Want to publish a novel? It helps if you’re a character on the TV Land series Younger.
On the long-running show, Liza Miller (played by Sutton Foster) has met plenty of authors at her workplace, Empirical Press—including the George R.R. Martin-esque fantasy writer Edward L.L. Moore.
It turns out that Liza’s onetime boss and ongoing romantic interest, Charles Brooks, is something of a writer himself—and, in the real world, Simon Schuster just published his novel, The Miseducation of Henry Cane, marketed as “an unputdownable coming-of-age tale about a young man navigating one life-changing summer in the Hamptons.” The book is also a plot point on the TV show—which is itself based on the 2005 novel Younger by Pamela Redmond Satran.
Henry Cane’s writer isn’t Peter Hermann, the actor who plays Brooks—although Hermann did publish a children’s book last year. The credited author is Brooks himself, and he’s not even the first Younger character to publish a novel. That honor goes to Charles’ ex-wife, Pauline Turner Brooks (Jennifer Westfeldt), who “wrote” Marriage Vacation. (“This provocative and gripping novel asks: Is a wife and mother allowed to have a midlife crisis? And, if she does, can she ever be forgiven?”) It was published by SS last year—and also featured on the TV series.
Both novels were ghostwritten by author Jo Piazza, who was recently interviewed by Lambeth Hochwald for Parade. So don’t worry, novelists—you’re not facing any competition from fictional authors. At least, not yet.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
