An Infinite Number of Monkeys

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/06/09/the-big-idea-laura-lekkos/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61005

The value of a good friendship cannot be overstated. But friendships aren’t always smooth sailing, they can be just as challenging as romantic relationship, and just as fulfilling. In today’s Big Idea, author Laura Lekkos takes a deep dive into the beautiful world of female friendships, the very thing that was the base for her newest novel, All the Little Ways.

LAURA LEKKOS:

As a screenwriter, I traffic in big ideas, sometimes insufferably so. The high-concept hook. The four-quadrant crowd-pleaser. The event-driven film that a studio exec can’t say no to. For every writer in Hollywood adding a space element or time travel trope to elevate an idea in the hopes of securing a sale, you will hear another bemoaning the lack of original ideas and quieter, character-driven stories.

It was in the latter headspace that I set out to write my first novel. The big idea was that…it would be small. How edgy! How daring! How subversive!

I wanted to write a novel centered around a deep, meaningful friendship. 

On earth. 

No body swapping. No murders. No vampires in sight.

I have often been struck by the layered quality and impact of my female friendships. The women in my world have inspired me, filled my cup, guided me, and in some instances, quite literally changed the trajectory of my life. Romance often steals the spotlight, for obvious reasons, but the enduring effect of a platonic bond can be equally powerful.

This is the kind of relationship that the main characters, Victoria and Liz, find in each other. As I outlined their story, I worked backwards and found that the beats weren’t dissimilar from a rom com. In order to end up together, in a matter of speaking, they would need a meet cute. Then, a first date gone awry, a second chance, a coming together, a shocking revelation, an estrangement and lastly, a reconciliation. 

While their characters began to find form on the page, I thought about all the friendship moments – both the small and the milestone – that have defined my life. Several years before I decided to take a stab at writing a book – a lifelong dream, given my early and persistent love of reading – I realized another one: becoming a mother. It was everything I imagined and nothing like I expected. It was heady, challenging, invigorating, mind-bending and often, surreal.

My journey was bathed in luck for many reasons. I had close friends who had taken on the mantle of motherhood in the years before me who dished out advice and hand-me-downs. I had friends who were pregnant at the same time who I traded notes with. We breathlessly spoke of our hopes and expectations; the group chat was full of jokes, memes, and recommendations. I had a loving, supportive husband and parents who were overjoyed, nearly to the point of fainting, about becoming grandparents. I have always been close with my mom and as I anticipated this great leap into the unknown, I looked to her as an example in how to mother.

But what if a woman was expecting a child without such a scaffolding? What if she didn’t have a village, a support system, a mom of her own to turn to, or even a friend to confide in and lean on? All the uncertainty of impending motherhood would be exponentially multiplied. She would be adrift and in need of the kind of female connection I have been fortunate to enjoy and have always held so dear.

Both the cast of characters and the story itself had been rattling around in my brain for some time before I put pen to page and while it unfurled without too much difficulty, it was the end of writing that gave me pause. I worried that the conceit wasn’t big enough and was concerned whether the marketplace would have an appetite for my book.  

I toyed with adding more mystery, considered a pirate’s trove of secrets to complicate things, and even wrote in a nefarious sublot before re-centering myself. I deleted the storyline. I stuck with my original vision of a character-driven narrative. I remembered early advice I had received about not trying to write to a marketplace with an ever-changing goalpost but rather, with passion and conviction about a story that spoke to me. Sound wisdom for screenwriters, novelists, or any creatives.

All the Little Ways is an ode to female friendship. It shines a light on the ways we care for each other and show our love, the declarations that are often found not in a grand gesture or a splashy movie moment, but in the little kindnesses that become woven into the fabric of our lives. 

I set out to write a book about a small idea, but along the way, I discovered that it was actually pretty substantial. Because what’s bigger than the transformative power of love?

All The Little Ways: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop

Author’s socials: Website|Instagram|TikTok

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/06/09/the-big-idea-laura-lekkos/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61005

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/06/08/various-sundry-6-8-26/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60979

Hello, it’s Monday, let’s see what’s been going on over the weekend:

Spencer Pratt misses LA Mayoral runoff: I’ve not lived in California for decades now, and even when I did never lived in the city of Los Angeles proper. Nevertheless as a native son of Southern California, I’ve been keeping up with LA’s mayoral race, mostly because people I know were exasperated by the presence of Pratt, a fellow who as I understand it was best known for dating someone more famous than he and then extending that into an indifferent career in the reality TV genre, the sort where he and his spouse at one point announced an impending divorce for the publicity boost. Pratt is a Republican, and so perhaps unsurprisingly his entire platform seems to have been based on “backing the blue” and harassing homeless people.

The California primary election was nearly a week ago, and the vote tallying has been slow and for most of it Pratt was in second place behind the current, somewhat embattled, LA mayor Karen Bass. But as the mail-in votes have been counted over the last week, Pratt slipped into third behind Nithya Raman, and seems likely to stay there. Naturally, this has started the absolutely predictable GOP whining and foot-stomping about “election integrity,” to which the only rational response is, shut the fuck up, you reprehensible children, and take the “L” like grown-ups. They won’t, of course. But one can dream.

Earlier in the campaign Pratt said that if he lost the election he would leave Los Angeles; I understand there may be a GoFundMe to hire him a U-Haul. I will believe that he’s going to leave LA when I see it. He has not other real skills than being a celebrity of a certain low-wattage sort. He needs to be where the work is. And of course, this was all this doomed mayoral run was — an attempt to keep his name in the spotlight a little longer, to keep the work flowing. I hope it does this task… poorly.

Rush comes back: In rather more exciting news from Los Angeles, Rush opened up their new tour there last night, their first in a decade and since drummer/lyricist Neil Peart passed away in 2020. Apparently things went extremely well, with tour drummer Anika Nilles getting her critical flowers for her work on the throne. For me the moment of particular interest is that Aimee Mann (who I am friendly with thanks to our mutual participation on the JoCo Cruise) popped up for a cameo on “Time Stand Still,” which is arguably my own favorite Rush tune:

I have friends who are over the moon that Rush is back on tour, especially since it seemed unlikely, with the passing of Peart, that they would ever do so again; he was (and is) absolutely the beating heart of that band. No one could or did fault the Geddy Lee or Alex Lifeson, the other two members of Rush, for choosing to call it a career. But the way Rush are doing this particular tour, with a drummer with her own considerable skills, not designed to replace Peart but to support his friends as they take a sweet, valedictory lap, seems to be something everyone is getting behind. I hope they have a good tour, and I hope all my friends who love Rush get a chance to see them.

House-sized American flag causes a power failure: Sometimes the real-world metaphors are just a little on the nose, aren’t they? But wait, the metaphor gets even nose-ier: The New York Times reporting on the event seems to suggest the massive, 3,000 square foot flag that cut off power to 40,000 may have been the property of the WWE wrestling organization, based in Stamford, where the outage happened. A preview, possibly, of the event (UFC, not WWE) scheduled for the White House lawn this weekend? We shall see.

I am, for the record, somewhat less outraged than some other people of my political leanings about the MMA event at the White House. I think it’s tacky as fuck, but that’s Trump for you. I don’t support it and am sure it’s going to be corrupt people doing corrupt things, corruptly, but on my list of things to seethe about regarding this administration, it’s low-ish on the list. Other people are taking up my slack, to be sure. I wish them joy in the work.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/06/08/various-sundry-6-8-26/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=60979