Did You Read It? #1

New podcasts, books, youtubes, and a Jack the Ripper anniversary

I am starting a Substack column for a bunch of reasons. Like many writers materializing on this platform, I’ve been around. I published nine historical novels, worked as a staff editor at seven newsstand magazines (the most well-known are Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and Good Housekeeping), wrote four (unproduced) screenplays, and blogged from here to eternity.

I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was 8 years old, and I have paid the bills from writing and editing since I was 23. I would say I am moderately successful at this. I only hit a fiction bestseller list once, and briefly, with my debut novel, The Crown. Yet here I am, tapping away at the keyboard since the 1980s.

Does this mean I will tell people how to make a living as a writer? No. Although I will be sharing observations on the writer’s life and occasional tips on craft, my Substack won’t provide a career-building service.

I’ve decided to join Substack because, in addition to holding down a 40-hour-a-week job, writing fiction on the side, and living with my husband and two children in upstate New York, I have a voracious appetite for media and culture, from highbrow to lowbrow. It’s time to share what I devour. Because some of it needs to be shared.

A friend of mine once said I was a lot like the characters in the Portlandia episode “Did You Read It?”. I always lose it while watching that sketch. I have a compulsive nature when it comes to reading, yes. But here’s the thing—it’s become more than just reading. Even I am having a hard time keeping up with not just the books, magazines, newspapers, and websites but also the podcasts, YouTube episodes, and films and television series pouring out now. A lot of it is good. Some of it is fascinating. And some of it reeks.

It’s important to prepare you. I am a media junkie and a history nerd and a classic film addict and an art lover and a true crime devotee. I love The Red Shoes, Rebecca, The Letter, Elizabeth R, and La Dolce Vita, while also loving The Godfather, Scarface, The Wire, and Breaking Bad. I know—it doesn’t make any sense to me either.

My plan: I will share what I’m reading, seeing, or listening to that I find most interesting, along with updates on my writing projects and an occasional blog post that seems timely.

And off we go:

Best Podcasts of the Week:

Delicious Tudor Double Header

History After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal interviews Gareth Russell for “Henry VIII’s Murderous Reign”. I’ve been reading fiction and nonfiction about Henry VIII for decades. I didn’t think there were any new viewpoints for me to hear about Hal. Wrong! Gareth is simply brilliant—and I am counting the days until his biography of James VI/I, The Six Loves of James I, is published in the U.S.

plus…

A Not Just the Tudors panel gives us “Henry VIII on Screen: The Historians’ Verdict”. Professor Suzannah Lipscomb put together a fantastic group. It’s not just the expected drumroll of who plays the tyrant best. After listening to this, I’m rethinking landmark portrayals by Charles Laughton and Richard Burton. And I’m grateful for a nuanced analysis of Damien Lewis in Wolf Hall and The Mirror and the Light. He’s an amazing actor (Nicholas Brody! Bobby Axelrod!), but Lewis’s Henry VIII misses for me. I think it’s because Hilary Mantel turned Thomas Cromwell from a cold, ruthless murdering monster into a kitten-cuddling top executive who’s catnip to the ladies. That throws everything and everybody out of whack.

American Horror Done Right

I’ve listened to just about every episode of The Secret Life of Books. It’s one of my never-miss podcasts about literature. Still, they outdid themselves with a Halloween-timed three-part series on American horror lit that delved into novels that I’ve read multiple times: Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, and Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. Talk about genius selections. Co-hosts Sophie Gee and Jonty Claypole place each novel (and film/TV adaptation) in the context of 1950s to 1970s’ social turmoil. I am just sad they only did three episodes…

Hall of Fame Mention:

Another podcast pair I never miss is Faculty of Horror’s Andrea Subissati and Alexandra West. They are Canadian journalists and occasional academics (btw, the Jays were robbed!) who are screamingly funny while cutting through the myth, ad copy, and blather to find what’s most valuable about horror cinema. Case in point: As the Conjuring Universe spreads faster than The Blob, Andrea and Alexandra execute an unforgettable takedown of Ed and Lorraine Warren in “Missionary Position.”

YouTube Favorites

Mythbusting The Thing

I think everybody needs to bookmark “Why the Book Wins.” Laura is so damn entertaining while being fair in her judgments and down-to-earth. I discovered her after watching Elin Hildebrand’s “The Perfect Couple” on Netflix and checking out Laura’s smart comparison of book vs series. Recently, she did strong episodes on The Manchurian Candidate and To Die For. But it was her comparisons of The Thing that made me laugh.

I’m a core fan of the 1982 John Carpenter film, but I fear the whole thing has become somewhat canonized.

Laura rightly points out that while the Carpenter film is excellent, both the 1951 and 2011 movies are bad, and the novella, on which all of this is based, is written poorly. It was John W. Campbell who wrote “Who Goes There?” in 1938. This could be a case of someone coming up with a highly original idea—an alien visitor that can assume the appearance, personality, and memories of a living organism it devours—that is not always executed well. Nonetheless, Campbell struck a chord in pop culture that continues to ring.

The Mobster Explains It All

I used to never miss Michael Franzese’s YouTube shows, but after a while, I felt the material that the onetime caporegime in the Colombo crime family had to work with was wearing thin. Enough with the wine label. But boy, is he back! The recent gambling arrests, which exposed big problems in the NBA, inspired Franzese to post a devastating episode: “Ex Mobster Breaks Down Gambling Scandal.” In short, legalizing sports gambling made this scandal highly predictable. In two weeks, Franseze garnered 1.3 million views on the episode, and he’s being booked all over YouTube and TV.

By the way, I edited a fascinating article on private poker while I was executive editor of DuJour. “American Hustle” was written by the late Michael Connelly, a gruff and kind cop-turned-journalist I loved working with, who attended a couple of private games in L.A. to report on the article. We were way ahead of the news!

Books I’m Racing Through

Shiny New Novel

The wait on Libby was waaaay too long for the new Ann Cleeves’ novel, The Killing Stones, so I bit the bullet and bought it at full price. I don’t regret it. Jimmy Perez is reclaimed from the original TV mystery series. Douglas Henshall (now departed from “Shetland”) was mesmerizing, but he and the writers took the character pretty far from her original conception. Cleeves’ solution: Send Jimmy to the Orkney Islands with a new wife, a woman who’s his superior in the police. The novel’s crime was tantalizing; I couldn’t go to sleep until I finished. I don’t know how Ann Cleeves maintains this high quality, book after book.

Well-Done Collection

I was thrilled to hear that Scribner has compiled a new collection of Daphne du Maurier's short fiction, accompanied by a lengthy, eloquent introduction by Stephen King. Not only are these stories so enthralling that two were made into successful films—Don’t Look Now and The Birds—but Daphne’s short fiction has clues to her obsessions in life. I reviewed the collection for my group blog Miss Demeanors.

HistFic Advance Reads

• I downloaded Paulette Kennedy’s The Two Lives of Lillian Carmichael on Netgalley. It’s set in South Carolina, 1853. Lillian Carmichael, privileged daughter of a disgraced Charleston family, is due to be hanged for the murder of her sister when fate gives her a second chance at life. I’ve plunged in, and these are Southern Gothic vibes to kill for. The novel comes out in March 2026.

• I finished Deborah Swift’s The Cameo Keeper, set in 1644 Rome. What a fascinating time. A new pope has been elected, but he comes into power with a sister-in-law everybody fears. The lives of the novel’s main characters—an astrologist, a physician, and a poisoner/herbalist—are all thrown into crisis by Rome’s turmoil. The novel comes out on Nov. 11th.

Going Down the Rabbit Hole

My first takeaway on news about the man formerly known as Prince Andrew, Duke of York, was: He’s hit rock bottom. After reading a whole lot on this—and watching incisive episodes of Palace Confidential on YouTube—I began to wonder just how large the bomb radius is for Andrew Windsor-Mountbatten.

I thought Andrew Lownie’s book, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, was fearless, but when, in interviews to push the book, Lownie said he thought Jeffrey Epstein was murdered, it gave me pause. Why would anyone murder Epstein and leave Ghislaine Maxwell alive? She knew everything he did about planes, islands, and grotesque massages. (And as the former deputy editor of The Crime Report, put out by John Jay College, I can tell you that the city’s prisons and jails are a real mess. It wouldn’t be that hard for a determined Epstein to kill himself at the MCC.) If Lownie is spouting this theory, it calls his journalistic rigor into question. Less urgent question: Why did Lownie lose his US publisher and put the book out himself on Kindle Unlimited in the U.S.?

I’ve found that the most provocative points of view on the royal family exist at the opposite ends of the spectrum. “Abolish the Monarchy,” by Will Lloyd, published in the New Statesman, is so well argued that it made me wonder about the future of The Firm, and I’m someone who has set the alarm to 4 am to catch every royal wedding and coronation. But I also found myself pondering Andrew’s “shipwrecked” existence with a little more historical perspective after watching David Starkey on YouTube.

It Doesn’t Work for Me

I gave Ryan Murphy’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story a shot on Netflix and found it muddled and sleazy. But the opinion I found most compelling on the series was that of Osgood Perkins, the director and son of Anthony Perkins. His father, whose iconic Psycho character, Norman Bates, was partially based on Gein, is depicted briefly in one of the Monster episodes, struggling with his homosexuality. His son isn’t happy about this. He said in an interview that series like Monster are “increasingly devoid of context,” while going on to say that “the Netflix-ization of real pain [i.e., the authentic human experiences wrought by ‘actual events’] is playing for the wrong team.”

Here’s the thing: I’ve seen two of Osgood’s films, The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Longlegs. They are dark, twisted, and marked by harrowing violence. I venture to suggest that Osgood Perkins is trying to work through some personal feelings about violence and trauma through his work, but the difference is that he has no “real” people played by actors in his movies. Should the documented pain of human beings, even if they are dead, be off-limits to Ryan Murphy? Perhaps—but that’s a slippery slope. In the meantime, Ryan, in view of not just this but All’s Fair, please make better television. I hear that Libby Borden might be on deck, and I would like to see the ax-wielder succeed…so to speak.

My Book Life

Publishing expert Jane Friedman says authors selling their books directly is a growing trend—or, as Jane puts it, “winning the long game”—and I’ve been doing exactly that as part of the Once Upon a Gothic project. It’s a Kickstarter exclusive that closed to funders on November 1st, after making our initial target—and then some. (The books will be sold through Muse following the Kickstarter.) The Historical Novel Review’s November issue covered our books in a two-page article headlined “Four Authors Turning Publishing on Its Head.”

This is terribly encouraging :)

Last year, Muse’s Kris Waldherr asked me if I wanted to write a “retelling” of a Gothic classic, and I suggested Northanger Abbey. I wrote a sequel to the Jane Austen classic, taking the story of Catherine Morland 22 years forward. One of the most exciting aspects of Once Upon a Gothic is the book design. Kris Waldherr was able to work with a printer to produce exquisite hardcover and softcover books!

Anniversary of a Jack the Ripper Tragedy

On November 9th, 1888, the last of the assumed victims of Jack the Ripper, the “canonical five,” was found murdered. I wrote a blog post about the tragic Mary Jane Kelly and tried to set the record straight on some of the myths about the Ripper:

The Story of Mary Jane Kelly

A mournful funeral procession made its way to St. Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery in Leytonstone on Nov. 19th, 1888. Thousands lined the streets to say farewell to the woman in the coffin, some of them weeping.

“God forgive her,” some called out as the procession lumbered past.

Forgive her for what?

The tragedy began the morning of Nov. 9th, ten days before. James Whitehead, a 54-year-old merchant who’d made a successful second career in politics, was the star of the Lord Mayor’s Show, a London tradition that was always held on this date.

As the city’s new mayor, Whitehead, a champion of reform, had desired a more stately event than the circus-like Mayor’s parade, famous since the 16th century. But, heedless of Whitehead’s embarrassment, crowds gathered along the Gresham Street to Guildhall route, with many police called upon to patrol and control.

It was perhaps a welcome distraction from the horror.

For the past six months, London had been transfixed and terrorized by the murders of a series of women in the Whitechapel District of the East End. The last of the horrific slayings — dubbed the “Double Event” as two prostitutes, Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes, had their throats cut within two hours of each other — was on Sunday, September 30th.

The stereotypical image of Jack the Ripper. In reality, to blend in on Dorset Street and the rest of Spitalfields, the murderer would have had to appear much less posh

Although the police had interviewed at least 2,000 people, they had not zeroed in on the man responsible, the same one who may or may not have written taunting letters to the newspapers signed “Jack the Ripper.” There was some hope that the killing spree was over, since more than a month had passed. The Lord Mayor’s Show was an occasion to set aside fear and celebrate.

One person not hurrying to the parade was Jack McCarthy, landlord of many properties in Whitechapel occupied by the destitute, ranging from the respectable working poor to thieves, gamblers, hopeless alcoholics, and “Unfortunates,” the Victorian euphemism for prostitutes. As always, McCarthy had money on his mind. Around 10:30 am, McCarthy told his assistant, Thomas Bowyer, to try to collect the rent in arrears at №13 Miller’s Court, a ground-floor room on a narrow 20-foot-long cul-de-sac of Dorset Street.

Even within Spitalfields, an overcrowded East End parish infamous for its poverty, crime, and filth, Dorset Street was in a class all its own. Part of the “wicked quarter mile,” it was a 130-yard-long street almost entirely occupied by common lodging houses and pubs. In 1901, the Daily Mail, under the headline “The Worst Street in London,” would publish an article saying, “…The lodging houses of Dorset Street and of the district around are the head centers of the shifting criminal population of London… the common thief, the pickpocket, the area meak, the man who robs with violence, the unconvicted murderer…”

As grim as these lodgings were, the alternative — “sleeping rough” — was worse. Many of the poor struggled daily to pay for their “doss house” bed. The September 8th victim of Jack the Ripper, 47-year-old Annie Chapman, was murdered while trying to earn enough money on the streets to pay the nightly charge at her common lodging house at 35 Dorset Street…

To read the rest of the article, click here.