.
Emily would fly to New York every couple of months to work with
Sarah on their creation. The protagonist was Ryan Hadley, a fictional
peer who wants to redirect her life’s path. She’s got
a core group of friends to support her new plan, and humor is sprinkled
among the troubles.
“What we most hope for the book,” Emily says, “is
that women like us read it and laugh.”
Her visits usually lasted a week or two. She’d sleep on the
sofa at Sarah and her husband’s apartment. Proximity didn’t
always lead to productivity.
“In fact,” Sarah says, “Emily was in New York
for about six weeks this summer and we couldn’t get anything
done. What would start out as a work discussion inevitably disintegrated
into, ‘I’m going to change the CD. Do you want another
beer?’ or something equally non-work related. We have agreed
that when she moves to New York”—that’d be this
January—“Emily and I will stick to what’s been
working for us. Phone and e-mail.”
In early November 2003 after their agent had fielded bids from several
publishing houses for the book now titled, “My Perfect Manhattan,”
Sarah got a call at work. Her day job was, and is, at a pharmaceutical
marketing firm, where she’s an advertising executive.
It was their agent, Wendy Sherman. Simon & Schuster had offered
a two-book deal with its Downtown Press imprint, and Sherman had
agreed.
When Sarah got the news, she felt feverish, and jumped up and down.
She called Emily.
Sarah knelt on her swivel chair while talking with her friend and
co-author. They giggled and she spun. The cord wrapped around her,
and the phone crashed to the floor and broke. Emily heard a muffled
grunt, then a hello. They hadn’t lost their connection.
Emily, 28, has goals. She’d like to sell a million screenplays
and win an Oscar, too, she says but for now she has two professional
objectives: to finish (with Sarah) their second book, due to the
publisher Jan. 1; and get a day job. (As for contract details, they’d
reveal only that Sarah was able to pay off her credit cards and
Emily could buy a few new outfits.)
“I’m pretty much willing to do anything that doesn’t
involve food service or nudity,” Emily says.
Introducing Libby Street
This story ends where Libby Strret begins. One name is more recognizable
than two, so Emily and Sarah needed a collective pseudonym. Despite
the distance that separated them for most of their lives Liberty
Drive in Dover was a constant. Thus came the name Libby Street.
Sarah’s parents still live in Dover, but they moved two years
ago to a new neighborhood.
The two components of Libby Street have grand plans for July 5,
the release date of their first novel. They’ll probably have
a sleepover the night before (“because we’re dorks,”
Emily says), have a few cocktails, set the alarm clock and go to
sleep. They’ll wake up and visit the Barnes & Noble nearest
Sarah’s apartment on the Upper East Side. When the doors open,
the women will rush to buy “My Perfect Manhattan.”
Sarah’s husband will snap pictures. She and Emily have imagined
that moment, at that location, for the past year and a half.
But today marks Libby Street’s official debut. The two authors
wrote a short story called ”The Luckiest People” for
a New Year’s-themed anthology titled “In One Year and
Out the Other,” available in bookstores today. The publisher
says Street’s story “ponders the morning after—and
the pros and cons of finding a stranger in one’s bed.”
Sarah and Emily embrace the term “chick-lit” ahead of
the stiffer “contemporary women’s fiction.” Now
busy with deadlines and a cross-country move, they don’t notice
until reminded that their own journey makes for a nice story, too.
Copyright, The News Journal
Delaware State News
Monday, June 14, 2004
DOVER NATIVES A NOVEL PAIR
Tale of 20-somethings to be published next year
By Jenny Kania
DOVER – When Dover natives Sarah H.W. Bushweller, 26, and
Emily S. Morris, 27, collaborated on a novel, the pair did so in
unusual fashion.
Longtime friends, they forwent lengthy meetings in a stuffy office
and all-nighters in front of the computer.
Instead, they playfully exchanged emails about a fictional group
of 20-somethings, and in the process, created a highly sought after
book.
Tentatively titled “Delicate Blunders,” the publication
will be released next year.
Although a debut effort, the book became the product of a ferocious
bidding war.
Downtown Press, a division of Simon and Schuster, won the publishing
rights after offering the ladies an impressive two-book deal.
The pair’s agent, Wendy Sherman of Wendy Sherman Associates,
was not surprised by the interest in her clients’ work.
“Their writing is fantastic, lovely and enjoyable,”
she said. “They capture the voice of their character, and
to have two writers combine to make one voice is very hard to do.
But with them, you can never tell who wrote which part. Their voices
are indistinguishable.”
The authors attribute this to their longtime friendship.
Pals since preschool, Ms. Bushweller and Ms. Morris are eerily alike.
“If you’re ever around them, it’s hard to tell
where one stops and the other begins,” said Sarah’s
mother P. Raquel “Rocky” Bushweller of Dover.
“They’re alike in their mannerisms, the way they think
and their sense of humor, and you can see that reflected in the
way they write.”
Ms. Bushweller is also the daughter of state senatorial candidate
Brian Bushweller of Dover. Ms. Morris is the daughter of Shawn and
Randy Morris of Novato, Calif.
Both girls grew up on Liberty Drive in Dover and are graduates of
Dover High School. Their books will be released under the pseudonym
“Libby Street,” paying homage to the road where they
once lived.
Ms. Bushweller now resides in New York City with her husband Giuseppe
Castellano. Ms. Morris lives with her parents in Novato, but plans
to move to New York next year.
Until then, the friends will continue to collaborate over e-mail.
It has been their lifeline.
With just a click of a button, they send each other pages of new
material and ten edit the work.
“We just write until we can’t write anymore and then
the other person takes over,” Ms. Morris said.
“There’s always that anticipation when you get a new
e-mail, of what’s going to happen next in the story. That’s
why it’s exciting working with a partner. If you’re
all by yourself, it can seem like drudgery.
The pair’s first book features main character “Ryan
Hadley” a 25-year-old-woman who wants to leave her job in
data entry and become a Web designer.
“She’s trying to figure out what she wants to do with
the rest of her life,” Ms. Morris said. “She feels like
she’s standing still while everyone else is rising up the
ranks.”
The book also includes a supporting cast of Ryan’s close friends,
who are all young professionals in the Big Apple.
Ms. Bushweller and Ms. Morris had little difficulty creating the
characters. They, too, are 20-somethings searching for success.
So far, they’re on the right path. In addition to their two-book
deal, the authors are contributing to a short story anthology, which
Simon and Schuster will publish in December.
They’ve also signed contracts with German and Dutch publishers,
and have a contract with Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles
for the handling of film rights to their books.
This is especially thrilling for Ms. Morris, who holds a master’s
degree in screenwriting from Ohio University.
“It’s the Holy Grail of publishing to go to movies,”
she said. “It’s good exposure and it’s good money.
We don’t know why all this is happening to us, but we’re
so glad it is.”
Ms. Bushweller is equally amazed.
“It’s unbelievable, slightly surreal and completely
absurd,” she said. “We hoped for a book contract, but
didn’t expect all this to happen so quickly.”
The pair’s first book falls into the category of women’s
fiction, or, as it’s commonly called, “Chick Lit.”
Their second release will feature new characters and an entirely
new plot. Te comedy will be about a vengeful actor who starts stalking
a member of the paparazzi.
Both authors look forward to seeing their publications in a bookstore,
next to other well-known Chick Lit novels, such as “Bridget
Jones’s Diary.”
For them, it is a joy to be able to share their success with each
other.
“It’s wonderful. Every time something amazing happens,
instead of jumping up and down on the bed by ourselves, we can scream
and giggle together,” Ms. Bushweller said.
“It’s fun to have someone there with you. Emily and
I always say we’re two halves of the same brain and we’ll
always have a special connection.”
Copyright, Delaware State News
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