Of “Celebrity Authors”

 Recently, there has been a lot of discussion on social media on the subject of celebrity authors. You know the kind - famous actor or Duchess or whatever publishes a book and it sells because of the name on the cover. I’m not even talking here about the ghost written autobiographies, which are, of course, published for the same reason. I have a few of those. Some have the name of the actual author as co-writer, some just have the name of the actor or whoever. We expect those to be ghost written, although they aren’t always. 

I’m talking here about fiction written with the name of someone you wouldn’t normally associate with writing. It has been going on for a very long time. 

Here are some of those I remember from a long time ago. Some are ghost written; they tend to be the better ones; being an actor doesn’t mean you can write, but the books will sell.

Star Wars, with the name of George Lucas on the cover, was actually written by SF author Alan Dean Foster.

The Tek War series: name on the cover, William Shatner(known to his fans as Captain Kirk). Author: SF writer Ron Goulart.

 Avon: A Terrible Aspect was written by Paul Darrow, one of the stars of British science fiction show Blake’s 7. He played the brooding anti-hero Kerr Avon, very popular with female fans, who bought his novel and raved over it. You could never mistake it for a ghost written book, it was so awful. And he did say that he had worked on it in his dressing room while doing stage shows. I bought the hardcover when it came out, and quickly dubbed it Avon: A Terrible Novel. It really was. I asked my library technician to cover it, to keep it in good shape so I could lend it to curious friends so they wouldn’t have to pay for it. 

I had Year 7 students who were much better writers. Apart from the poor  quality of the writing, the science was non existent. He thought the Magellanic Clouds were giant clouds in space, and had his hero travel between two planets in the solar system via the Magellanic Clouds. He had telegrams being sent between planets. Oh dear... not even the TV series had that! 

Poor Paul was a fine actor, but he couldn’t write to save his life. That didn’t matter in the case of this celebrity writer. Fans bought it and loved it, because hey, it was by Paul! It even went into paperback. I very much doubt it had any editing at all, or the editor was told to let Paul have his way. 

You can sort of see why publishers would publish this stuff. It makes money. 

But not all celebrity authors are awful. Some discovered that they could write after another career. 

Thomas Tryon was an American actor. He was very good at that and did a lot of films and TV roles. Then he discovered he could make a living from writing, and quit the acting. I have read one of his books, Harvest Home, an impressive horror novel in the style of Stephen King, before anyone had even heard of Stephen King. (I think King’s first novel came out soon after) That one became a TV miniseries. 

Charlie Higson is a British YA novelist who is also known as an actor and comedian. I’ve never seen him act, but I did have many of his books in my library. They are very good. Two series are The Enemy and Young James Bond, which he was commissioned to write, and which compares nicely to Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series, but set in the 1920s, when Young James was a student at Eton. Elsewhere on this site, you will find an interview he kindly agreed to give to a member of my book club. Selena adored his books. The Enemy is a series of novels, set in London, in which anyone over about fifteen is likely to become a flesh eating zombie. So children have to hide and learn to hunt for food and deal with family members who are willing to kill and eat them. Scary and very well written! 

David Walliams, best known as a comedian, is a children’s writer. For reasons I haven’t yet been able to find out, he is being abused on social media for being a celebrity writer, but guess what? Kids love his books! I have heard primary school teachers reading his books to their classes. Some of my literacy students brought in their own copies. They loved them! 

In Australia, there is Felice Arena, a top children’s writer and qualified primary teacher. Here is my interview with him. Probably most people here have forgotten by now that he used to be an actor. He was one of the cast of our popular soap Neighbours, then did stage work in England. A very prolific writer, he started off with football novels, the Specky Magee series. This series was hugely popular but has been followed up with many others. Most recently he has been writing historical fiction for children - three so far, set in Sicily during WWII, Paris early in the 20th century and Berlin just after the wall went up. He is working on another, though keeping the details secret. Children these days don’t usually care for historical fiction, but these three have all been short listed for YABBA Awards, which are the ones which children nominate and vote for.  

He is one of the few authors in this country who is able to make a living out of writing.

A celebrity author? Not now, though his co-author on the Specky Magee novels was Garry Lyon, a football star. However, they were friends from their school days, so nothing cynical there, just two friends writing a book together, and one of them an expert in the theme. 

Any celebrity authors you can think of?