Star Struck

Coming to a bookstore near you--I hope...

On a breezy September afternoon, as Kevin Derow waits for an express bus back home after an exhausting first day of college, a limousine pulls up. Out steps Shannon Kistler, the rising pop star proudly displayed on his t-shirt. She embarrasses him and flees the scene before Kevin realizes what happened. Six days later Kevin surprises Shannon at an autograph session in a Queens record store, and later discovers she slipped him her private phone number.

Kevin and Shannon see each other despite their busy schedules. But while she confronts the pitfalls of fame, his admiration for her costs him two jobs, forces him out of his family\\\'s house, and nearly gets him paralyzed on the Coney Island boardwalk. What\\\'s worse, Kevin discovers Shannon\\\'s record label is paying off radio stations to play her songs--and he may have wrecked her blossoming career as a result.

For anyone who ever wondered what it might be like to fall in love with his or her favorite celebrity,

is for you.

No, you read that right. That\\\'s the new title of the book. Now it\\\'s a matter of my new host fixing things on his end.

And what do you know? Just when I thought I\\\'d never be able to interest someone in publishing anything I wrote, an agent outside New York City asked to see the synopsis and first three chapters. So I mailed them to her.

I found this agent by way of a web site sent to me by a longtime fellow chatter. I e-mailed a good thirty or forty agents before this woman said the magic words--and I was close to wit\\\'s end, too. In any event, it will be a while before I hear back, but at least she\\\'ll give my materials some long-overdue attention. : )

I also entered the novel in an online competition sponsored by Simon & Schuster and gather.com. My page was only up for two weeks in February, but apparently that was long enough to rack up some brutally honest criticism. One fellow, who might well have spent his life writing, sounded rather presumptuous about where the novel was headed based on the first chapter alone, as well as how othe people would react to it. It made me want to put my fist through the monitor. Sheesh...

Check here periodically to find out about its progress--and bug your local book--wait a minute. That\\\\\\\'s for The Strickland File.color:black\\\\\\\'> Well, you get the idea.

To Deborah Gibson, my (American) idol

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