NEW RELEASE
Sad Desk Salad - Jessica Grose (2012)
Sad desk salad refers to the working woman's lunch, eaten at her desk while catching up on the latest news and gossip via the internet. Alex Lyons is no different from any other working woman, except she is the one writing the gossip (and she sits on her couch, not at a desk). Alex writes for a popular blog which covers everything from politics to celebrities. When an anonymous video lands in her inbox, detailing the drug dalliances of a would-be Senator's daughter, Alex doesn't hesitate to post it, knowing how huge it will be for both the website and for her career. Once the video is posted, however, she begins to have second thoughts and worries herself into a frenzy about the girl in the video, her own credibility as a writer, and how to get to the bottom of the person writing a hate blog aimed at her for the content of her posts. When her situation eventually takes a toll on her relationship with her boyfriend, Alex decides it's time to slow down and put things back in perspective. Sad Desk Salad is a sharp, funny look at what happens when you put too much stock into what you read on the internet, let your imagination get away from you, and when you lose sight of what's important and real in your life. I'm looking forward to reading more from this debut author. (LEK)
Sad Desk Salad, by former Gawker writer Jessica Grose, is about a blogger who dishes up celebrity dirt and stumbles upon the biggest scoop of the year. The summary says: "Alex Lyons gets paid to be a bitch. As writer for Chick Habit, a website for women and one of the most popular blogs on the internet, she's fulfilling her dream of being a professional writer. Maybe she's not quite championing the women's rights issues she used to write about in college but Alex churns out several posts a day, beginning with hard news at 8am (a meth-addicted former beauty queen, perfect); morning and evening gossip roundups; and especially juicy posts for blog primetime, when women in their offices all over both coasts eat their sad desk salads. So what if it means burrowing into the couch while her boyfriend is at work, compulsively scouring the web from 6am until 6pm to find the next big celebrity scandal, and only moving for five minutes to grab a sad couch salad of her own - the last time she left her computer for more than 10 minutes, Farrah Fawcett died, and she missed the scoop. It's a chick-eat-chick world; and since Chick Habit's parent company has been cracking down about page views, Alex knows her job is at risk. So when an anonymous tipster sends Alex the juiciest scoop of the year - a politico's squeaky-clean Ivy League daughter caught in the act of some very R-rated activity - it's a no-brainer. As she prepares to ignite the next internet feeding frenzy, she hesitates: is she ready to ruin the girl's life? What Alex doesn't anticipate is how the big scoop will send her own life spiraling out of control." Sad Desk Salad is out in October.