From Evelyn Hugo to NASA: Author Taylor Jenkins Reid reaches for the stars

The Advertiser

2 days ago

Taylor Jenkins Reid recalls a moment writing her new novel, Atmosphere: A Love Story, set against NASA's robust 1980s shuttle program, where she felt stuck. She went, where she often goes, to her husband to talk it through.
"I said, 'I can't write this book. I don't know enough about the space shuttle. I don't know what happens when the payload bay doors won't shut and you have to get back within a certain amount of revs, but they can't land at White Sands. They have to land at Cape Kennedy.' And he's like, 'Just listen to yourself. You know so much more than you knew a couple months ago. Keep doing what you're doing.'"
Atmosphere follows astronomer Joan Goodwin, who is selected to join NASA's astronaut program. She and fellow trainees become like family and achieve their dream of going to space - until tragedy strikes.
The story unfolds in two timelines: One when Joan first joins the NASA program and the other in December 1984 when a mission goes terribly wrong. The duo behind Captain Marvel, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, are adapting the book into a film with a cinema release in mind.
Reid knew that she had to do more than just her average six to eight weeks of research. Research and rabbit holes, by the way, are Reid's jam. She's written blockbuster novels set in the golden age of Hollywood in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, the 1970s rock scene in Daisy Jones & the Six, 1980s surf culture in Malibu Rising and professional tennis in Carrie Soto is Back. With Atmosphere, though, it took extra time, reading and understanding.
"It feels like a fever dream now when I think about it," Reid said. "It was a very intense period of time. "
For this endeavor, she needed assistance: "I had to reach out to people, complete strangers that I did not know and say, 'Will you please help me?'" She was surprised at how many people said yes. One of the most important voices was Paul Dye, NASA's longest-serving flight director.
"He spent hours of time with me," Reid said. "He helped me figure out how to cause a lot of mayhem on the space shuttle. He helped figure out exactly how the process of the connection between mission control and the space shuttle work. The book doesn't exist if he hadn't done that."
Question: How has writing Atmosphere changed you?
REID: I'm really into astronomy. Last Thanksgiving my family took a road trip to the Grand Canyon. I routed us through Scottsdale, Arizona, because I wanted to go to a dark sky park. Because of light pollution, we can only see the brightest stars when we go out and look at the night sky in a major city. Whereas when you go to a dark sky park there is very limited man-made light. So you can see more stars. We got there and it was cloudy. I was beside myself. The next night we got to the Grand Canyon and all the clouds had disappeared and you could see everything. I stood there for hours. I was teary-eyed. I can't emphasise enough: If anyone has any inclination to just go outside and look up at the night sky, it's so rewarding.
Q: Last year you left social media. Where are you at with it now?
REID: I didn't realise how much social media was creating so many messages in my head of, you're not good enough. You should be better. You should work harder. You should have a prettier home. You should make a better dinner. And when I stopped going on it, very quickly I started to hear my own voice clearer. It was so much easier to be in touch with what I thought, how I felt, what I valued. I was more in touch with myself but also I'm going out into the world and I'm looking up at the sky and I am seeing where I am in relation to everything around me and I starting to understand how small my life is compared to the scale of the universe.
Q: Serena Williams is executive producing Carrie Soto for a series at Netflix. Did you meet her?
REID: Yes. It's the only time I've been starstruck. I was in my bones, nervous. I had to talk to myself like, "Taylor, slow down your heart rate." The admiration I have for her as an athlete but also as a human is immense. The idea that I might have written something that she felt captured anything worth her time, is a great honor. And the fact that she's coming on board to help us make it the most authentic story we possibly can, I'm thrilled. It's one thing for me to pretend I know what it's like to be standing at Flushing Meadows and win the US Open. Serena knows. She's done it multiple times. And so as we render that world, I think it is going to be really, really special because we have Serena and her team to help us.
Q: Now for your favorite question. What's up with the Evelyn Hugo movie?
REID: There's not much that I am allowed to say but a lot of times I think people mistake me not saying anything as a lack of interest or focus and that's not the case. Everyone is working incredibly hard to get this movie made and everyone knows that there is a lot of pressure to get it exactly right. We're all hard at work. We're taking it very seriously and I give Netflix so much credit because they have such an immense respect for the readership of that book. They want to make them happy.
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Taylor Jenkins Reid recalls a moment writing her new novel, Atmosphere: A Love Story, set against NASA's robust 1980s shuttle program, where she felt stuck. She went, where she often goes, to her husband to talk it through.
"I said, 'I can't write this book. I don't know enough about the space shuttle. I don't know what happens when the payload bay doors won't shut and you have to get back within a certain amount of revs, but they can't land at White Sands. They have to land at Cape Kennedy.' And he's like, 'Just listen to yourself. You know so much more than you knew a couple months ago. Keep doing what you're doing.'"
Atmosphere follows astronomer Joan Goodwin, who is selected to join NASA's astronaut program. She and fellow trainees become like family and achieve their dream of going to space - until tragedy strikes.
The story unfolds in two timelines: One when Joan first joins the NASA program and the other in December 1984 when a mission goes terribly wrong. The duo behind Captain Marvel, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, are adapting the book into a film with a cinema release in mind.
Reid knew that she had to do more than just her average six to eight weeks of research. Research and rabbit holes, by the way, are Reid's jam. She's written blockbuster novels set in the golden age of Hollywood in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, the 1970s rock scene in Daisy Jones & the Six, 1980s surf culture in Malibu Rising and professional tennis in Carrie Soto is Back. With Atmosphere, though, it took extra time, reading and understanding.
"It feels like a fever dream now when I think about it," Reid said. "It was a very intense period of time. "
For this endeavor, she needed assistance: "I had to reach out to people, complete strangers that I did not know and say, 'Will you please help me?'" She was surprised at how many people said yes. One of the most important voices was Paul Dye, NASA's longest-serving flight director.
"He spent hours of time with me," Reid said. "He helped me figure out how to cause a lot of mayhem on the space shuttle. He helped figure out exactly how the process of the connection between mission control and the space shuttle work. The book doesn't exist if he hadn't done that."
Question: How has writing Atmosphere changed you?
REID: I'm really into astronomy. Last Thanksgiving my family took a road trip to the Grand Canyon. I routed us through Scottsdale, Arizona, because I wanted to go to a dark sky park. Because of light pollution, we can only see the brightest stars when we go out and look at the night sky in a major city. Whereas when you go to a dark sky park there is very limited man-made light. So you can see more stars. We got there and it was cloudy. I was beside myself. The next night we got to the Grand Canyon and all the clouds had disappeared and you could see everything. I stood there for hours. I was teary-eyed. I can't emphasise enough: If anyone has any inclination to just go outside and look up at the night sky, it's so rewarding.
Q: Last year you left social media. Where are you at with it now?
REID: I didn't realise how much social media was creating so many messages in my head of, you're not good enough. You should be better. You should work harder. You should have a prettier home. You should make a better dinner. And when I stopped going on it, very quickly I started to hear my own voice clearer. It was so much easier to be in touch with what I thought, how I felt, what I valued. I was more in touch with myself but also I'm going out into the world and I'm looking up at the sky and I am seeing where I am in relation to everything around me and I starting to understand how small my life is compared to the scale of the universe.
Q: Serena Williams is executive producing Carrie Soto for a series at Netflix. Did you meet her?
REID: Yes. It's the only time I've been starstruck. I was in my bones, nervous. I had to talk to myself like, "Taylor, slow down your heart rate." The admiration I have for her as an athlete but also as a human is immense. The idea that I might have written something that she felt captured anything worth her time, is a great honor. And the fact that she's coming on board to help us make it the most authentic story we possibly can, I'm thrilled. It's one thing for me to pretend I know what it's like to be standing at Flushing Meadows and win the US Open. Serena knows. She's done it multiple times. And so as we render that world, I think it is going to be really, really special because we have Serena and her team to help us.
Q: Now for your favorite question. What's up with the Evelyn Hugo movie?
REID: There's not much that I am allowed to say but a lot of times I think people mistake me not saying anything as a lack of interest or focus and that's not the case. Everyone is working incredibly hard to get this movie made and everyone knows that there is a lot of pressure to get it exactly right. We're all hard at work. We're taking it very seriously and I give Netflix so much credit because they have such an immense respect for the readership of that book. They want to make them happy.
AP/AAP
Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark the page so you can find our latest books content with ease.
Taylor Jenkins Reid recalls a moment writing her new novel, Atmosphere: A Love Story, set against NASA's robust 1980s shuttle program, where she felt stuck. She went, where she often goes, to her husband to talk it through.
"I said, 'I can't write this book. I don't know enough about the space shuttle. I don't know what happens when the payload bay doors won't shut and you have to get back within a certain amount of revs, but they can't land at White Sands. They have to land at Cape Kennedy.' And he's like, 'Just listen to yourself. You know so much more than you knew a couple months ago. Keep doing what you're doing.'"
Atmosphere follows astronomer Joan Goodwin, who is selected to join NASA's astronaut program. She and fellow trainees become like family and achieve their dream of going to space - until tragedy strikes.
The story unfolds in two timelines: One when Joan first joins the NASA program and the other in December 1984 when a mission goes terribly wrong. The duo behind Captain Marvel, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, are adapting the book into a film with a cinema release in mind.
Reid knew that she had to do more than just her average six to eight weeks of research. Research and rabbit holes, by the way, are Reid's jam. She's written blockbuster novels set in the golden age of Hollywood in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, the 1970s rock scene in Daisy Jones & the Six, 1980s surf culture in Malibu Rising and professional tennis in Carrie Soto is Back. With Atmosphere, though, it took extra time, reading and understanding.
"It feels like a fever dream now when I think about it," Reid said. "It was a very intense period of time. "
For this endeavor, she needed assistance: "I had to reach out to people, complete strangers that I did not know and say, 'Will you please help me?'" She was surprised at how many people said yes. One of the most important voices was Paul Dye, NASA's longest-serving flight director.
"He spent hours of time with me," Reid said. "He helped me figure out how to cause a lot of mayhem on the space shuttle. He helped figure out exactly how the process of the connection between mission control and the space shuttle work. The book doesn't exist if he hadn't done that."
Question: How has writing Atmosphere changed you?
REID: I'm really into astronomy. Last Thanksgiving my family took a road trip to the Grand Canyon. I routed us through Scottsdale, Arizona, because I wanted to go to a dark sky park. Because of light pollution, we can only see the brightest stars when we go out and look at the night sky in a major city. Whereas when you go to a dark sky park there is very limited man-made light. So you can see more stars. We got there and it was cloudy. I was beside myself. The next night we got to the Grand Canyon and all the clouds had disappeared and you could see everything. I stood there for hours. I was teary-eyed. I can't emphasise enough: If anyone has any inclination to just go outside and look up at the night sky, it's so rewarding.
Q: Last year you left social media. Where are you at with it now?
REID: I didn't realise how much social media was creating so many messages in my head of, you're not good enough. You should be better. You should work harder. You should have a prettier home. You should make a better dinner. And when I stopped going on it, very quickly I started to hear my own voice clearer. It was so much easier to be in touch with what I thought, how I felt, what I valued. I was more in touch with myself but also I'm going out into the world and I'm looking up at the sky and I am seeing where I am in relation to everything around me and I starting to understand how small my life is compared to the scale of the universe.
Q: Serena Williams is executive producing Carrie Soto for a series at Netflix. Did you meet her?
REID: Yes. It's the only time I've been starstruck. I was in my bones, nervous. I had to talk to myself like, "Taylor, slow down your heart rate." The admiration I have for her as an athlete but also as a human is immense. The idea that I might have written something that she felt captured anything worth her time, is a great honor. And the fact that she's coming on board to help us make it the most authentic story we possibly can, I'm thrilled. It's one thing for me to pretend I know what it's like to be standing at Flushing Meadows and win the US Open. Serena knows. She's done it multiple times. And so as we render that world, I think it is going to be really, really special because we have Serena and her team to help us.
Q: Now for your favorite question. What's up with the Evelyn Hugo movie?
REID: There's not much that I am allowed to say but a lot of times I think people mistake me not saying anything as a lack of interest or focus and that's not the case. Everyone is working incredibly hard to get this movie made and everyone knows that there is a lot of pressure to get it exactly right. We're all hard at work. We're taking it very seriously and I give Netflix so much credit because they have such an immense respect for the readership of that book. They want to make them happy.
AP/AAP
Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark the page so you can find our latest books content with ease.
Taylor Jenkins Reid recalls a moment writing her new novel, Atmosphere: A Love Story, set against NASA's robust 1980s shuttle program, where she felt stuck. She went, where she often goes, to her husband to talk it through.
"I said, 'I can't write this book. I don't know enough about the space shuttle. I don't know what happens when the payload bay doors won't shut and you have to get back within a certain amount of revs, but they can't land at White Sands. They have to land at Cape Kennedy.' And he's like, 'Just listen to yourself. You know so much more than you knew a couple months ago. Keep doing what you're doing.'"
Atmosphere follows astronomer Joan Goodwin, who is selected to join NASA's astronaut program. She and fellow trainees become like family and achieve their dream of going to space - until tragedy strikes.
The story unfolds in two timelines: One when Joan first joins the NASA program and the other in December 1984 when a mission goes terribly wrong. The duo behind Captain Marvel, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, are adapting the book into a film with a cinema release in mind.
Reid knew that she had to do more than just her average six to eight weeks of research. Research and rabbit holes, by the way, are Reid's jam. She's written blockbuster novels set in the golden age of Hollywood in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, the 1970s rock scene in Daisy Jones & the Six, 1980s surf culture in Malibu Rising and professional tennis in Carrie Soto is Back. With Atmosphere, though, it took extra time, reading and understanding.
"It feels like a fever dream now when I think about it," Reid said. "It was a very intense period of time. "
For this endeavor, she needed assistance: "I had to reach out to people, complete strangers that I did not know and say, 'Will you please help me?'" She was surprised at how many people said yes. One of the most important voices was Paul Dye, NASA's longest-serving flight director.
"He spent hours of time with me," Reid said. "He helped me figure out how to cause a lot of mayhem on the space shuttle. He helped figure out exactly how the process of the connection between mission control and the space shuttle work. The book doesn't exist if he hadn't done that."
Question: How has writing Atmosphere changed you?
REID: I'm really into astronomy. Last Thanksgiving my family took a road trip to the Grand Canyon. I routed us through Scottsdale, Arizona, because I wanted to go to a dark sky park. Because of light pollution, we can only see the brightest stars when we go out and look at the night sky in a major city. Whereas when you go to a dark sky park there is very limited man-made light. So you can see more stars. We got there and it was cloudy. I was beside myself. The next night we got to the Grand Canyon and all the clouds had disappeared and you could see everything. I stood there for hours. I was teary-eyed. I can't emphasise enough: If anyone has any inclination to just go outside and look up at the night sky, it's so rewarding.
Q: Last year you left social media. Where are you at with it now?
REID: I didn't realise how much social media was creating so many messages in my head of, you're not good enough. You should be better. You should work harder. You should have a prettier home. You should make a better dinner. And when I stopped going on it, very quickly I started to hear my own voice clearer. It was so much easier to be in touch with what I thought, how I felt, what I valued. I was more in touch with myself but also I'm going out into the world and I'm looking up at the sky and I am seeing where I am in relation to everything around me and I starting to understand how small my life is compared to the scale of the universe.
Q: Serena Williams is executive producing Carrie Soto for a series at Netflix. Did you meet her?
REID: Yes. It's the only time I've been starstruck. I was in my bones, nervous. I had to talk to myself like, "Taylor, slow down your heart rate." The admiration I have for her as an athlete but also as a human is immense. The idea that I might have written something that she felt captured anything worth her time, is a great honor. And the fact that she's coming on board to help us make it the most authentic story we possibly can, I'm thrilled. It's one thing for me to pretend I know what it's like to be standing at Flushing Meadows and win the US Open. Serena knows. She's done it multiple times. And so as we render that world, I think it is going to be really, really special because we have Serena and her team to help us.
Q: Now for your favorite question. What's up with the Evelyn Hugo movie?
REID: There's not much that I am allowed to say but a lot of times I think people mistake me not saying anything as a lack of interest or focus and that's not the case. Everyone is working incredibly hard to get this movie made and everyone knows that there is a lot of pressure to get it exactly right. We're all hard at work. We're taking it very seriously and I give Netflix so much credit because they have such an immense respect for the readership of that book. They want to make them happy.
AP/AAP
Love books? Us too! Looking for more reads and recommendations? Browse our books page and bookmark the page so you can find our latest books content with ease.