Soap Opera
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Real-life star of As the World Turns for over forty years, actress and novelist Eileen Fulton weaves a sizzling tale that could only come from someone with an insider's savvy about what happens on a TV soap--after the cameras stop rolling...
Left at the altar in her small Midwest town, Amanda Baker heads to New York City to start anew and follow her dreams right onto the set of TV's most popular soap opera. She is to be the new "Hope" on Another Life, a role that will make her a star. But nothing comes without hard choices, and soon Amanda is swept into an off-camera crisis involving the troubled cast of Another Life--a shocking real-life drama that could shatter Amanda's own glittering new world. Now she must risk everything to save her career... and her heart.
And was that really Monique O'Day, the beautiful and sophisticated star who had been so captivated with Amanda that she insisted on sharing a cup of Queen Ann tea with her in her private dressing room after the test? And, of course, Hank. The executive producer who held her hand, led the way, then later, while she was in Monique's dressing room, asked her if she would be their Hope. Amanda collapsed onto the bed and began replaying her audition over and over in her head, trying to savor each moment of the day that was about to change her life.
In another part of Manhattan, Hank Pride was sprawled naked across his stainless-steel platform bed, replaying the very same audition scene. Hank watched the images flash across the two large-screen televisions in front of him. Amanda's audition tape was playing on the left and a twenty-year-old scene from Another Life featuring a very young Monique O'Day was playing on the right. While the scenes flashed across his naked and perspiring body he suddenly had an inspiration for the next twist in the plotline.
And it had nothing to do with the soap.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Art imitates television in this aptly named sudsfest by one of the reigning doyennes of soapdom, familiar to daytime viewers as Lisa Miller in As the World Turns. Stranded at the altar by her gambling-addicted, promiscuous fianc , unsophisticated Amanda Baker departs D.C. for New York, vowing never to let a man stand in the way of a career on Broadway. In the Big Apple, after a month of waitressing and despairing, she lands a job on Another Life, a popular daytime soap, playing the long-lost daughter of a beloved veteran. Not everyone is happy to have Amanda on board, however. Soon, not only is she coping with the less glamorous aspects of soap life--the grueling hours, the fans who confuse actor with character--but also with bitchiness and blackmail. And, of course, romance. Encapsulating the multiple tragedies, flagrant coincidences and tear-streaked triumphs that define soap opera, Fulton includes such stock characters as the dashing hero, the ingenue, the idiosyncratic diva and the lecherous producer, as well as swarthy and quixotic lady-killers, beautiful na fs ripe for love and scandal, and lost children later found. There are enough car accidents among a small circle of people to completely defeat statistical law. True to its title, the plot moves briskly through assorted melodramas. But this is what millions tune in for on a daily basis--the campiness as well as the escapism--and Fulton confidently delivers the goods. FYI: Fulton is author of seven mysteries (Take One for Murder; Fatal Flashback) and co-author of two autobiographies (How My World Turns; How My World Still Turns).