Results tagged “novel”

During his final days as he suffered from pneumonia and hep C, Jim Carroll had returned home to the same Inwood apartment where he was raised and detailed in his classic, Carroll went back to Inwood to save money and work on his first novel (which he finished!) in the apartment now decorated simply with a poetry event poster and a photo-triptych of Kurt Cobain. A friend of his tells the Times, “There’s a lot of the poetic there, of coming full circle."

One Queens FDNY lieutenant is doing something more than posing for calendars and, you know, saving lives; 38-year-old Terry Brody just wrote a romance novel (get a taste of it here)! The Daily News reports singer Shakira was his muse, as he got the idea for the plot when her video popped up on the firehouse television in 2003. Yesterday he was handing out copies in Times Square, and told the paper, "It's a romantic comedy about an NYC firefighter and a pop star and they meet after he saves her life in a fire," and is titled Rescuing Madison. Before you get your hopes up, ladies, this one is married with a kid—but that doesn't mean you can't make up your own romance novel about an FDNY lieutenant/author sweeping you off your feet! Meanwhile, back at the firehouse, Brody says of his fellow firemen, "They break my chops left and right. It's a book for teenage girls for the most part. They say, 'It really brought out the teenage girl inside of me."

While you were busy checking out possible candidates for a Missed Connection post and listening to your podcasts, 36-year-old Brooklyn writer Peter Brett wrote a novel while commuting on the F train. Feeling like an underachiever yet? He wrote the novel, his first, entirely on his smartphone. Now the "dark, demonic fantasy," titled The Warded Man, is sitting pretty in bookstores. The Daily News reports that Brett worked in medical publishing, and for the two years it took him to finish the 400-page novel, the F was his muse on his daily commute to and from the Fort Hamilton Parkway stop and Times Square. He told the paper, "I trained myself that at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. every day when I got on the train, that was my writing time. I had about 45 minutes each way, and everyone who takes the F knows that 45 minutes can turn into an hour and a half." Now a full-time writer, he combats writer's block by taking rides on the train.

Heather Hunter has been vindicated! What do you mean, who's Heather Hunter? Ever hear of a little film called Screw The Right Thing? Bloopers And Boners? Hung Jury? Nevermind; according to her website, the retired porn star is "hailed as this generation’s most well-regarded sexual icon." And she's "ready to start another phase of her career.......as a rap superstar." But first she had to put a nasty lawsuit behind her, brought by her presumably less porny rival Dianne Miller, who has accused Hunter of stealing her idea for a novel about a porn star. Which is such an inspired concept, you'd think Miller would have an open and shut case—especially considering she gave Hunter a manuscript titled Insatiable Desires in 2005, and Hunter's 2007 novel is called Insatiable: The Rise of a Porn Star. But according to the Daily News, the judge threw out most of Miller's allegations yesterday, while telling the plaintiffs he was open to reconsidering the suit.

Breakfast at Tiffany's, the novel by Truman Capote, is turning 50 (in just 3 years, the film will do the same). USA Today takes a look at the classic, which The New Yorker called "empty nostalgia" at the time (Capote wrote a letter to the publication saying he was "hurt and dismayed" by the criticism). The story however, whether on paper or celluloid, has stood the test of time and remains a favorite amongst many...in fact, just a couple of years ago the iconic Givenchy black dress that Audrey Hepburn wore in the movie sold for $807,000 (how much will Carrie Bradshaw garb go for in 50 years?).