“Lost” Manuscript about LOST

So remember earlier this year there was this tie-in book called THE KILLING CLUB, which Michael Malone wrote in the voice of a character from the ABC soap ONE LIFE TO LIVE? It did so well — NYT Bestseller, after all — that there’s a new bandwagon. And it’s not just limited to soaps (although AS THE WORLD TURNS will be publishing a tie-in for their 50th anniversary next spring) but mainstream TV shows, too:

Variety says that writers for ABC’s Lost will soon be penning a subplot about a character named Gary Troup who didn’t survive the crash but left behind a manuscript he was working on.

Troup is fictional, of course, and so is his supposed novel. But ABC sister company Hyperion Books will publish the "found" manuscript, in the hope of turning a fictional product-placement into a real one.

Working with writers from the series, Hyperion has commissioned a novel by a "well-known" mystery writer — it’s not saying who — that supposedly constitutes the book. The book will be marketed as the work of an author who "delivered (his book) to Hyperion just days before Troup boarded Oceanic Flight 815."

The book, to be titled BAD TWIN, will be a PI Detective thriller. And so, let the guessing game begin! I wonder if it’s Malone again…

UPDATE: This article at SciFiWire (hat tip: PM) mentions Ridley Pearson, if only because he’s done this sort of thing and is published by Hyperion.