Writing Life

The Rules of Hollywood

by Jill Amadio

I am hovering just to the rear and right of the author seated at a table signing copies of my novel. He's having a grand old time chatting up friends, colleagues and neighbors who have stopped by the bookstore to congratulate him. As his eyes keep darting to the door to see who's coming in through Dutton's glass and steel portal on N. Canon Drive in Beverly Hills, I just know he's hoping it'll be a producer, director or actor who'll slap an option offer on the table within the next three days.

Having arrived an hour early to help him set up his pens, business cards, and coffee, I'd spent a ridiculously long time deciding exactly where to position myself. Good manners and courtesy demand that I appear as self-effacing as possible, almost invisible. In fact, completely invisible, if that can be arranged. It would fit in perfectly with my role.

As the ghostwriter of several nonfiction books, mostly autobiographies, I never have any trouble absenting myself totally from book signings, except for my own book published a couple of years ago (still being mulled over by The Producer). Once I pass along a client's ghosted or collaborated manuscript to the publisher, whether it is a vanity press or a "real" publisher, I am usually back home casting about for my next project.

But this time is different. I have ghostwritten a novel. A mystery, to be exact. My first. Sure, there are a few collaboration mysteries on the market including books from the Dick Lochte and Christopher Darden team, but I hadn't found anyone else who ghostwrote a novel, so initially I found myself floating in misty confusion.

I finally decided to take my client's original plot premise and toss in a couple of killings to spice it up. I researched a charming method for murder, gave one nasty character my great-grandfather's revered Scottish name, and honored my favorite 18th century poet by sprinkling some quotes throughout. All in all, a rather neat package.

Fortunately, my client enjoyed the experience. He occasionally threw a spanner into the works, such as wanting to add several more murders to the mix once he got into the swing of things, but basically he was pleased with the story's various twists and turns, especially when we included a fictional Bel Air branch of the Brooklyn Russian Mafia.

So here we are, he and I, at Dutton's. And I am still in a dilemma as to where to stand. The author/client graciously invited me to attend and never disguised the fact that he hired a writer to write his book. Actually, he is pretty proud of himself for finding me. He'd read the autobiography of Mrs. Rudy Vallee I'd collaborated on with the widow, Ellie, and adapted to a screenplay (also still in limbo), so our hopes for an option and a subsequent TV series or movie energize both of us this evening.

When the client called me a couple of months earlier to say that the publisher set up the book signing at Dutton's, I panicked. What was the publisher thinking? Dave Dutton was closing up shop! Immediately. Come to find out, Los Angeles has a few other Dutton's bookstores. But Dave's in Brentwood was The One. Still, one can't sniff at North Canon Drive. It's Beverly Hills and pretty posh.

I decide to phone The Producer. I walk away from the author and his pile of books, take out my cell phone, and call.

"Hi Brandon, how about coming along to a book signing?"

"Whose?"

"Oh, no one you know."

"So why would I come?"

"Well, I wrote it."

"Why didn't you say it was your book signing?"

"It isn't."

He snorts and hangs up.

Still undecided where to stand I continue to hover, ghostlike.

Originally published in the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine in November, 2006.

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Jill Amadio is a journalist, biographer and ghostwriter. She has published several nonfiction books and is the author of Gunther Rall: Fighter Ace and NATO General, and co-author of My Vagabond Lover: The Rudy Vallee Story, which she adapted to a screenplay. She is a former reporter for the Bangkok Post and the Spanish-American Courier in Madrid.