| |||||||||||||||
Travis was supposed to have Chloe's back. But the spotlight of fame is very seductive.
Nika's the secret behind Chloe's success. But she's got an agenda of her own.
Let the games begin.
Laura J. Burns has written more than thirty books for teens and kids, and hopes to write at least thirty more. She lives in California with her husband and kids.
Chapter One
Nika Mays's Manuscript Notes: Overnight Success
Hurricane Chloe. That's what I called Chloe Gamble in the weeks after she landed her first starring role. The girl wasn't even on the airwaves yet, but Hollywood knew her. And Hollywood wanted her. That's a heady thing for a sixteen-year-old girl. Hell, it was a heady thing for me, and I'd been out of Stanford for three years already.
Here's the thing about Hollywood: It can change your life in a single second. One day an actress is a waitress who owes two months on her rent. The next day she's a star, with four magazine covers scheduled and a shiny new BMW. One day a writer is an offi ce drone answering phones in some cubicle at a nameless corporation and the next day he's got a studio deal and a blurb on the front of Variety. One day a director is renting out pornos at a video store and the next day he's Quentin Tarantino.
It doesn't happen all the time. It doesn't even happen very often. But it happens. Maybe an actress has had four hundred awful meetings -- meetings where she's told that she's too fat, too old, too green, too talentless, too washed-up, or just "not right." Four hundred meetings that led nowhere. And then, for no reason other than luck, the four-hundred-and-first meeting goes well. The actress meets the right casting director with the right project at the right time, and that's it. Before the actress gets to her car, her agents have been contacted. Negotiations begin. Other projects come pouring in, just because the formerly available actress is now completely unavailable. The gossip columns and the paparazzi hear about it and start making up stories. Boom! The actress is famous. Life changed.
All of my classmates from Palo Alto thought I was crazy for putting up with the sexist, low-paying, and old-school atmosphere at the Hal Turman Agency. But every time one of them asked me why I didn't leave Hollywood and get a normal job, I would tell them: Normal is the last thing I want. I want to wake up wondering if this could be the day. That's what keeps us all in show business.
It happened for me the day Chloe Gamble got cast on Cover Band. That morning, I was still a nobody, an assistant at a Ventura Boulevard child talent agency with one sixteen-year-old unproven client on my roster. Then I closed the deal: Chloe to star in the flagship show for the new Snap Network. One deal -- a few phone calls back and forth, a little hardball negotiation, and done. Life changed.
By the time I arrived at the offi ce the next day, my world was transformed. The assistants at the agency had started answering my phone for me, even though I'd been one of them just a day before. Hal's top agent, Bonnie Uslan (who hated me), asked me to lunch. And I had twenty-three calls on my call sheet -- not Hal Turman's call sheet, mine. Some of the calls were talent managers, wanting me to agent their clients. They'd heard I made a deal for Chloe Gamble. I'd somehow managed to resurrect her career after she made the apocalyptically bad decision to crash a network test at NBC. Now these talent managers who I had never met before wanted me to work my magic for their stable of young actors and actresses.
Chloe was the newest thing, and that meant everybody wanted a piece of her. A few were music managers, wanting to handle the recording side of Chloe's career, and there were one or two songwriters trying to send me demos that were "perfect" for Chloe. I spent the whole morning working the phone, feeling my way through the first flush of Hurricane Chloe.
"Nika! Do I have you to thank for this?" Hal Turman bellowed from his office. I figured that was his way of calling me in for a chat, so I grabbed my sweater from my cubicle and went into his offi ce. I'd learned long ago that Hal had a very specific reason for keeping his inner sanctum as cold as a meat locker. So I made sure to cover up so Hal could look me in the eye.
"I just got a call from some rag about my hipness quotient," Hal said. He stared at me, his bushy eyebrows drawn together in confusion. "Now what in the hell is a hipness quotient?"
"Who called?" I asked.
"Something called H Meter." Hal waved the pink message paper around. "Must be one of those new magazines."
"Hal, H Meter is a Hollywood blog," I told him, snatching the paper so I could read the message for myself. "They're saying that the agency's hipness rating just went up because of Chloe's new show."
"Honey, you can call it a quotient or a rating and I still don't know what it's supposed to mean," Hal said. "Don't try to tell me that there are Nielsen ratings on what's hip."
"Well, no." I smiled. "It's just a blog that tracks the Business and decides who has good buzz or bad buzz, who's getting more famous, who's in disgrace, you know..."
"What is this blog garbage?" Hal asked. "I hear them talking about it on CNN, for God's sake."
I thought about trying to teach him a little about the digital age and the Internet, but what would be the point? Hal still referred to the computer on his desk as the "word processor."
"Tell you what, I'll handle our New Media department," I said.
"You'll handle it?"
"I'll create it," I said. "For a twenty-five thousand dollar raise."
Hal's eyes narrowed. He'd been in the business a long time. He was a dinosaur, but he was a dinosaur who knew how to negotiate.
I might have overplayed my hand. Hal had given me a raise just the week before. But he looked at me now, his old eyes calculating. The long silence was a technique I had watched him use countless times. It was designed to make the other party feel "greedy" and cause them to lower their price. I knew that I had to stay quiet, no matter how uncomfortable I felt.
"This 'New Media' department, it'll help us keep our hip quotient?"
I nodded.
"Fine. You're Head of New Media. You earned your ten-thousand-dollar raise." Hal motioned me toward the door.
I knew I had asked for way too much money. I had expected Hal to lecture me or laugh at me, or both, but I had not expected him to give me a ten-thousand-dollar raise. That's when I knew how important Chloe was to the agency. Hal felt he was making a comeback. I hadn't overplayed my hand at all -- I had underplayed it.
"I'll need an offi ce. And my own assistant," I said.
Hal narrowed his eyes again, but this time I could see angry lines forming on his brow.
"Have them clear out the break room; you can turn that into your offi ce," Hal said. "And you can share an assistant with Michael. And for your information, there was nothing wrong with the old media. It built this fucking building."
He turned away, and I walked out with a new title, new digs, and some more money. Life changed.
And it wasn't just me.
Travis Gamble had a new life too. About twenty minutes after Chloe landed Cover Band, word leaked out that Travis was her twin brother. Video grabs of his guest shot on the sitcom Shallow People, shirtless and hot, were up on YouTube almost instantly. Before, he was just a cute male model. Now, he was part of a hot acting family -- a young, hot acting family. The tabloids love that. Look at Britney and Jamie Lynn, or Lindsay and Ali. Hell, even Paris and Nikki.
Travis wasn't even offi cially my client when Hurricane Chloe hit. But right away the calls started. I had serious bookers calling me about modeling jobs in New York and these weren't just for underwear catalog shoots. I had casting directors calling about TV and fi lm auditions. Travis had always struck me as a kid with his feet on the ground, but when McG's company wants you to read for a role, even the most sensible teenager in the world is going to jump at the chance. I rushed over agency papers right away. My client list had doubled!
The next thing I had to do was fi nd a reputable modeling agent for Travis, so that I could focus on his acting career. That's Hollywood -- one week you're just a high school soccer star. The next week, you've got two agents and a dual career. Like I said, life changed.
Then there was Chloe Gamble herself. From the biggest screw-up the town had ever seen to the star of a shiny new TV show in record time. Chloe's life went from zero to sixty overnight. No more school, no more general meet and greets, no more lurid horror movies -- she was past all that in the blink of an eye. As soon as she closed on Cover Band, Chloe's life became a whirlwind of photo shoots, magazine interviews, wardrobe and makeup tests, music rehearsals, and must-be-seen-at parties. The struggling girl who'd clawed her way out of Spurlock, Texas, was now Chloe Gamble, the star.
She was enjoying every moment of it. But she still kept a very keen eye on the bottom line.
"How much do I get paid?" Chloe asked me three days after she'd started work on the preproduction of Cover Band. "For all the extra stuff, I mean."
"What 'extra stuff'?" I asked.
"The photo shoots and the network promos and all those interviews with websites! I mean, it's a lot of fun, but how much do they pay me for that?"
I had to laugh. In some ways Chloe was the shrewdest person I'd ever met and in many ways she was still a sixteen-year-old kid.
"They don't pay you anything extra," I said. Chloe's eyes went wide with surprise.
"The Snap Network isn't paying you all that money just to act in the show. They're also paying you to sell the show. Your job -- your only job -- is to sell the product known as Cover Band. That means acting, but it also means promoting," I explained. "We have to get your face on every single blog, gossip site, magazine, and TV show that will have you, because that gives the show a chance to be successful. People will want to see more of you, so they'll watch the show, and the show will stay on the air. Good ratings equal survival in TV. Think of it as investing in yourself."
Chloe understood, but her mind w...
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
YA Hollywood Fiction,
By
This review is from: VIP Lounge (Chloe Gamble Novels) (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
This was a fun book to read. Everyone loves a little Hollywood drama every now and again, and if you love celebrity gossip, you will have a good time with this book.
The second in the Chloe Gamble series has our lead actress really becoming a star. She will stop at nothing to get what she wants, but finds that the people who are supposed to have her back all have agenda's of their own. The story is told from multiple perspectives giving a nice look into all the characters motives. It really breaks up the story in a good way and keeps it moving along at a nice pace. Its interesting to see how it all comes together. An interesting, yet predictable story about life in the Hollywood spotlight as a hot young new actress. If you likedSecrets of My Hollywood Life, Secrets of My Hollywood Life: On Location, orHollywood Is like High School with Money then you will enjoy this book.
3.0 out of 5 stars
3 Stars Is Being Generous,
This review is from: VIP Lounge (Chloe Gamble Novels) (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I have to say that this series didn't do it for me. The premise was one that I was interested in at the time I received it - normal teenager goes to Hollywood and navigates the shark-infested waters - but I'm sorry to say that I could never get into it. It was very slow and I finally gave up on it. Very rarely do I call a draw when reading books no matter how bad I think they are because I associate stopping with quitting. Unfortunately I stopped reading this, never picked it back up, and have no desire to return to it. I guess I am a quitter on this. If you decide to read it, good luck.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A ok series,
By
This review is from: VIP Lounge (Chloe Gamble Novels) (Paperback)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
A ok series. I can't say I found this enthralling to be honest. It was predictable and at times even a little boring.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
