“An epistolary novel is as far from optionable as you can imagine,” Elisabeth Robinson says of her debut, The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters. She should know. A former waitress at Indochine, Robinson landed a job with a customer, a United Artists executive, and went on to help produce films like Braveheart for Alan Ladd Jr. in Hollywood, tabling her dreams of becoming a novelist. Then, in 1998, her sister Laurie died of leukemia. “Writing was always how I worked things out,” says Robinson. “My intention was to come to terms with the way she lived and died—which was with the kind of idealism and optimism I never had. The comedy stuff came out of nowhere.” In the letters of alter ego Olivia Hunt, Robinson interweaves her grim family story with gleeful Hollywood satire. She insists she had a far easier time than Olivia in Hollywood. “I had great bosses—but that would be boring.” Now 43 and an Upper East Sider, she no longer frets over box office, though Hunt Sisters should hit big, with plugs from brows of every height (Jonathan Franzen, Glamour). “Maybe if the movie business was in New York, I could have stayed in it,” says Robinson. “But I hate all that sunshine. It really is oppressive.”

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