Most people would be shocked to learn that Lauren Conrad of Laguna Beach and The Hills fame is a New York Times best-selling author, several times over. Lauren Conrad is one of those people. “We were doing the inside cover of the beauty book I’m working on, and under ‘also by’ it listed all my other books. I was like, ‘When did this happen?’” Three years after she made her writing debut with the L.A. Candy series, she’s back on shelves with the first book in a new trilogy, The Fame Game . In stores tomorrow, it follows Heidi Montag -like character Madison Parker, another Audrina Patridge-like character, and two other Hollywood hopefuls. As they star in a new spin-off series and adjust to life as reality TV stars, obvi. There’s a soap opera’s-worth of drama, a fake-it-for-the-cameras relationship, and a whole lot of mascara-tears. How much of it did she pull from real life? Quite a bit. The entertainment value in Conrad’s page-turners is about separating the moments based on LC’s behind-the-scene anecdotes from fiction. “The most fun for me is being able to tell all the little tricks that people do in the media,” Conrad told EW. “Mostly, the shameless ones in terms of calling their own photographers, leaking their own stories, the little things.” “The thing people don’t really know but everyone in the industry knows.” The characters in this novel are pretty shameless so it’s no wonder even the 26-year-old’s own editor struggled with playing the fact or fiction game. “My editor would always go, ‘I don’t know if this seem realistic. Is this something that could actually happen?’ I’dsay, ‘it did happen. That’s a real story.’” Conrad’s tale doesn’t require any deep thinking, but it also doesn’t really aspire to. You’re just going along with Madison and the other girls for the ride. “One of my biggest goals, especially with writing YA novels, is just to have people enjoy reading,” she said. “I remember being in high school and it was so forced because everything I read through most of school was assigned reading. “I love the idea of giving girls a book that they can read and enjoy reading.” [Photo: WENN.com]
