Secrets jof a best-selling hack

       Steve Hely needed to know how to write very well in order to write as miserably as he does in How I Became a Famous Novelist . In a satirical novel that is a gag-packed assault on fictitious best-selling fiction,Hely, who has been a writer for David Letterman and American Dad , takes aim at genre after genre and manages to savage them all. You are invited to trawl the mass-market fiction in your local bookstore if you think Hely is making much up.
       Since he needs a pretext for this batch of dead-on parodies, Hely invents the calculating Pete Tarslaw,hack extraordinaire. And How I Became a Famous Novelist needs to give Pete some motivation. So in a rare show of genuine literary laziness, Hely jolts Pete with the news that his college girlfriend is getting married. This qualifies as instant, just-add-water motivation. Pete wants to be a hugely popular writer so he can make this girlfriend sorry she's marrying somebody else.
       With that, Hely is off to the races.He has Pete start analysing popular books to see what makes them sell.That gives Hely a pretext to lard How I Became a Famous Writer with a wide array of supposedly viable titles, main characters, ad lines ("Blood is the new pink") and crazy premises.Sample thriller plot:"A New York City cop discovers that some Hasidic Jews have found a long-lost 11th commandment that changes everything."
       Here are some sample titles from Hely's version of the New York Times best-seller list, which is mimicked with particular glee:Cumin: The Spice That Changed the World ,Indict to Unnerve ,The Jane Austen Women's Investigators Club and Sageknights of Darkhorn . The list also includes a sci-fi novel with the following synopsis:"In a post-nuclear future inhabited by intelligent cockroaches, Lieutenant Cccyxx discovers there was once a race of sentient humans."
       At the risk of shamelessly cannibalising Hely's humour, here are a few more. Sample military adventure title:Talon of the Warshrike . Sample writerly process: The author of "Warshrike"explains that he got a plot idea while in Venice with his ex-wife; while on a night cruise he looked back at the city and thought,"What if somebody blew this place up?" Finally and most lovably, there is this suspenseful moment from a brisk novel in which a US president is warned about a national security crisis:"Sir, how much do you know about outer space?"
       Gradually Pete begins to shape his own version of a winning formula.He is goaded by the example of a folksy, literary type named Preston Brooks who appeals greatly to women and who says things - in person, not in print - like the following, as he gives a tour of his office to a TV interviewer:"I call this the dance hall.Because characters will appear, and introduce themselves and ask me to dance. The character always leads. I bow, accept, dance for a while." Is it any wonder that Pete dreams up a scene in which a young woman admits she's never been to a formal dance in high school - and then a kindly gent named Silas Quilter dances with her in a cornfield?
       That novel of Pete's is The Tornado Ashes Club . It involves a grandson who fulfils his grandmother's wish to find a tornado into which she can throw the ashes of her long-lost lover,Luke, who appears in a young, handsome incarnation during the book's picturesquely European World War II flashbacks."Use words to describe old ladies that make them sound beautiful [graceful, regal, etc.]", Pete tells himself about pitching his story to a book-buying audience. He also concocts many other rules, like a dictum to dream up highway scenes "making driving seem poetic and magical" in order to tap into the audiobooks market.(Most audiobooks are listened to in cars.)
       The Tornado Ashes Club really does stink. So how closely is Hely going to tether How I Became a Famous Novelist to this one parody? Happily, he concocts so many other diversions and advances Pete's story so deftly that a little of Pete's bad book is allowed to go a long way. And without really straining credulity, Pete's travels through the world of publishing become exuberantly far-flung.
       He crosses paths with a businessman who has been inspired by a selfhelp book called Caesar, CEO: Business Secrets of the Ancient Romans and thus refers to a rival company as Carthage; a drab, well-known literary figure who teaches a writing class ("For ease and accuracy I'll call her SpaghettiHair HamsterFace," Pete says) and an editor who makes sadly apt notes about Pete's manuscript."Does a dying deer really smell faintly of cinnamon?" she inquires."You use the word sallow four times, and I'm not sure you ever use it right."
       Revealingly, Pete's research project never extends to the writing of endings.That may be because Hely doesn't know how to end this book. In the final chapters he torpedoes Pete's cynicism in ways that will disappoint anyone who was enjoying the jaundiced humour. And there are contrived plot complications.("An interesting fact about the US attorney's office in Boston is that they serve good coffee.")
       But the damage is already done:Hely has deftly clobbered the popularbook business. He has taken aim at lucrative "tidy candy-packaged novels you wrapped up and gave as presents",the kinds of books that go "from store shelves to home shelves to used-book sales unread". His complaints about such books are very funny. They'd be even funnier if they weren't true.