Talk:Francine Pascal

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There's a lot more about her out there...

Maybe a more experienced editor could take a go? I really don't know yet about how to make a really excellent article. I added what I could, but there is definitely more information about her personally that can be added. AmandaWins 20:06, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Question

So, did Ms. Pascal write every book? When did the ghostwriters come in? Maybe the first paragraph needs a cleanup? Thanks.71.133.137.240 06:07, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Answer

I'm assuming the question refers to Ms. Pascal's two biggest young adult series. The prevailing opinion seems to be that she did write most of the books herself, at least for the first several years of the Sweet Valley series, and for most of the Fearless series. As far as I know, there's no question that she wrote her other teen and adult novels herself. (The obvious exceptions would be individual books that she co-authored with either her husband John Pascal or her brother Michael Stewart, or both -- e.g., The Strange Case of Patty Hearst with her husband, or George M! with both her husband and brother.)

Re: the mass-market series novels, here's a Disambiguation Notice from the website LibraryThing:

Disambiguation Notice:
Laurie John, Jamie Suzanne, and Kate William are all fictional names used by Francine Pascal to represent authors of the Sweet Valley series. (But not Kate Williams, who is a real and separate person. Even though there may be Sweet Valley books incorrectly attributed to her.)

Some form of this disambiguation clarification exists on several websites that review and/or sell copies of novels in the Sweet Valley and Fearless series.

The website LiveJournal, which seems to have a different tone, asserts that all the Sweet Valley books were written by ghostwriters:

Author Francine Pascal was the creator of the Sweet Valley universe.... Each book was actually written by a ghostwriter using a fake name, such as Kate William, Jamie Suzanne, or Laurie John.

This is my personal opinion, but one rather obvious hint that some of the "ghostwriters" aren't real is their names. "Laurie John" is a combination of Ms. Pascal's daughter Laurie, and her late husband John. The same is true for "Jamie Suzanne," which is an only slightly less direct combination of her (now late) daughter Jamie, and her daughter Susan. As for "Kate William," well, those were her parents' first names. (How do I know? Click on the last external link, to The New York Times page.)

Of course, ghostwriters can use whatever names they are assigned. But are they usually assigned pseudonyms? Isn't the point of a true ghostwriter to write under the name of the presumed author? If for some reason ghostwriters are given pseudonyms, does it make sense that they would use such obvious combinations of names of the author/creator's family members?

Perhaps she used ghostwriters towards the end of the two mass-market series, but I believe that Francine Pascal wrote at least most of the Sweet Valley and Fearless novels herself. Now, is it possible that she (or her agent or publisher) wanted people to think she used other writers? That's another question.

--aps301 11:39, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

References

LibraryThing, 2005-2009
LiveJournal, Inc., 1999-2009
The New York Times, July 20, 2000

External links

"the long marriage for each"

What does that phrase mean, in this article? Equinox (talk) 23:16, 27 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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