Sizzle Reel

An unputdownable queer rom-com about life and love in Hollywood. For aspiring cinematographer Luna Roth, coming out as bisexual at twenty-four is proving more difficult than she anticipated. Sure, her best friend and fellow queer Romy is thrilled for her--but she has no interest in coming out to her backwards parents, she wouldn''t know how to flirt with a girl if one fell at her feet, and she has no sexual history to build off. Not to mention she really needs to focus her energy on escaping her emotionally-abusive-but-that’s-Hollywood talent manager boss and actually get working under a real director of photography anyway. When she meets twenty-eight-year-old A-list actress Valeria Sullivan around the office, Luna thinks she’s found her solution. She''ll use Valeria''s interest in her cinematography to get a PA job on the set of Valeria''s directorial debut--and if Valeria is as gay as Luna suspects, and she happens to be Luna''s route to losing her virginity, too . . . well, that''s just an added bonus. Enlisting Romy’s help, Luna starts the juggling act of her life--impress Valeria’s DP to get another job after this one, get as close to Valeria as possible, and help Romy with her own career moves. But when Valeria begins to reciprocate romantic interest in Luna, the act begins to crumble--straining her relationship with Romy and leaving her job prospects precarious. Now Luna has to figure out if she can she fulfill her dreams as a filmmaker, keep her best friend, and get the girl. . . or if she’s destined to end up on the cutting room floor.;

Autorentext

CARLYN GREENWALD writes romantic and thrilling page-turners for teens and adults. A film school graduate and former Hollywood lackey, she now works in publishing. She resides in Los Angeles, mourning ArcLight Cinemas and soaking in the sun with her dogs. Find her online on Twitter @CarlynGreenwald and Instagram @carlyn_gee.

Klappentext

An unputdownable queer coming-of-age rom-com about life and love in Hollywood. • "Both an irresistible love story and a riveting exploration of Hollywood dynamics.” —Rachel Lynn Solomon, New York Times bestselling author of The Ex Talk

For aspiring cinematographer Luna Roth, coming out as bisexual at twenty-four is proving more difficult than she anticipated. Sure, her best friend and fellow queer Romy is thrilled for her—but she has no interest in coming out to her backwards parents, she wouldn't know how to flirt with a girl if one fell at her feet, and she has no sexual history to build off. Not to mention she really needs to focus her energy on escaping her emotionally-abusive-but-that’s-Hollywood talent manager boss and actually get working under a real director of photography anyway.

When she meets twenty-eight-year-old A-list actress Valeria Sullivan around the office, Luna thinks she’s found her solution. She'll use Valeria's interest in her cinematography to get a PA job on the set of Valeria's directorial debut—and if Valeria is as gay as Luna suspects, and she happens to be Luna's route to losing her virginity, too . . . well, that's just an added bonus. Enlisting Romy’s help, Luna starts the juggling act of her life—impress Valeria’s DP to get another job after this one, get as close to Valeria as possible, and help Romy with her own career moves.

But when Valeria begins to reciprocate romantic interest in Luna, the act begins to crumble—straining her relationship with Romy and leaving her job prospects precarious. Now Luna has to figure out if she can she fulfill her dreams as a filmmaker, keep her best friend, and get the girl. . . or if she’s destined to end up on the cutting room floor.

Leseprobe
chapter one
**
As I make my hour-­long commute to work, I convince myself that the reason it was mildly difficult to come out to my therapist is because she looks like Rachel Brosnahan. Which, yeah, doesn’t make much sense without context, and who’s to say my brain’s working at seven in the fucking morning as I inch along the slog of Vermont Avenue, longing for the respite of the equally-­as-­red stretch on Wilshire Boulevard? In fact, I can confirm it is not. I’m not even really listening to the Jenny Nicholson podcast I clicked on an hour ago.

Facts: Beverly Hills is seven miles from my apartment. My therapist looks exactly like Rachel Brosnahan. I’ve been officially identifying as bisexual for four days.

Four days, and I’m already a bisexual disaster. Or, rather, I became a bisexual disaster the moment I came out to Julia. Imagine for a moment the bright lighting of a therapist’s office a block from the beach, with sun spilling in from the east because some clown didn’t put the windows in the office facing the beach. We’re doing a P.O.V. shot; Julia’s perfectly centered horizontally but shifted up a little vertically to suggest her slight authority over me, a slight authority we don’t talk about.

I’m bisexual, I say. Camera tight on me, Julia off camera.

That’s great! she replies. When did you figure it out?

I reply with: While watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

We quick cut to Julia’s face and—­

Even running the story through my head, my cheeks still go hot with the memory. I knock my air-­conditioning up a notch. Everything’s fine. Coming out has been fine. The Julia–­Rachel Brosnahan story is the kind of shit my best friends, Romy and Wyatt, will lap up like, well, like stressed-­out Hollywood assistants lap up hard liquor after work. And yes, I can tell them this specific story because they’re the next people I’m going to come out to.

Just as I reach perfect homeostasis from the air-­conditioning against the sizzling heat of Los Angeles in June, I’m tapping my employee card against the reader in the parking garage and locking away my freedom and sanity, along with an emergency change of clothing. I take my daily last longing look at my parked car, wishing I could crawl back to bed. But alas, I’m twenty-­four, nearly two years out of college, and a Working Professional. A true old Gen Z with a let death take me aesthetic.

Slater Management is what Hollywood calls “boutique,” which really just means we don’t have enough clients to take up a whole building. We take up three levels: lobby/café/copy room, literary managers, talent managers. We’re successful enough to have perks like a café but small enough that I know the name of every­one I pass as I walk through the floors.

I drop into my chair at eight fifty a.m., ten minutes before my boss, Alice, will be in. Or expects to be in. She’s never on time. So, at the very least, I’m given a few minutes to reassess the scene. Slater has provided us with quickly declining Macs, headsets, and ancient office phones that don’t even have caller I.D.—­the Let’s Push My Blood Pressure Up to 181/121 Trio. I start my deep breathing and do my standard morning routine: open up the digital Rolodex, click open Alice’s call log, open email, headset on. Alice has a client coming in today. His name’s John, and he’s a director of midbudget films that people know of without knowing his actual name.

“Jesus, Luna, you gotta stop doing coke every Sunday,” Wyatt Rosenthal, one of the two people I’m going to come out to next, says as he plops into his seat beside me.

While the six talent managers have their own offices separated from us by wall-­to-­wall glass, the assistants are all crunched on to one communal pod desk. Great for socializing, bad if you want to cry without f…