One of my daughters was at drama school and I understood enough about the acting business to know that when she left she would be entering one of the most difficult and crowded professions in the world – offering even more opportunities for heartbreak than trying to write for a living.
In order to make a start she needed to have something that she could show to potential agents and casting directors. Every graduating drama student in the world would have photographs and all of them would be trying to persuade the gatekeepers of the industry that they deserved to be given a chance. She needed some sort of calling card which could be easily accessed, would show off her abilities and would stick in the memory of those who saw it.
It occurred to me that if I wrote a book which was narrated by a young girl breaking into show business and the celebrity world, I could ask my daughter to make a short film in the form of a monologue by the main character, which we could then post on YouTube as a promotion for the book, at the same time making it available and easily accessible at the touch of a button or two to anyone whom she might be approaching about possible representation or casting.
So, I conjured the character up in my head and ghostwrote for her in much the same way as I would have done if she had been one of the real-life actresses or celebrities I had worked with over the years. The result, The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride, is the tale of a young girl who is talent-spotted at a local drama class by the casting director of the country’s biggest soap opera and is catapulted into the tawdry world of modern celebrity. Once she is famous family skeletons emerge from the shadows, providing the dramatic tension and surprises needed to keep the plot rolling along.
The book was agented by Barbara Levy and published by John Blake, with my daughter’s picture on the cover, and the YouTube monologue worked as planned.
A year or two later I was approached by some freelance film producers wanting to make a pilot episode for television with my daughter in the lead role and it looked as if it was going to provide exactly the sort of break she needed. The producers then patiently embarked on several years of meetings, trying to raise money and gain distribution for their project. It takes so long, however, to raise the necessary money to make even a half hour television pilot, that by the time they were actually ready to film, my daughter had grown too old to play the part which had originally been written for her. Life for a freelance actress (and freelance film producers for that matter) is definitely even more of a bitch than life for a freelance writer.
Encouraged by the success of Steffi I persuaded the publisher to commission a prequel, The Fabulous Dreams of Maggie de Beer, which followed the earlier career of Steffi’s mother, who just happened to be the same age as me and arrived in the same part of London at roughly the same time (she left home at 15 whereas I had waited another two years), her head filled with much the same dreams and delusions as mine; the writer’s ego once again struggling to be free of its chains.