A brand new way of blurring fiction and, um, fiction

A long, long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I used to watch soap operas. It was so long ago, in fact, that Michael Malone (known to some for his novels, including UNCIVIL SEASONS and FIRST LADY) was on his first go-round as head writer for One Life to Live. But soaps have a disturbing way of repeating themselves (so who’s Victor Newman with again? Didn’t I see this storyline back in 1991? Or in reruns from the mid-80s?) and when Malone returned to OLTL, he helped cook up what is, as the Book Standard reports, quite an unusual scheme:

The plot of The Killing Club offers its share of twists, red herrings and things that aren’t quite what they seem. But not as many as you’ll find in the plot to market the book.

For starters, the forthcoming mystery from Hyperion is ostensibly written by Marcie Walsh and Michael Malone. Only Walsh is not a real person, but a character on the daytime soap One Life to Live. Walsh is played by Kathy Brier, who, although not actually a writer, will attend signings to promote the book. Malone, the book’s sole author, is a real person. But a fictitious writing coach by the name of Michael Malone (discussed on the show but never seen) helps Walsh pen the mystery. Real Hyperion executives will mix with fake readers in a dramatized party set to air on One Life on the book’s real publication date, Feb. 16.

Yes, you heard right. There will be a fake launch party airing on the soap opera on the book’s on-sale date. So how did this marketing ploy come about?

A year ago, Brian Frons, head of ABC daytime, pitched Bob Miller, president of Hyperion, the idea of linking a story line on ABC’s One Life to Live to a mystery novel that Hyperion would publish. Hyperion and ABC are both owned by Disney. Malone, who at the time was head writer on One Life and who has authored numerous mysteries (Time’s Witness, Uncivil Seasons), was assigned to craft a story line in which a character on the show writes a book; and to pen a real novel to correspond with the soap plot.

“It’s playing with fictions within fictions, a two-level imagining,” Malone tells The Book Standard. Malone says he considered what kind of mystery the character of Marcie Walsh would write and what would transpire in the mind of the detective she created. He turned to an idea he’d once kicked around with Josh Griffith, another writer on the soap, about a group of high school students who form a club to fantasize about killing people they don’t like. Ten years after they graduate, a murder takes place exactly like one the club had imagined.

Thus, in last winter’s season of One Life, the character Marcie Walsh, a wisecracking receptionist at a police department, began working on her debut book, a murder mystery. And it’s why on Feb. 16, the book’s (real) editor, Gretchen Young, high-profile book jacket designer Chip Kidd and Hyperion’s Miller will be seen on One Life mingling with actors playing mystery fans at a book-launch party.

Of course, what this article neglects to mention is that last September, Malone left his head writer post (after co-scribe Josh Griffith reported walked off the set after a major argument involving storyline direction) and was replaced by Dena Higley. Which might explain why he’s never seen on the show, since he no longer works for them…