Guest Author: Marianne Mancusi – News Blues

Marianne is with us today to share her inspiration for News Blues, available from Love Spell.

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I talked on Monday about living different lives and experiencing wild and crazy things through reading and writing books. But in one particular case, I decided to go the opposite route and use my real life experiences instead. My March book, News Blues, (Dorchester Love Spell) is a comedic romance set in a television newsroom, the very kind of place I have spent my whole career.

I remember the day I started writing News Blues. I was in the middle of a rough draft of what would eventually become Moongazer and I’d had to worst day at work. My executive producer had assigned me the stupidest story on the planet — Cosmetics that Kill — and I wasn’t making any progress on it. Simply because, cosmetics, as a rule, don’t actually kill. But the station loved the scare stories and hey, it’d sound great in a promo, so they weren’t going to take my objections or rationalizations. I was to find some makeup with gross, nasty bacteria lurking in it, have it tested and inform the world about all the grossness I found.

(Note: You’ve probably seen these germ stories before. It’s the kind of story stations always fall back on to get the ratings. And no matter what you test — be it the bottoms of purses or the ice in ice machines, you’re likely going to find something that sounds gross to the general public. But what you don’t see on the news is that most of these germs, while icky, actually won’t harm you. Our bodies have antibodies to take care of those kinds of things.)

Anyhow, I started thinking about all that goes on behind the scenes in television news. How they exaggerate to scare, how they won’t tell you about something truly deadly if it involves one of their advertisers, how managers will only approve a story if you can attach celeb’s name to it (they wouldn’t let me do a story on teens cutting until I mentioned that Lindsay Lohan was rumored to be a cutter), how they fire veteran journalists who make too much money and replace them with hot 20 somethings who have no experience but will practically work for free, etc. etc.

I started writing. And the words poured out of me. About Maddy, a hapless special projects producer, like myself, who is always assigned the most ridiculous stories. She longs to become a real journalist and work for a fictional network news show that still takes pride in reporting the truth. Instead, she’s stuck will silly, sensationalized stories like Deadly Dishwashers, Killer Clay, and Perilous Pets–stories aired for the sole purpose of boosting ratings through scary promos–while the most shocking news event in her town goes totally unreported.

I think when many people read News Blues they will assume much of it was exaggerated for fiction. But while the plot and characters are made up, the inner workings of the television news room are extremely real. For example, these “Household Products That Kill” stories Maddy’s assigned are all based on real news reports I’ve been assigned over the years. We really did air Problem Pedicures, Cosmetics that Kill, Shower Shocker and the rest on a daily basis.

But just as Maddy and her photographer–sexy, motorcycle riding bad boy Jamie Hays–find a way rise above the corruption and risk their jobs to uncover the truth–in real life too, there are true journalists slaving away in the trenches. The unsung heroes who work overtime to expose the bad guys, right the wrongs, and produce fair and balanced reports. If anyone can save the industry, it’s them. They give me hope for the future and inspired the News Blues novel.
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You can visit Marianne on the web at her blog and her website.

Check out her books here.

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