I’ve seen people talk about actors and artists that had a terrible time.
My own would be Anne Rice. She wrote Interview with the Vampire after her young daughter died of Leukemia. Then her husband suddenly died of a brain hemorrhage. I suspect her Christian, anti-fanfic phase was a result of mental illness and manipulation from the publishers, although I don’t think she ever apologized.
I don’t know why “of course they’re not great, she’s a new writer”. Plenty of new writers and first novels are amazing. And it wasn’t a case of readers demanding a trilogy, she signed a lucrative publishing deal to write a trilogy on the strength of the first book. She didn’t stumble into it, she wanted to be an author and managed it. She just managed it with work that is generally held to be low quality. Stuff of nightmares? Come on, now :)
I really love it when people prove my point exactly. Just because she made money doesn’t mean that I still don’t feel kind of bad for her. It was very, very fashionable at one point in time to shit all over her, and while I’m not defending the quality of her books, it on a human level, that’s gotta feel awful.
It was like a teen cultural movement to absolutely hate on her. It had to feel awful
I haven’t proved your point exactly, or even vaguely. Your assertion - that she was somehow forced into writing more books than she was ready for by a sudden passionate fanbase - is simply incorrect. She chose to accept a contract that obliged her to turn her single book into a trilogy.