There are several buildings in Manhattan that are considered the most exclusive and prestigious addresses in New York City. The New York newspapers are constantly covering these buildings, and discussing the rituals and decisions made by the co-op boards in these various buildings—it's a topic we found fascinating. Having grown up in Manhattan, we were particularly interested in how the denizens of co-ops interact with each other, and basically how they don't interact with each other, often not even greeting their neighbors. In some cases, the only interaction neighbors have with one another is on Halloween when their kids come begging for candy. We thought it would be interesting to move throughout the building and focus on several families, describing how different peoples' lives can be, even though they are being led only a few floors apart.

People may recognize a quote here and there, but we swear, the book is fiction! We just started to take notes when we decided to write this book, so any funny anecdotes or lines that we heard over the course of two years was thrown into whatever character seemed appropriate.

We both went to The Spence School in New York and The Taft School, a boarding school in Connecticut. Our parents were friends, and then during and after college we had parallel careers—we both interned at MTV and Jill interned at Harper's Bazaar while Carrie worked there after college. Carrie went on to work at Harper's Bazaar in Russia and then to become editor in chief of Russian Marie Claire while Jill graduated from Yale in three years and worked at Interview Magazine. When we were fed up with magazines we both quit our jobs and wrote our first film Intern, about an exploited and terrorized intern at "Skirt", a fictional fashion magazine. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1999.

We love working in films, and have sold two scripts to Paramount Pictures, as well as adapted a children's book for Nickelodeon Television. However, we were frustrated by how long it takes for Hollywood to actually make a film and we decided to adapt one of our screenplays, The Right Address, into a novel. We figured that it would be a nice way to expand upon our initial idea.

One thing that readers have to understand is that our position on stores differs greatly from some of our characters. For example, Mr. Guffey is very snobby about certain stores—like Prada, which he dismisses as a "hoax" but that is actually one of Carrie's favorite stores. We also have other characters bash certain stores and then prance into them and purchase things. For example, Cordelia says no one would ever buy an engagement ring at Tiffany's because it is for "out of towners," but actually Carrie's ring came from there. Jill shops mostly downtown or in—gasp—Brooklyn, a place the snobby characters in the book would never set foot.

We're currently working on our second novel. The working title is The Junior Committee but that may change. It focuses more on the younger generation—the swans in their twenties—who are starting to take New York by storm. We also have two film projects in the works.