What is the title of your latest release?
ROLAND ROGERS ISN’T DEAD YET
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A ghostwriter ghostwrites for a ghost.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
Stay with me here: The ghost in question is a recently deceased movie star named Roland Rogers, but no one knows he’s dead yet. Roland is trapped in some sort of purgatory, only capable of communicating through electronic appliances. Before his body can be found, he wants to reveal a closely held lifelong secret, so he reaches out to a struggling memoirist named Adam Gallagher for help.
All of which is to say this book had to take place where you’d expect an A-lister to live, which is why it’s set in a cliffside Malibu mansion with obscene square footage.
Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Adam is a lot like me, so no.
What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Smart, sad, and stubborn.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I learned how much Calacatta marble countertops cost.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I used to not even press the “return” key until I thought a paragraph was perfect. But now, it’s a blend. I write for a few nights in a row and then I’ll have a polishing session where I edit everything I’ve done up to that point.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
French fries in a Frosty. I’m not fancy.
Describe your writing space/office!
I aspire to write at my desk. Realistically, I write on the sofa while watching movies on my projector. Roland Rogers stars in a fictional action movie franchise called Crash Street, so I put on a lot of Mission: Impossible this time around.
Who is an author you admire?
Brian Evenson. I sent him a piece of fan mail when I was in college and he responded, which was so kind of him.
Is there a book that changed your life?
Kate Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw
Tell us about when you got “the call.”
I feel like I keep daring my publisher Zando to buy weirder and weirder books from me, and so far they keep saying yes. When I got the call for this one, I was like, “Really?! What do I have to do for you to dump me?” This game of chicken we’re playing is getting dangerous. My next book will have to be written in Wingdings.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
I like to read monographs about particular animals. What are bees thinking? How does an octopus taste its food? Why do sea otters hold hands? I can’t get enough.
What’s your favorite movie?
Right now? Michael Clayton. As a kid, I had most of the dialogue in You’ve Got Mail memorized and Michael Clayton is getting close to that point for me now. And the closing credits scene with George Clooney riding in the back of the cab? Perfection.
What is your favorite season?
Winter in Seattle. Three months of cold, dark, wet weather. I love it.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Not to sound too much like Eeyore, but I don’t like my birthday. As a Capricorn, I’m not super comfortable with my feelings. They’re so unwieldy. When people tell me they love me and they’re happy I was born, I tend to short-circuit. So I like to work on my birthday. But I do get myself a cookies and cream milkshake after dinner.
What’s a recent TV show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Challengers is the most fun I’ve had in a theater all year. I wish that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross could score every conversation I have in real life. Imagine: I’d be doing my annual performance review at work and pulsing techno music starts to play. There’s nothing that beat can’t improve.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Indian.
What do you do when you have free time?
I’ve played over 700 hours of Elden Ring.
What can readers expect from you next?
More Elden Ring. And probably another book.
A Novel
It’s the gig of a lifetime for this ghostwriter, except there’s a catch: the client, a closeted A-list actor finally ready to come out in his memoir, is an actual ghost.
Adam Gallagher has knocked on thousands of doors. An ex-Mormon and almost-famous memoirist, he is used to sharing his life story with strangers. But this day, this house, is different. For it belongs to none other than Roland Rogers: Hollywood Hunk, and soon to be author. Roland has a story to tell, a decades-old secret to spill, and he’s decided that Adam is just the guy to help him do it.
Except there’s a problem. Roland Rogers is dead. Not in the metaphysical realm—if he focuses, he can summon enough energy to communicate via the kitchen speaker—but certainly in the physical, and he needs Adam to pen his story before his body is found frozen beneath the avalanche of snow that squashed it. That means one month, a hundred thousand words, no breaks.
Ghostwriting is hard enough, let alone when you’re dealing with a real ghost, and so it isn’t long before Roland’s idea of what his book should be clashes with Adam’s vision for what it could be.But the clock is ticking, the ice melting. And as more truths are told, both men soon discover that this experience is less of a coming out, and more of a coming home . . .
The sophomore novel from the beloved author of Patricia Wants to Cuddle, Roland Rogers Isn’t Dead Yet is a witty and electric new rom-com for fans of Ashley Poston and Casey McQuiston.
Paranormal | LGBTQ [Zando, On Sale: December 3, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781638931539 / eISBN: 9781638931546]
Samantha Allen is the author of PATRICIA WANTS TO CUDDLE (Zando, 2022) and the Lambda Literary Award finalist REAL QUEER AMERICA: LGBT STORIES FROM RED STATES (Little, Brown, 2019). A GLAAD Award-winning journalist, Samantha has been published by outlets including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and CNN. Her other books include LOVE & ESTROGEN (Amazon Original Stories, 2018) and M to (WT)F (Audible Originals, 2020)
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