#ghostwritten by J (real)
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Strange Fate linkdump: Questing, Empathy and Endgames
Huge long post! Linkdump and many many thoughts that wandered through my mind while going through these links.
Last Lullaby stuff:
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/hachette-signs-new-l-j-smith
About the international licensing of The Last Lullaby in 2013. Strange Fate is the big obvious lost book but it’s not the only one.
https://booknode.com/the_last_lullaby_0705503
French bookseller page about The Last Lullaby, with back cover blurb in English but no cover picture. So whatever happened happened before an artist could be commissioned. The book seems to follow unscarred teen Brionwy rather than scarred child Crispy who we met in the Strange Fate chapter
https://spotlightreport.net/featured/burn-bright-presents-l-j-smith-interview
2013 interview about The Last Lullaby. In this interview Crispy and Brionwy are two different characters, though I’d always had the impression that they were the same person and Brionwy was Crispy’s real name. Maybe just because Brionwy is the name in the title and then it’s Crispy’s story, back in whatever first incarnation I read of it whatever incarnation that was. And it’s poetic nfor the scarred child to have a beautiful name.
So we have the short story Brionwy’s Lullaby about Brionwy in the harem and the Strange Fate chapter about Crispy in the ruins. Two pieces. Less than we have of Strange Fate, but there is a looooot of worldbuilding in Brionwy’s Lullaby. Lots of worldbuilding but no hint of where the story goes next. Do Brionwy and Crispy meet? Is there some connection between them? How does the story end? In the Strange Fate incarnation of the story this future is traded for a happier timeline when characters in our time avert the apocalypse but as a separate story how would it conclude?
Honestly I’m sadder about this book than I am about Strange Fate; I loves me some YA dystopias and the whole dragons and vampires thing is just neat. But this book’s as lost as lost can be.
Recent Stuff:
https://www.reddit.com/r/YAlit/comments/krlvr1/lj_smiths_night_world/
Reddit thread from two months ago. The rabbit hole is real and nobody else seems to have found the bottom.
https://deadline.com/2020/05/greg-berlanti-productions-adapt-the-forbidden-game-novels-lj-smith-as-tv-series-the-vampire-diaries-author-1202944224/
Article about the upcoming Forbidden Game TV series. Forbidden Game is a Simon & Schuster series, not Alloy, so while I’m sure Ms. Smith has no say in how the show will go she will at least get royalties! However much royalties book authors get from TV shows, no idea how much that is.
https://micky.com.au/the-vampire-diaries-writer-reveals-new-fantasy-horror-series-the-forbidden-game/
“LJ Smith has just revealed that its horror trilogy novels...” Um. Not quite.
I looked through half a dozen articles about the Forbidden Game TV series and none of them had anything from Ms. Smith. I knew the chance that this would draw comment from her was only a tiny chance, but it seemed worth looking.
Interviews and Stuff:
https://www.saltlakemagazine.com/qa-the-vampire-diaries-creator-l-j-smith-on-writing-and-losing-the-series/
2012 interview about Vampire Diaries
https://peoplepill.com/people/l-j-smith-1
Just a biography page.
http://theliteraryconnoisseur.blogspot.com/2014/05/an-interview-with-new-york-times.html
2014 interview with a blogger. Ms. Smith does seem to be an absolutely lovely person.
https://areiterowski.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/author-profile-l-j-smith/
2013 Blog post about Ms. Smith, ending with a quite long list of “things she’s currently working on.’ the medical stuff didn’t happen until 2015 though with six projects in progress it’s believeable that she didn’t finish any of them before being felled by illness in 2015.
http://luanatormesdemattos.blogspot.com/2013/11/interview-with-one-and-only-l-j-smith.html
2013 interview with a blogger.
Into the meta: Aubrey Clark and the ghostwritten books
https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/5760167.Aubrey_Clark
Books by Aubrey Clark. Secret Circle and Vampire Diaries. I assumed Aubrey Clark is a woman and the other book listed is by a man with the same name, but Aubrey is traditionally a male name and modernly a female name so who knows. Hardly the first time a dude wrote a series aimed at girls under a female name.
https://www.romance.io/authors/54558f9b87eac323ffb2cc31/aubrey-clark
Bio listing Ms. Clark as a she, and classifying her books as romances. Says she’s been writing for eight years. Just on the VD/SC stuff or did she write before? Alloy hiring an existing writer to ghostwrite and that existing writer using a pen name so her new work wouldn’t be connected with her old work is perfectly possible. I swear I read somewhere that Ms. Clark was Ms. Smith’s editor, or her “person” with Alloy, making her signing on as ghostwriter a bit of a betrayal… but I can’t find my source.
And how much of a betrayal is it really, if Ms. Smith got fired it’s not Ms. Clark’s fault if the series got offered to her, and who could say no to getting to write for a series you know? It’s a job and a chance to be a published author and nobody should be judged for grabbing that candy if offered it.
I wish we could hear what happened from Aubrey Clark’s side, just because the story of What Happened to Strange Fate is a mystery I to figure out… it’s easy for me to forget this mystery isn’t a Nancy Drew video game, it’s people’s real lives. Ms. Clark is not the villain, she’s a writer in a situation we don’t fully understand but she’s just a writer like any writer.
http://debrasbookcafe.blogspot.com/2012/11/book-review-secret-circlethe-divide-by.html
Review of Secret Circle: The Divide
http://bookandbroadway.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-temptation-tsc-6-by-aubrey-clark.html
Review of Secret Circle: The Temptation. The reviewer was not impressed.
http://yepireadbooks.blogspot.com/2013/04/book-32-temptation.html
Another review of The Temptation. This reviewer was a bit more impressed than the last one. I admit I ragequit the ghostwritten books after Ms. Clark started killing off characters, I don’t remember if I even hit book two…
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/The_Vampire_Diaries_(novel_series)
Publishing history of Vampire Diaries
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304058204579495491652398358
2014 “Vampire Diaries Writer Bites Back.” we’ve all read this one...
https://uniquelygeekygirl.com/2013/05/20/1223/
2013 “LJ Smith vs ghostwriter” from a blog called uniquely geeky girl. The next article on the blog is more about Alloy and its practice of hiring ghostwriters.
The Rise and Fall of Kindle Worlds:
https://the-digital-reader.com/2018/05/15/amazon-to-shut-down-kindle-worlds/
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Kindle_Worlds
https://www.thebookloft.com/fanfiction-and-kindle-worlds
https://www.hiddengemsbooks.com/amazon-closes-kindle-worlds/
https://gigaom.com/2014/08/17/amazons-fan-fiction-portal-kindle-worlds-is-a-bust-for-fans-and-for-writers-too/
https://www.wired.com/2013/05/kindle-worlds-fanfic-copyright/
http://www.roxannestclaire.com/barefoot-bay-world-kindle/kindle-worlds-faq/
https://www.bustle.com/articles/36237-amazons-fan-fiction-site-kindle-worlds-is-flopping-but-why
It rose, and it fell. As far as I can tell Alloy is the only publisher to put its works out on Kindle Worlds, I guess because that’s what they were already doing with their hired authors! Other authors seem to have opened their worlds individually and I guess not many of them signed on.
LJ Smith and Kindle Worlds
https://www.theawl.com/2014/02/the-writer-who-beat-the-system-how-one-woman-resurrected-her-sexy-vampire-brothers/
https://www.mhpbooks.com/fired-vampire-diaries-writer-takes-to-kindle-worlds-for-revenge/
http://floor-to-ceiling-books.blogspot.com/2011/02/l-j-smith-fired-from-writing-vampire.html
A blog post with some comments so you can read the state of the fandom at the time.
https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/fandom/vampire-diaries-lj-smith-kindle-fanfiction/
http://leegoldberg.com/tag/alloy-entertainment/
“Read the contract.’ This one is interesting because it’s the only one that isn’t in defense of Ms. Smith. She should indeed read her contracts unless she wants to just be a fanfic writer, which… I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an author going from published to fanfic, but why not?
Also, good question, where was Ms. Smith’s agent? And where is Ms. Smith’s agent these days when someone should maybe be being the Strange Fate Police?
Unrelated: I swear I read an article from Alloy’s perspective about what happened. Maybe it was this one and I thought it was from Alloy when it wasn’t. It is the only article not in support of Ms. Smith that I could find.
https://editingeverything.com/blog/2014/04/25/fanfiction-is-letting-lj-smith-tell-her-vampire-diaries-story/
https://www.tvovermind.com/vampire-diaries-lj-smith-fired-book-series/
https://thegameofnerds.com/2018/03/03/originals-10-facts-about-the-woman-behind-the-vamps/
https://dc.uwm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1952&context=etd
https://www.cbr.com/the-secret-circle-why-the-vampire-diaries-author-l-j-smiths-other-cw-series-failed/
I watched one episode of the Secret Circle series because I loved the books so much, but the CW style is not my jam. But it is interesting to read the pitch for a fewer-character second season.
https://anovelbookblog.com/2014/06/12/leeching-off-the-talent-writing-for-hire-the-dark-side-of-publishing/
About the Secret Circle sequel novels and Alloy
https://www.jeanienefrost.com/2019/02/ghosts-in-the-machine/
Ghostwriting and plagiarism and ethics.
https://www.fanpop.com/clubs/stefan-and-elena/articles/94267/title/lj-smith-fired-from-writing-own-novels
This is the full letter from Ms. Smith about getting fired.
https://teleread.com/thanks-to-kindle-worlds-fired-vampire-diaries-writer-continues-her-own-series-as-fanfic/index.html
http://iswimforoceans.blogspot.com/2011/02/help-lj-smith-vampire-diaries.html
2011 blog post
https://indecisiveturtle.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/assignment-4-ghostwriting-in-the-vampire-diaries-by-l-j-smith/
A long blog post that goes into detail about the writing of some of the books, how to tell Ms. Smith’s style from the ghostwriter’s, sentence length and similes and stuff, all very academic! I’ve retyped a couple pieces of Ms. Smith’s writing and I noticed she handles punctuation-with-quotes differently than I do, making it very weird to retype. This is an interesting one. Someone dived way deep!
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/the-gossip-mill
New Yorker article about Alloy
https://www.publishingcrawl.com/2012/05/29/the-not-so-secret-backdoor-to-publishing/
Article about Alloy and package writing
https://www.vogue.com/article/the-secret-circle-young-adult-witch-fiction
Just an article about the Secret Circle books and how they’re kinda bad but actually good. Which they are.
That’ll keep y’all busy for a while!
Quest wishlist: I wish we could ask someone in the publishing industry about rights to series and rights to “publication canceled” books and how all that stuff works. And I wish we could hear Aubrey Clark’s side of the story, but it just seems unkind to reach out to her to ask about this.
But the problem is… I call it “the quest for Strange Fate” because I’m melodramatic and like calling things quests, but what it the victory condition for this one? The obvious: we win if we find and read Strange Fate, but I don’t think that will ever happen. No matter how much we learn about what happened that won’t make Strange Fate appear.
I do wish we could tell LJ Smith that plenty of authors these days have a Patreon. If the people who still care about the lost books and the story of Ms. Smith could turn that caring into actual useful help for the people and maybe the books too that would be the best outcome. That would be a successful quest.
A darker timeline possibility: maybe S&S read Strange Fate and it wasn’t any good. Ms. Smith is a good writer. But take a good writer and give her 20 years off from writing, and make those the 20 years where the teen experience of life changed radically, her genres of choice became big and popular and evolved and built up tropes, and language itself did… things…
I stan language but it’s a little sus how new lettery bois go brr everywhere I look. I love it, but it’s humbling having to ask my niece what all the new words mean, and why so many of them seem to begin with S!
And Ms. Smith is sixty and has twenty years of rewriting Strange Fate, pulling it apart and tinkering until it probably doesn’t much resemble the book she started in 1998. Stir up all this in a pot and we’ve got a recipe for making a talented author drop a mediocre book. Maybe S&S read it, said “it’s a dud, the fandom is 20 years old, let’s just not” and Ms. Smith retired from public life in defeat.
This makes an unhappy sort of sense, but it doesn’t answer the question of why The Last Lullaby never appeared either.
Anyway. This has been a long post, lots of links and some thoughts on the philosophy of questing.
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Donald Trump’s Ghostwritten Book Catapulted Him to the Presidency
Did you know that a ghostwritten book released in 1987 ultimately led to the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States of America?
His autobiography, “The Art of the Deal”, was ghostwritten by ghostwriter Tony Schwartz, and became a runaway bestseller that put Trump on the map as the epitome of a brilliant businessmen. From that point forward, he became the example of a successful entrepreneur. His eccentricities, forceful opinions and quotable phrases appeared everywhere, and the book catapulted his brand into the minds of everyone.
I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.Donald J. Trump
The ghostwriter didn’t get a bad deal out of the 18 months he spent working with Donald on the book. He received a $500,000 fee plus half the royalties, making him a millionaire. Even better, unlike most ghostwriters, Tony Schwartz received credit for the work And his name is even included on the front cover.
Tony created Trump. He’s Dr. Frankenstein.Edward Kosner, the former editor and publisher of New York
It is an interesting read, Glamorizing the life of the man who created the Trump organization. It talks about his childhood, the creation and the development of the Grand Hyatt Hotel and Trump Tower, and so forth. Trump also lays out an 11 step formula for business success, which is inspired by Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. The book wasn’t, as Donald Trump claimed, the second best seller of all time, but there’s no doubt that it is well read and often quoted.Him
Trump even sets himself up as the underdog who fought his way to the top, because of a difficult childhood with a demanding father. This sets the stage for a fairytale like ascend to power, as if he was a king fighting his way to the throne.
That’s why I’m so screwed up, because I had a father who pushed me so hardDonald J. Trump
Because of this book, Trump became a household name, famous far beyond his role as a real estate tycoon in New York. In the late 1980s, the art of the deal was the book to read. Everyone seemed to be talking about it, and they all wanted to know about Donald Trump. Who was he? How did he get so rich? The thought on everyone’s mind was that Donald must have the answers because he was obviously rich and successful.
How did we know that? The book said so. That’s how we came to know Donald Trump. He was the hero, leaping like Superman from the pages of a book. It seemed he could make anything happen with ease. He could make deals happen easily and quickly. He knew the answers, he knew how to negotiate, and he had everything that we wanted. He had wealth, people looked up to him, he was surrounded by beautiful women, he lived in luxury, and he knew what to do without any doubts.
That’s the man we met in that book.
It doesn’t matter whether the book truthfully laid out Donald Trump’s life, philosophy and talents. It’s irrelevant that much of it may be a work of fiction, springing from the mind of a ghostwriter. All that matters is that we, the general public, have a ferocious appetite for people who succeed at all costs and achieve the life and goals that we desire.
In the years since, Donald cleverly used the fame generated by his book to appear in cameos and countless movies and even be the star of a reality show. I avoided The Apprentice like the plague. Trump didn’t impress me because I’ve worked for difficult bosses before, and it seemed to me that Trump was an expert at belittling and browbeating people into submission.
Donald Trump became the master of public relations. He appeared in movies in brief cameos, talk shows, interviews, and seemingly everywhere else. He was regularly in the news, and knew how to manipulate the press to give him free publicity. Trump made sure that he kept his face and name in the public eye. That’s one thing that no one can doubt that he’s exceptionally good at – being heard and being seen.
On June 16th, 2015, Donald Trump announced from the lobby of Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue, that he was running for president of the United States. He claimed that “We need a leader that wrote ‘The Art of the Deal.’”
I don’t think very many people were surprised by his announcement. Somehow, the man found a theme of rage that he was able to manipulate to his advantage and catapult his way into the presidency. The press, who love controversy and hated what Donald Trump stood for, happily help this man become the president of the most powerful country in the world.
And it all started with a ghostwritten book. It’s amazing, isn’t it? If that book hadn’t been written, Donald Trump probably wouldn’t be president today.
If you’re considering how to promote yourself and become a leader, remember the power of this simple little book. The strength of words to shape the emotions of people, build a story, and create a narrative is immense and cannot be overstated.
Leave a comment below – what are your thoughts about ghostwriting?
Additional Information about Ghostwriting
The post Donald Trump’s Ghostwritten Book Catapulted Him to the Presidency appeared first on The Writing King.
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The Road Already Taken
When former Los Angeles Times music critic Robert Hilburn was contemplating writing a biography of Johnny Cash in 2009, he asked Lou Robin, who had managed Cash for more than 30 years, how much of Cash’s story had been told. Robin thought for a moment and replied, “About 20 percent.”
That was a dumbfounding answer considering Cash had written two autobiographies, personal accounts had been written about him by both his first wife and one of his founding band members, and several other biographies on the iconic country musician had made their way onto bookshelves over the years.
This guest post is by Barry Sparks of York, Pa. Sparks is the author of the biographies Frank “Home Run” Baker: Hall of Famer and World Series Hero and Rick Riordan.
Hilburn started working on Cash’s biography the next day. After four years of writing and research, including interviews with nearly 100 people, Johnny Cash: The Life was published to rave reviews in 2013.
Although Cash insisted he wanted people to know his entire story, he’d failed to embrace such candor in his autobiographies because he didn’t want to hurt those closest to him, Hilburn says.
“One of the first things I learned about Johnny is that I had to double-check everything he said,” Hilburn told the Los Angeles Times. “He wasn’t one to let facts interfere with a good story. He wasn’t so much trying to mislead people as make stories more colorful.”
Johnny Cash: The Life is a classic example of why nonfiction authors should not shy away from subjects that have been previously covered.
When new or untapped interview sources or documents are revealed, or an opportunity to correct erroneous information or offer a new perspective presents itself, a well-tread subject might just warrant a fresh approach.
Cut through the veneer.
Eddie Rickenbacker, World War I flying ace, had been the subject of two ghostwritten autobiographies and three major biographies before author John F. Ross tackled his life story in 2014’s Enduring Courage: Ace Pilot Eddie Rickenbacker and the Dawn of the Age of Speed.
To his earlier biographers, relaying facts took a back seat to creating the image of an all-American hero who led a charmed life. For example, Ross was surprised when he discovered Rickenbacker’s father was actually killed by a laborer in self-defense after provoking a fight, not in a “construction accident” as stated in Rickenbacker’s autobiography.
“The veneer of untouchable hero covers nearly every incident as thickly as the fiberglass protecting a boat’s hull,” writes Ross in the book’s Note to the Reader. Cutting through the hero worship to find the real man was one of his greatest challenges. Ross relied on largely neglected primary sources to paint a more accurate portrait.
Get people talking.
Fiery New York Yankees manager Billy Martin had been dead for nearly 25 years when author Bill Pennington considered writing his biography. Although Martin was already the subject of at least four books, Pennington felt their characterizations of Martin hadn’t told the whole story.
“I thought the last 20 years or so that there has been a caricature of him as a dirt-kicking lunatic who got hired and fired a lot. … Those things are all true. But he is much more than that. He has been reduced to a four-second highlight clip on ESPN. That’s all people under 40 know about him,” Pennington says.
In crafting his approach to Billy Martin: Baseball’s Flawed Genius, published in 2015, Pennington believed the passage of time would allow for more candid and honest comments from those who knew Martin. He was able to get Martin’s only son, Billy Joe, as well as his widow, Jill—who had yet to be quoted—to agree to interviews. In the course of researching the book, Pennington spoke with more than 225 people, including all four of Martin’s wives, his childhood friends, teammates and rivals.
Utilize new documents.
Author Tim Weiner has long been fascinated by President Richard Nixon. Declassified government documents released from 2007 to 2014 form the foundation of his 2015 book, One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon.
Weiner had unprecedented access to thousands of files from the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Council, the FBI, the CIA, Nixon Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman’s diary entries, and hundreds of hours of Nixon’s tapes.
“I felt like an archaeologist unearthing the palace of a lost regime,” Weiner wrote in the book’s Author’s Note.
Likewise, several books about the PT-109 incident involving President John F. Kennedy, dating back to Robert J. Donovan’s 1961 bestseller PT 109, had been published before William Doyle’s PT 109: An American Epic of War, Survival, and the Destiny of John F. Kennedy was released in 2015. But Doyle boosted his account with declassified documents, JFK’s long-lost 1946 firsthand account, materials from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, archives from Japan, the Solomon Islands and Australia—much of which had been unavailable to previous authors.
He also interviewed the PT boat commander who served with JFK, surviving contemporaries of JFK, political aides, Ethel Kennedy and her son Max.
Add fresh perspective.
More than a dozen books have been published about what happened to the game of baseball during World War II, but author John Klima identified an opportunity for further discussion: The writers with expertise in baseball knew little about the war, and those well versed in WWII didn’t know much about baseball.
Klima, however, had grown up in a household where WWII and baseball were both familiar topics. He possessed a rare combination of knowledge and perspective. His book The Game Must Go On: Hank Greenberg, Pete Gray and the Great Days of Baseball on the Home Front in WWII, published in 2015, does justice to both subjects.
Rickenbacker’s biographer, John Ross, says he considers writing a book a voyage of discovery: “The best writing, I think, reflects that sense of discovery to the reader. The writer, like the reader, is sharing a new story, turning the page to see what’s next.”
That voyage can be different for every writer—even when documenting a seemingly tired subject—who takes a savvy approach to uncover something new along the way.
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from Writing Editor Blogs – WritersDigest.com http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/road-already-taken
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