He first became popular when I was in high school. When I practiced my interviewing skills in the mirror as I dressed for school, Jack Harrington was always my subject. “Mr. Harrington” I would say in my best no-nonsense reporter voice, which I’d been cultivating through my position on our school’s newspaper, “your new project is quite a departure from your previous work. Tell us what seduced you into taking such a controversial role.” I always imagined myself pinning him with my penetrating stare, silently daring him to bare his soul. I admit there was some melodrama in my imaginings; I had always been a love-story junky and hopeless romantic. Of course my fantasy would always end with Jack falling for me, Jada Eastman, the astute and charming reporter who had finally enticed him to explore his deeper, emotional side. Such excitement was hard to find on assignments for the Central High Herald.

I found myself in California after college, working as a fact checker for the entertainment department of the LA Times. I kept my writing skills honed by joining a writer’s guild downtown, where I met a biographer who took me under her wing. She hired me to help her on her current project: the biography of a prominent director. This experience was invaluable, and it started my interest in writing life histories. She mentored me for the next three years before I finally got my big break: the opportunity to write an “instant book” on a Hollywood scandal.

It seemed like a smarmy thing to do at the time—two actors’ lives were already ruined forever by the revelation of their secret affair and manipulation of various high-up producers and directors—but I’d learned over the past couple years that, to eventually get what you want, you had to temporarily take what you could get. I earned brownie points with the publishing company, though, when I broadened the book’s coverage through a creative use of my old fact-finding contacts, and not long after the project was completed, I received a call for another book.