Between a Dumb Rock and a Dumber Rock

Years ago I signed up for Pulisher's Marketplace's free newsletter service.  I always watch to see what memoirs are coming out and to size up the market for books like mine.  Sigh . . . I would like to share this week's two Memoir Deals with you now.

Memoir
Actor Ryan O'Neal's PAST IMPERFECT, a candid description of his and Farrah Fawcett's roller coaster of love and loss, from their first meeting in 1979 until her death in June 2009, including the pressures of their respective careers; their inevitable break-up; their emotional reunion after Ryan was diagnosed with leukemia; the devastating news of Farrah's own struggle with cancer; and their last days together; as well as O'Neal's career in Hollywood and his relationship with his daughter Tatum O'Neal, which has been stormy throughout the years as each battled substance abuse problems, the subject of a new reality series, 'Ryan and Tatum: The O'Neals,' that will air on the OWN Network this summer, to Tina Constable at Crown Archetype, with Suzanne O'Neill to edit, for publication in Spring 2012, by Kent Carroll at Europa Editions (World).

20-year-old Levi Johnston's DEER IN THE HEADLIGHTS: My Life in Sarah Palin's Crosshairs, claiming to "tell the truth about my close relationship with the Palins, my sense of Sarah and my perplexing fall from grace -- how I feel and what I've learned," or what the publisher calls a "tale of a misunderstood boy figuring out how to be a man and a father after being thrust into the spotlight and subsequent media circus at a very young and vulnerable age," to Touchstone, for publication in fall 2011.

Perhaps opportunities as a ghost writer of vapid tales might be more promising than writing a true story of an innocent little boy's battle with his own body for survival.  I liked Farrah Fawcett as well as any other little girl of the 1970s, but Ryan O'Neal hit on his own daughter as her funeral (it's true and might be in the book - oh no I may have incited you to read it) and Levi Johnson . . .  people, please!

I mean, really, I have been through so much that I try, lord knows I try, to keep bitterness at bay and focus on the positive.  I'm the eternal optimist and I never give up, but stuff like this (and I use that word stuff in place of a dirtier word that makes more sense) really chaffs my hide. Since when is the guy who knocked up the Governor's daughter and then posed for Playgirl magazine the literary darling of the day?  I guess since Paris Hilton, Snookie, and Bristol have already signed on for book tours.  Sigh . . .