A few days ago, my wife happened to be talking to me when I was trying to work on a book. (As you might suspect – she has no respect for my workspace. If she wants to talk to me about something and I tell her, “Gimme a sec,” she keeps on talking…)
Anyway, I’m continuing to do research on a pertinent topic while Mrs. Wonderful is bringing me up to speed about some issue (most likely related to the kids), when something pops up on the monitor indicating that Lou Diamond Phillips has a book coming out. Yes – that Lou Diamond Phillips. The actor. He of La Bamba, Young Guns and Longmire fame. Apparently he has a scifi novel called The Tinderbox releasing later this year.
My wife was surprised; she simply hadn’t thought of him as a writer (let alone a writer of scifi, which is the genre of his forthcoming book). I, on the other hand, wasn’t quite as stunned. Celebrities always want to do things other than what they’re known for: Models want to sing. Singers want to act. Actors want to direct. And, apparently, they all want to write books.
In fact, celebrities write books all the time. I mean, that’s presumably part of the appeal for publishers: these are individuals with built-in audiences. Quite often they’ll write their memoirs. Or, if they’re comedians, they might release something humorous. But more often than one might think, celebrities will turn their hand to fiction. With that in mind, I decided to poke around and see what other celebs had fiction books out.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of famous people write children’s books. Take John Lithgow, for instance. He’s an extremely talented actor, but has also written a number of children’s books. (One of them, Marsupial Sue, is even on my kids’ bookshelf.) Oscar winner Octavia Spencer has the Randi Rhodes, Ninja Detective series. Even Ricky Martin wrote one: Santiago the Dreamer in Land Among the Stars.
But celebrities do more than just children’s books; they also write full-length novels. By way of example, William Shatner wrote the scifi TekWar series. ( I read the first couple of these, but didn’t realize there were actually nine books in the series.) Basketball legend Kareem Abdul Jabbar has penned a Mycroft Holmes series; I’m a big Sherlock Holmes fan, so this one’s on my reading list. Last but not least, the Kardashian sisters – Kim, Kourtney, and Khloe – wrote a novel called Dollhouse about three glamorous sisters named Kamille, Kassidy and Kyle.
Of course, these are just a few of the celebrities who have written books. Needless to say, there are many, many more. But this is nothing new; famous people have always gotten books published. However, the great thing about the state of publishing to day is that anybody can write and publish a book. You. Me. Anybody. Bearing that fact in mind, I’d argue that makes us all celebrities in a way.