Kate the Hoosier Librarian forwarded me a link that frankly has me dumbfounded.
No, wait, it gets better. According to Kate:
The character, Kendall [Hart, Erika Kane’s daughter], had written the novel, but didn’t plan on having it published. Her friend, Greenlee, found it and submitted it to a friend who worked for a publisher. Six weeks later, the novel is released. (Yeah, the ridiculousness of how quickly and easily this has all happened has been driving me crazy.) When Kendall first spoke with the representative of the publisher she was told that the book was about to go to press, despite the fact that no deal had been negotiated and no contracts had been signed. There was no editing process, the book was published as written.) On today’s episode, Kendall is on her way to Chicago for a book signing.
I was reviewing the timeline and it goes something like this:
Thanksgiving to Christmas: Kendall writes entire novel, her first (were they inspired by NaNoRiMo?)
Around New Years, possibly after: Greenlee finds the manuscript and sends it to publisher friend
Within a few days: book is going to press
Before Valentine’s Day: book is in stores and Kendall is doing an author tour
Man, when’s the RWA session on that publishing path? Who runs it, Montgomery Scott? Because, dude, I am so there.
The 288-page hardcover, issued by Hyperion, is described on Amazon as “[d]ramatic, sexy, and fun, Charm! is a wickedly entertaining roman a clef by All My Children favorite Kendall Hart. Brimming with scandal, romance, backstabbing, and unpredictable twists, it is every bit as shocking and captivating as the character who wrote it.”
Kate asked two very important questions: first, am I planning to read it? No, but I don’t watch AMC or any other soaps so I think a lot of the book would be lost on me. Second, do I know who actually wrote it? Nope, I sure don’t, but am damn curious. Anyone out there know who ghost-wrote Kendall Hart’s dishy novel?
Found this:
It’s a reprint of an article from New York Magazine.
Scroll down a bit, you’ll find some interesting info.
Charmed, the booklike product!
Heh!
Sounds rather a lot like Hidden Passions—the “tell-all” the witch-character Tabitha wrote on Passions.
My BFF owns a copy.
Greenlee?
Oh yeah, there’s this comic strip going now. I don’t remember the name, one of those family things where everyone’s so damn sweet. You’ve got the oldest son who writes his first novel, ships it off to a publisher—not a query, mind you, but the whole ms—and six weeks later, he’s got a contract. No agent, no long submission process of query, chapters, manuscript. Just an unknown author shipping off an unsolicited manuscript to the slush pile—and a contract six weeks later with a book in time for the holidays.
Nice.
I must be doing something wrong.
Donna
Though folks in the soap opera world are boggling at Kendall’s sudden literary prowess, too, it’s more because the timeline is silly rather than because the concept itself is ridiculous. Hidden Passions by Tabitha Lenox is a great example of this being done before, ditto for Robin’s Diary and Patrick’s Journal, which were tied into GH and One Life to Live, respectively.
However, what IS weird that unlike those books, nowhere in Charm! does it list the real author.
More recently, Julia London co-wrote Jonathan’s Story with a Guiding Light writer. Unfortunately, the book was terrible. They couldn’t quite capture the magnetism of Jonathan, a very popular character on the show, and basically gave him the biggest Mary Sue of a lead character to bond with in Aubrey Cross. Zzzzzz.
Don’t forget BAD TWIN, the novel written by passenger GARY TROUP (a play on “purgatory”) on Oceanic 815, from LOST.
Well, when we consider that it takes only a few years for a soap opera baby to grow to an adult, suddenly the time frame for a book publication becomes much more reasonable.
Oh yeah, there’s this comic strip going now. I don’t remember the name, one of those family things where everyone’s so damn sweet.
Donna, that’s For Better or Worse, by Lynn Johnston. I was pretty ticked when she did that too, because as a writer, she should know better and frankly, it seemed very easy way out for a strip that’s actually done a pretty decent job of facing realities (in a comic strippy sort of way). However, when I ranted about it on my blog, one of my responders said she did it that way because she’s more or less winding down the strip and wanted to tie up the majority of the loose ends.
Okay, so I get the artistic license, but it still made me nuts.
No one’s mentioned Felicia Gallant’s novel, _Dreamweaver_, which I liked rather well (somewhat introverted novelist heroine meets up with sexy charming Hollywood screenplay author who’s adapting her book, complete with harrowing backstory and HEA). Looks like it was co-written by the actress (Linda Dano).
Ahhh, Mike Patterson and FBoFW. Otherwise known as FOOB in the world of comic strip snark. Lynn Johnston doesn’t give a rat’s behind but she has lost tons of fans over the way she’s attempted to wrap up the strip. Many complain about the way she gave Mike that book deal.
The ghost writer for the book you’re blogging about is Mike Roy, I believe. This one may actually be unique in that it’s not an attempt at a tie-in to the show?
The whole book written on screen making the leap to the printed page thing has been done and (overdone imo) before.
Hidden Passions
Lorelai’s Secret Diary
The Killing Club
Oakdale Confidential
I knew I stopped watching AMC for a reason. Shame, too. Love the character of Kendall Hart, but this is just stupid. They’ve been stupid for a while now.
Greenlee, by the way, is a family name.
Yes, I remember the Felicia Gallant/Linda Dano novel(s?)! In fact, I think that Another World was possibly the first soap to do this kind of tie-in novel.
I am also a One Life to Live fan and still have my copy of Patrick’s Journal. (Strangely enough, the Patrick of Patrick’s Journal is now Zach on AMC and husband of none other than Kendall Hart!)
I don’t know much about soaps, but I do know that with the writers strike, all the writers have been jonesing for work. This is how they pay the bills, I bet.
Isn’t Meg Cabot doing something like this? One of the characters in her Princess Diaries books writes a novel, and that novel will actually be released (written by MC herself) as a bonus for fans. Or am I mixing MC up with someone else?
he has lost tons of fans over the way she’s attempted to wrap up the strip. Many complain about the way she gave Mike that book deal.
Ruth, I just went back and found my blog rant on the FBoFW thing—it was barely a year ago, that he got his “book deal.” In my world, I was published almost a year to the day after I received my offer and I remember thinking “Damn, that’s fast for publishing.”
What’s interesting about going back and reading that rant, is to look at the responses I received. Everyone had a slightly different threshold of where they were willing to suspend belief, but bottom line was, no one was buying it. Period.
Sounds like it was a work-for-hire job for somebody, probably handled like other media tie-ins.
Oh god, yes, the FOOB storyline provided plenty of rant fodder in the corner of LiveJournal where I hang out, because one of the popular bloggers with a lot of pro sf writers in his commentariat is a despairing FOOB fan.
One of the things that will happen as a result of this storyline is that a lot of “I’m going to write the next Great American Novel” people will get a thoroughly unrealistic view of publishing, then get disheartened when it’s not like that, and buy into the “it’s who you know, not how good you are” line peddled by vanity presses. Ick.
On NUMB3RS, one of the main characters sent in a proposal for a nonfiction match-type book, a publisher called and said that if he’d simplify it for the popular audience, they’d publish it as a self-help book. Like two episodes later, he was doing an booksigning and the thing’s a bestseller. It annoyed me because the show has a rep for doing decent math research. Ooh-kay, so this wasn’t worth researching?
Industry insider: the ghostwriter is Sebastian Stuart.
Mora,
Yes, that’s Meg Cabot. I wonder what character it’s going to be?
Barb, your blog rant pretty much sums up what all the “Mudges” over at joshreads were saying about Mike and his book. I became so disenchanted with the strip when it became obvious that Johnston was setting up Liz to be back with Anthony. By chance, I stumbled on joshreads and found myself amongst a group of people with the same grievances about FOOB. They get into some seriously insane rants over there. I wonder if Jules’ blogger is a Mudge.
Well, when we consider that it takes only a few years for a soap opera baby to grow to an adult, suddenly the time frame for a book publication becomes much more reasonable.
Hee – instead of SORAS, we have SORPS.
And yes one of Meg Cabot’s character’s is releasing a book.
A couple of observations (okay, three):
1) Anyone who watches daytime drama OR reads the funnies in order to figure out what real life is like needs the Clue Bat. This is entertainment, and there will be various shortcuts taken (and conventions observed) to serve that end.
2) Obviously it bugs people who are writers or publishers themselves when their territory gets this treatment. Me, I get bothered by the inaccurate treatment of teachers on various TV shows, in movies and in the funnies sometimes—it isn’t like that, I cry! No one likes it when it’s their little corner of the world that is getting the airbrush, but it happens to us all.
3) This book isn’t about All My Children, but it sounds like the writer has taken some inspiration for story elements from things that Kendall has experienced. I’m intrigued to see how that works out—do we get a good story? Is there some added level of entertainment provided by the whole fictional character as author thing? I think this is an interesting twist. Yeah, it’s a product tie-in, but it also *might* be a good read.
AMC is the one show I have watched from its inception, and I can’t seem to totally give it up, even when it is stupid (and yes, I mean stupid even by soap standards). Jessie and Angie!?! Wow, romance again.
Well, as usual, I’m going to chime in about something I haven’t paid any attention to in 20 years or so: All My Children.
@Lola:
The ghost writer for the book you’re blogging about is Mike Roy, I believe.
Wasn’t Mike Roy the name of a character on AMC? IIRC, he was the detective who was Haley’s uncle or long-lost father or something. I think Erica married him briefly. I have no idea if he’s still on the show. If the AMC folks are saying he’s the ghost writer, it might be just another layer of obfuscation. 🙂
You left out the part where she wrote this while her husband was missing and possibly dead and she was left to care for her 2 children, one of whom had a hearing disability. And in between she slept with her ex-best friend’s (Greenlee, who also happened to be stuck with Kendall’s husband in the same hole) boyfriend out of their shared grief.
I love soap operas.
Sebastian Stewart is claiming to be the author on Amazon. Pull up ‘Charm’ and scroll to the Customer Discussion on the bottom. Someone asks who wrote it and he pipes right up.
No one has rated it on Amazon yet. On the same discussion someone links the characters in the book to characters in the story. (ie Kendall is Avery, Zach is Brad, etc.) I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’m really, really curious about this. I hate marketing gimmicks, but I want to know if the book is worth picking up anyways.
RT
1) Anyone who watches daytime drama OR reads the funnies in order to figure out what real life is like needs the Clue Bat. This is entertainment, and there will be various shortcuts taken (and conventions observed) to serve that end.
SonomaLass, I don’t think anyone (sane, that is) uses daytime drama or the comics to figure out what real life is like, but in the case of FOOB, Johnston had spent her entire career allowing these characters to develop at a very realistic pace, to have very realistic things happen to the characters, so to see her take such drastic shortcuts with this was the comics equivalent of throwing the reader out of the book.
Or jumping the shark.
Oh, and Ruth, I so hear you on the Liz/Anthony thing. Again, very neat and pat and jump the shark.
There’s a whole group of us who have followed the horror of the Liz/GrAnthony storyline purely through the horrified commentary at More Words.. 🙂
Had you asked a few years ago during my back to back maternity leave periods I could have given you the entire HISTORY of AMC. I tried to catch up the other day and the entire Kendall/Greenlee scenario left me totally confused… and maybe a little scared too.
The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer
GrAnthony, hahahahahahaha. We like to call him Waaaaanthony. I’m going to have to check out More Words, Jules. I can always use another place to find FOOB snark 🙂
Barb, you are SO right about her jumping the shark with that story line. It was poorly executed, IMO, and having her end up with Anthony was just like pouring lemon juice into a paper cut.
I read FOOB now purely for the snark factor.
Thank you! I thought I was the only person who absolutely HATED the manipulation of Liz back to the cheating Anthony … who now has a child he needs help rearing so Liz is suddenly good enough for him. Bleah!
The timeline isn’t surprising since pregnancies on AMC last anywhere from 8 weeks to 3 years, and waitresses become millionaires overnight.
Speaking of Felicia Gallant, she always wore a feather boa when she wrote her romances.
Wait, didn’t LOST do the whole fictional-character-writing-book-tie-in thing back in 2005?
Um, I thought I was the only one who screamed at the comics page, “Get an agent! Get an agent!” when Mike took the first offer dangled by the publisher in FBoFW.
Man, I’ve got to get a real life.
Watching it in real time was even more wtf worthy. Not least of which was the realization that this means Kendall can read. You shoulda seen her coaxing Greenlee back from death by offering to take her on the 5 star international book tour. Awesome.
One of the actors on ER was giving doctors advice on how to care for their patients. To give the guy his due, he did demur a couple of times that he knew nothing about being a doctor.
But finally he caved and told us how to do a better job.
I yelled at the TV screen, I am not an actor, but I watch a lot of TV, and I know you could do a better job of acting than you do.
Yep, I also need a life.
As TeddyPig implied, wasn’t the first book written by a TV character THE SECRET DIARY OF LAURA PALMER, from TWIN PEAKS, published 1990 and written by David Lynch’s daughter Jennifer?
Jessica, my friend Jacqui, the grad student in math, says the math on NUMB3RS is pretty bad. I like the show, but then I can’t even balance my checkbook.