Best-selling author turns setbacks and anger into success

Author Jen Lancaster never set out to be a writer after a corporate layoff during the dot-com bubble burst of 2001.

"When I started writing I didn't set out to be a writer, I was just an angry person," she said Thursday on "CBS This Morning."

With no job to follow her associate vice president role, she started a blog, sharing her unemployment frustrations.

"When I marched into the unemployment office with my Prada bag I thought a new job was just around the corner for me and it turns out that it wasn't," she said.

Her honesty and quick wit earned her a massive following and inspired her first book "Bitter is the New Black."

Now, 14 years later, Lancaster is a New York Times bestselling author of eight memoirs and four novels.

"I write for myself, to crack myself up, the fact that anybody else likes it is just a bonus," she said.

Her new novel, "The Best of Enemies," deals with female friendships and rivalries.

Lancaster pits two ex-friends against each other, a mommy blogger and a foreign war correspondent. The former, she said, was inspired by a certain group of social media mavens.

"I see these women, especially women in their 30s, who are working so hard to cultivate these Pinterest-perfect lives that they're not living their lives," she said.

That's something Lancaster admits she experienced herself a few years back. Her book, "Tao of Martha," chronicles her journey to follow every tenant of Martha Stewart for a year.

For the full interview, watch the video above.

To read Lancaster's answers to your questions, visit the "CBS This Morning"Facebook page.