And the Oh, Nora Zalavanski was one of my very first friends in Los Angeles. I met her through one of my roommates, who I met while working on a TV show for the

BBC in just the very earliest months after I moved to LA from Oklahoma and

then after we'd all been friends for a while,

several years after we first met,

Nora, Rachel, and I, and our other friend, Priyaya started my very first book club a book club that I have talked

about for years I wrote about it in my first book share your stuff Stuff, I'll go first, I wrote about it in the belonging chapter

because that book club really proved so formative to me in several different ways and

Nora was one of those co-founders of that group

and we just spent so much time in our 20s and then early 30s kind of figuring out who we were and who we wanted to be.

And those book club friendships, they have just remained such important relationships in my life.

Nora and I always had a special kinship because we were both writers,

but Nora has always been many steps ahead of me in the publishing game.

And so I've looked to her for advice over the years and was beyond thrilled when she published her first novel several years ago.

In 2012, she published her first novel, Semi-Charmed Life.

We had an awesome book release party in my backyard.

It was so fun to toast in our book club

our friend publishing her book.

And then in 2016, she published,

Will you Won't You Want Me?

And then now, here we are this spring.

Her third novel comes out next week. It's called Competitive Grieving. And if you haven't already

started to see the buzz on this novel, you will soon. There is such great buzz around competitive grieving because this

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