Books I Read in June: Favorite and Least Favorite

July 02, 2025  /  Susannah Breslin

This year, I decided to read only books with pictures. In June, I read three books. (You can find all my short book reviews here.) My favorite was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: Tove Jansson Edition which I called “vibrant and beguiling.” My least favorite was Art Monsters by Lauren Elkin which I did not finish.

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tags / REVIEWS, BOOKS I READ, BOOKS, ART, CHILDREN

Fuck You, Pay Me #23: When to Say Yes and When to Say No

June 28, 2025  /  Susannah Breslin

This is part 23 of Fuck You, Pay Me, an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was June. Here are a few things on my radar.

Just Say No This month I found myself in the midst of negotiating a publishing contract. The money was so-so, but the real issue was the dramatic rights. If you’re not aware, dramatic rights have to do with who has the right to turn the property that you’ve written into a movie, television series, or the like. Statistically, the odds are slim that your written property will be turned into a movie, television series, or the like, but they’re not zero. You’ll see a range of guesstimates about how likely it is that your intellectually property will be optioned, but whatever the number is, it is surely less than 1%. That said, never say never, and these days, when content is everywhere, it’s important that you retain as many rights as you can. Let’s just say Netflix or Scorsese or some producer comes inquiring about turning your words into a movie or TV show or some other sort of project like that. Do you want to be the one who has to say, oh, yes, well, actually I gave that away for a pittance? No, you do not. In fact, when I was a younger writer, dramatic rights were not on the table, or at least not so often. Somewhere around, say, the 2010s, publishers began attempting to make a land grab for these rights, and certain writers, let’s say, millennials, gave them away because they just wanted to be published. Nowadays, every Tom, Dick, and Harry is trying to steal your dramatic rights. But if your project is optioned and turned into a movie or TV show, you may make more money with that than you ever did with the word-based version. So keep your dramatic rights. I ended up passing on their offer. Which is a bummer. For them, mostly.

Get Money Last month, I wrote about how a TV show had reached out to me about using some of my photographs as part of a set that they were creating for the third season of this show, which airs on one of the streaming networks. After some negotiation, we settled on a fee. A friend of mine had advised me that this network was sometimes slow in paying, so I had a clause added to the agreement that payment was due upon receipt. A couple weeks later, I was paid, but by that time the individuals who had worked with me were no longer working on the show. Which is to say, make sure you don’t just get getting paid in writing, make sure you get in writing when you will be paid, or you might end up chasing payment forever.

Be a Star Recently, I’ve gotten into telling stories in public forums. Last month, I read an excerpt from a short story I wrote at a bookstore. Last weekend, I read an essay adapted from my memoir at a basement club that hosts performances. Next week, I’m going to perform a story I wrote based on dating in Los Angeles at a bigger event. Why am I doing this? I’m not really sure. While I’ve been on TV many times, and read my work many times, and been part of an improv group, performing is a scary thing. But I thought it was important to keep pushing myself, trying new things, telling stories in new ways. Besides, this is Los Angeles. You never know who’ll be in the audience, where it might lead, how your story might land.

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tags / FUCK YOU PAY ME, WRITING, MEMOIRS, FICTION, WORK

Apologies, From the Sabines

June 26, 2025  /  Susannah Breslin

This short story was written by me and originally published in Opium Magazine in 2003.

When all the men were gone, that was when the women realized they were sorry. It had been a long time coming, the women saw in hindsight. One by one, the men had left, the woman recalled. The men had their briefcases at their sides, their suitcases on their leashes, their luggage strapped across the widest parts of their shoulders. "Goodbye!" the men had called out to the women. The women should have known. At first, the women had been happy. Now, they had time to shop at strip malls, and get their nails polished in pink or peach, and talk to each other about each other across the freed up phone lines. They had all the time in the world in a world without men. "Hello!" the women screamed out to each other across the deserted city streets. Inside their homes, the women cooked TV dinners for one, and sat down on toilet seats without checking first, and figured out how to use all the remote controls. Eventually, they even got into the White House, and learned how to kill cows for one another, and changed each other's tires by the sides of the roads. A long time after all the men were gone, when the women had settled down into their lives at last, the women sat there like that for one day, and they were content. The next day, though, the women began to fidget, and several of them scratched their heads, and a couple of them yawned. In the darkness of their closets, and the isolation of their cars, and back behind their mildewing shower curtains, the women whispered to themselves, "Those men, they weren't so bad." And the women began to wonder if the men being gone was not such a good thing, after all. Too late, the women decided, it was.

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tags / MUSIC, FICTION, VIDEOS, SHORT STORIES, WOMEN

Daddy-O

June 16, 2025  /  Susannah Breslin

In my Instagram Stories for Father’s Day, I posted a few links to my late father and his work, including his New York Times obituary, my favorite thing he ever wrote, his Rothko biography, Hilton Kramer’s New York Times Book Review review of my father’s Rothko biography, and my father’s Rothko biography research archive at the Getty Research Institute. It’s been almost 30 years since my father died, and I’ll miss him forever.

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tags / DEATH, FAMILY, WRITING, BOOKS, PERSONAL