It's pretty rare that an author gets a major plug from a competing publishing house.
But that's what's happened to Diane Leslie for her autobiographical, 1950s Hollywood-set coming-of-age novel Fleur De Leigh's Life of Crime, just published by S&S. In Random House's influential "Just the Fax" bookseller alert as well as followup newsletter to all accounts, New York City rep (and former bookseller) Ruth Liebmann gave the ultimate accolade to Leslie's tale of the travails of precocious, 10-year-old child-of-Hollywood Fleur, largely ignored by her film industry parents, noting it is "what I'd be handselling if I were still a bookseller."
Author Leslie is also in the book biz -- she's a book group leader at Dutton's Brentwood, Calif., store -- but she and Liebmann had never met.
The book debuted at #1 on the Los Angeles Times's fiction bestseller list, a velocity helped no doubt by a major turnout of Leslie's fans and colleagues at a signing held at Dutton's. S&S responded to the news of the bestseller list hit by ordering up radio spots to promote the book, which have been running in the L.A. area since. A second printing of 2500 copies has already been added to the book's initial 13,500-copy release. Leslie is now set to tour to San Francisco and it's starting to look like her book is no mere West Coast phenomenon: at press time, Barnes &Noble tapped her to come aboard for a Discover Great New Writers signing in New York on June 18.
Leslie told PW she "didn't stray too far from the truth" for her story. Like Fleur, Leslie had to undergo a revolving door of nannies -- about 60. And Leslie also attended a "psychodrama" workshop for Hollywood kids, which in the novel becomes a funny-horrible sequence in which the kids are more worried about "acting" their pain rather than dealing with it.
So just who were Leslie's parents? Leslie's father, entertainment lawyer Jacques Leslie, is dead, but mother Aleen, who wrote the A Date with Judy radio show (later turned into a TV sitcom, a comic book and finally a movie with Elizabeth Taylor) as well as other movie studio scripts, is still on hand to demonstrate the writer's inspiration. Aleen appeared at the Dutton's book signing -- but not before considering wearing a tiara. She also signed some of her daughter's books herself. "She told me, `After all, I'm the star of your novel," daughter Leslie told PW, in the wry tone that also marks her book.
Even PW got the "star" treatment. "My real mother, Aleen Leslie, would prefer that her age be left unmentioned," Leslie wrote us after an earlier version of this story ran (with Aleen's age) in our online newsletter PW Daily. "She still lives in Hollywood, after all."
