Remember that exciting news I was teasing last week? 🤩
I’m thrilled to announce that The Favorites has been optioned by Welle Entertainment and Netflix for development as a feature, and they’ve hired an absolutely stellar screenwriter: Kate Gersten, who also wrote The Last Showgirl starring Pamela Anderson. She’s going to bring the perfect mix of glam and grit to the adaptation, and I can’t wait to see how she translates my hot mess ice dancers to the screen.
This is not the first time my work has been optioned: those of you who’ve been around awhile may recall that The Favorites was once in development as a television series rather than a movie, and They Never Learn was also optioned for TV at one point. It is, however, the first time the project has gotten far enough along to merit an official Deadline announcement — a major item checked off the Author Bucket List for me!
My philosophy about Hollywood projects, and really being a published author in general is: don’t get too attached to any particular outcome, just enjoy the hell out of the process and celebrate every win along the way. So while I hope The Favorites is destined for Netflix stardom, whatever happens, I’m going to relish the experience — and of course, keep all of you posted along the way ❤️
Before I go, a couple other quick news hits from the past week or so:
I recorded an interview with Tali & Lauren of The Prose Pros podcast, in which we discussed my fanfic writing past, how a “business crush” led me to my dream agent, being unapologetically yourself, and much more.
I also contributed some Favorites sales data to an informative and infuriating post on Andrea Bartz’s Get It Write Substack about bestseller lists (spoiler alert: they are not lists of the best sellers).
Sexy Ice Sports Winter continues, and so does my Heated Rivalry-related sales bump! Good Housekeeping UK included The Favourites in their round-up of “8 Steamy Romances to Read if You Loved Heated Rivalry.” I appreciate the shout-out even though my book is a) not a romance and b) not particularly steamy, unless you’re turned on my emotional turmoil (hey, no judgment).
Speaking of emotional turmoil: the World Figure Skating Championships are this week in Prague, and Canadian ice dance team Piper Gilles & Paul Poirier just announced that they’re bringing back one of my favorite programs of all time, their Wuthering Heights free dance. When they premiered this back in the 2023-2024 season, I had finished writing The Favorites but was still wondering who would want to read a Wuthering Heights x ice dance mashup, like do those things even go together?? And then Piper & Paul proved that hell yes they do 🖤
As always, I recommend following The Nice Capades for all your skating competition coverage needs, but I’ll probably share some of my thoughts on the Worlds results in next week’s post, as well as my experience seeing the Ice Dance International tour when it came through the Chicago area recently. (There was a sapphic pas de trois, and I still have not recovered.)
Congratulations on the film news, so so exciting!
Congratulations Layne!!! Also come back anytime :)