FESTIVALS, CYBERATTACKS, AND ALL THINGS GOLDEN
Jul 30, 2026
LIFE OF A BOOKMAN
Bookman: 1. a person who has a love of books and especially of reading. 2. a person who is involved in the writing, publishing, or selling of books. Oh, hi that’s me!!
Oh, the hope: I’m not sure what I love more, the story behind the novel, THEO OF GOLDEN, or the story of the novel, THEO OF GOLDEN. Typically when a book has a ton of hype, I lean away from it, but with Theo, I went straight to the bookstore. This is a novel about an 86-year-old man who returns coffee shop portraits to the person whose portrait was taken. I know, it doesn’t sound like riveting stuff, but it’s so sweet. I’m about halfway through, and the book has made me teary multiple times, because it’s hopeful and loving and soft…but there’s enough unanswered questions that I keep turning the page. If you need a gentle read that feels like a porch swing and an iced tea on a late spring day, this is the book.
What I've been writing: I’ve been writing on the internet, weekly, in this newsletter, for 14 years. And before that, I had the longest running column at my college newspaper (“The Real McCoy”, bc obviously). For most of those years, this newsletter was typically something on my heart – personal, preachy, reflective, random – but it read like a long essay, versus a curated email. What I realized is that I both love this curation style so much, AND, I miss those longer-form musings. So, I’m getting back to that over on Substack (a newsletter platform), and if you’d like to join me there, please do (because no, I have no auto-imported the tens of thousands of you from my personal website). If you dig either of these, hit subscribe:
• The Heartbreak We Don’t Talk About Enough (send this to an artist)
• What 10 Years of Ghostwriting for Famous Women Taught me About Success (celebrities, they’re just like us)
WOMEN’S STUDIES
What gets passed down becomes our history.
What we’ve normalized, when it comes to plastic surgery, is so f*cking wild to me, and Jia Tolentino wrote a really smart piece about this distorted reality: “As cosmetic procedures become both more invisible and more extreme, our connection to reality is fraying.” She writes about what iphones and the proliferation of celebrity facelifts at young ages have done to our sense of reality. “It’s not hard to understand why so many young people….have gone from buying into the idea of “proactive” Botox to believing that visible aging, in any form, at any age, should be treated as one would treat a disease.” Aging isn’t a disease. Nor is looking like you’re aging. It’s beautiful, as are the people experiencing it, which is all of us.
Woman starts law school at 47, now leads her all-women firm
I’m obsessed with this story, which is more nuanced than “woman decides it’s never too late,” although it is about that, too. Early this morning, I thought about the 26-year-old version of me who launched her own personal brand, threw a party for it, created a book proposal, tested out some workshops, and never looked back. And it made me weepy at how grateful I am for that side of myself, the one that’s just like LFG. I don’t have a lot of “maybe I’ll do X someday” because if I really want to do it someday, that someday might as well be now. This story about Abigail and her journey and her law career are inspiring examples of what it looks like to stay on a path toward what lights you up. It’s a cute read.
How to Fall in Love with a City
Anne Helen Petersen and Lilah Raptopoulos had the most WONDERFUL conversation about falling in love with a city, which was a veil for a long conversation about friendship. I listened to the whole podcast wishing I could have been in the room, because their advice was exactly what I tell people: live near your friends if you can, it makes a city infinitely better (and your life, too). And if you can’t, be in the business of making deep friendships. When I left all my galpals in SF to move to Savannah where I knew no one, friendship was my number #1 priority. And within a year, I’d make lifelong friends that filled my life with so much beauty, and therefor the city. Now that I’m back in SF, the same is true. I waited on finding an apartment until I could find one walking distance from one of my besties. And before I signed the lease, I timed how long it would take, door-to-door. It matters that much!!! This is a great podcast to throw on if you’re building (or questioning) your relationship with where you live.
I’m a big fan of Casey Newtons tech reporting, and this piece looking at what happened when OpenAI’s agent-in-training broke out of its training sandbox and conducted a cyberattack against Hugging Face (if you don’t know what any of these words mean, I salute you. I wish I didn’t) was scary? interesting? worrisome? I’m net negative on our (meaning society’s) plans for the this technology we’re creating, and this was another data point on why.
Ann Friedman Had the Bestsellers, It still wasn’t enough.
omg this article made me feel so seen, as someone who has had multiple successes but also sooooo much rejection on book proposals and books that I can’t get publishers to buy. Ann Friedman and Aminatou Sow wrote Big Friendship, which I adored (and we came very close to getting them on my podcast back in the day!), and yet her bestseller did not help sell her future work. What I loved about this was how honest Ann is about her opinions, her thoughts on the industry, and weirdly, it led to me doing a journaling exercise with & for myself that went something like this:
if you knew that ZERO future splashy validation was coming (think: bestseller lists, press, awards), what would you still spend your time doing?
And it made things weirdly clear for me. I would still be doing this, THIS, right here, with you. The same way I’ve been doing it for the last 14 years…one newsletter…one straight from the mind and heart weekly piece at a time. And I’d still be writing books, because there are stories worth get lost in, even if the splashy deals and the bestselllers never come.
Other stray links: The story behind Theo of Golden book sales is soooo worth a read! I watched Disclosure Day and WTF, Spielberg? He’s lost his edge (but Emily Blunt and Coleman Domingo were magnificent). The reddit discussion on all the filmmaking misses was definitely my favorite part. Finally finished Younger, all 8 seasons, which if you need something watchable is def worth having on in the background.
PASS IT ON
Stories are heirlooms. Here’s one of mine:
What are you doing September 19 & 20? And do you want to come to LA for the world’s biggest festival for women in business?? I’ll be hosting one of the Create & Cultivate stages all weekend, and hosting a roundtable on book publishing, and signing books, and you should definitely come.
When I look at the arc of my career, and my biggest moments, and the lasting friendships and business relationships that made them possible…many of those roads travel all the way back to Create & Cultivate, and its founder (and my dear friend), Jaclyn Johnson. So when I say that this is one of my FAVORITE events, I mean it. And like not because I get paid to be there. I don’t. I pay to travel there. Pay to stay. Which I share to say, it’s really such a vibrant, connective, and insightful place to be…because of the community of women who attend.
Code: MAXIEM20 for special pricing
So if you need some juice in your creative life, your business life, or your networking life, come to LA!! Tickets are here, and you can use code: MAXIEM20 for special pricing. LMK if I’ll see you there!!
Woman on xoxo
