After hearing last year about Boris Johnson’s thriller, then about Saddam Hussein’s romance novels, I got thinking about why people from all sorts of backgrounds are drawn to writing fiction. Reading them, I’m struck by two thoughts, firstly by how easy lots of professional writers make writing fiction look, and secondly by how much you can come to understand a person by the way they write.
Are there any novels you know of from unexpected authors? Have you found any that are decent as books apart from their creators? What is it about novels that draws non-writers that’s missing from, say, pottery or interpretive dance?
Hillary Clinton cowrote a thriller with Louise Penny entitled State Of Terror.
Dolly Parton collaborated with James Patterson on Run, Rose, Run
Bill Clinton collaborated with the aforementioned Patterson on “The President Is Missing”
Kareen Abdul Jabar wrote a YA fiction novel called Mycroft Holmes
Channing Tatum has written a series of children’s books and is currently hashing out a collaboration with Roxanne Gay on a romance novel.