The Glamorous Life of a Writer

The Glamorous Life of a Writer

My 15 Minutes of Fame, Not

Part One

Sometime in August, an editor of V-Life magazine called and said they wanted to do an article about me and how I’d reinvented myself from a TV writer into a best-selling novelist.  She said the article would co-ordinate with the launch of The Bad Behavior of Belle Cantrell.  
     I suppressed the urge to say, “ME?  You want to do an article about ME!  Whatever for?”  Instead I said, coolly, “I’ll look forward to it.”
V-Life, is a relatively new life-style magazine.  It’s just now being sold on the newsstands, but it goes to everyone who subscribes to Variety which means everyone in Hollywood.  The producers, the directors, the studio heads, the hair dressers, they all get it.  Besides that, it’s gorgeous, filled with movie stars and models.  I figured this was my moment.  
HarperCollins sent them a picture of the provocative cover of my new novel.  Then on August 26, I had lunch with the journalist, Leslie Gornstein, at terrific little French Bakery in Beverly Hills.  Sounds like the glamorous life of the writer?  Wait.
     The following week the creative director called and said he wanted to arrange a photo shoot.  “Of me?  Can’t you just use the book cover?”  I protested.  Apparently, he couldn’t.  
He scheduled the shoot for 2:00 PM the following Thursday.  I was to be dressed and ready for a photo shoot for a magazine that featured movie stars and models.  I called my Beverly Hills hair stylist.  In the rest of the world they’re hairdressers.  Here they’re stylists.  Kevin is handsome, sophisticated, and the only one who has a clue what to do with the mass of thick curls growing around my head.  If you have lots of curls you know that like the little girl in the nursery rhyme, when they look good they look very, very good and when they look bad they look horrid.  Worse, they seem to have their own appearance schedule.  It takes a very special stylist to beat them into cooperation.
Kevin picked up the phone and explained calmly, he didn’t come in until noon on Thursdays.
“I won’t be able to get back home by 2:00, much less have time to put on make-up and get dressed.”  Kevin made sympathetic sounds, but repeated his rule.  He stayed late Thursday night, so he couldn’t possibly work on Thursday mornings.
(THAT’S ENOUGH FOR TODAY.  CONTINUED TOMORROW.)