It's been 10 years since "Good in Bed" was published and Weiner's ninth book, a novel about the formation of a very modern family, will be out July 12, her name large above the title - "Then Came You" - in recognition that it's her name that sells books. (And she pronounces it, FYI, the way the former congressman from New York only wishes he could.)
Her career looks like many a writer's happy ending.
Yet for months now, Weiner's been out west in the sitcom trenches as the executive producer of an ABC Family series, "State of Georgia," that stars former "Cosby" kid Raven-Symoné and premieres a week from today.
If "Georgia's" is like any of the writers' rooms I've visited, Weiner's new line of work is more frenetic than the one I've imagined her pursuing in the years since she left the Inquirer (where she at one point was my competition on the TV beat) and began writing her books in a neighborhood coffee shop. It's also a job that comes with restrictions that someone used to total control of her characters' universes might chafe at.
Not to mention a killer commute.
For the life of me I can't figure out why she'd want it. But then I don't work as hard as Weiner does. I suspect few people do.
That work includes our interview, which took place over coffee on the Sunday morning of Memorial Day weekend, a time carved out of one of her visits home. (Until earlier this month, her older daughter, Lucy, 8, was still in school in Philadelphia and wasn't as free to travel as her bicoastal sister Phoebe, 3, who's in "nursery school there and in nursery school here," said her mother.)
