So here I am in the Land of Blog.
It's taken me a while to get here, but now I've arrived I hope you may be interested in what I have to say. Sometimes I'll chat about current writing projects, where I am with them, interesting things in the pipeline. Sometimes I may drift off into discussing new cds I've bought or films I've seen. Sometimes it's quite likely that - ask my wife - I'll just talk bollocks. Whatever, I'm going to be posting here at least a couple of times each week, and if you have any opinions, questions or comments on anything I have to say, just pop over to the Forum page and leave a message.
***
The Cult of Celebrity never fails to piss me off, never more so than at the weekend when I read some publishing news in the paper. Someone's just signed up a major two-book deal to write two 'thrillers'. That someone is Pamela Anderson.
Now, I don't know Pammie (though I've seen the video!), so I'm in no position to comment on whether or not she can write... Oh, but hang on ... the newspaper article actually stated that the books will be written by a ghost writer. But don't panic, because they will contain Pammie's ideas, characters and 'voice'.
Voice. Something that takes writers years to establish, decades to progress, a lifetime to adapt and expand. But Pam's got it already.
Bullshit. What she's got is notoriety in the public eye, a continuing status of 'celebrity' even though the last film I saw her in was the abysmal Scooby Doo (and even that was a 30 second cameo), and a set of knockers that makes her the prime object of desire for anyone who'd rather sleep with several stones of plastic rather than real flesh and blood.
I'm sure the books will sell extremely well.
The advance was not mentioned in the article, but I'll guess that it's in seven figures. I just can't help thinking - hell, maybe it's naive of me, childish, and maybe it's imbuing businessmen with a sense of worth that just doesn't exist - but what if that publisher split that million dollars into 20 equal parts? That's twenty advances of $25,000 to up and coming writers, leaving $25,000 each for promotion, signing tours and investment into the future. Out of the twenty, maybe a handful would write books that could do very well. And out of that handful, maybe - just maybe - one would write a bestseller. And write it themselves.
But that'll never happen, because people like celebrity. It makes them feel safe. Maybe it gives them something to aspire to. Give me anonymity any day.
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