Another Brief Interview with Hallie Cantor

Your debut novel Like This, But Funnier comes out next year. I can only imagine how difficult it is to write a novel but what was fun about the process? 

Thank you for the free promotion (please buy my book next fall, person reading this!). The best part of writing a novel is that you don't have to sell anyone on the idea before you begin, as you do when developing a TV show. There's no pitch document or show bible or meetings where you try to convince people that the thing WOULD be good if they let you make it. Instead, you just make the thing! It's scary but also incredibly freeing.

I still think about your pilot Andrea, Inc. That's one of the best pilots I've ever read. It dealt with -- among other things -- why we buy things and who is making us buy them. Do you think that overall people have gotten better with their relationship to consumerism or worse? I'm sorry, this question kind of got away from me.  

That is extremely kind, thank you. The premise of that pilot was that a startup had invented a way to monitor individuals' brainwaves and sell that data to corporate advertisers. Now it feels like AI can extrapolate so much from our digital behavior that our literal brainwaves would no longer even be an improvement. So...worse, I guess?

Thanksgiving is coming up. What are you thankful for this year and/or what’s your favorite dish?

Pie! (For both questions.)