/ 5 August 2004

Pamela Anderson becomes a novelist, with a little help

Pamela Anderson has a new best friend: her ghostwriter. The 37-year-old model-actress added novelist to her résumé on Tuesday with the release of <i>Star,</i> published by Atria Books. But the former <i>Baywatch</i> babe didn't do it alone. ''The first meeting we knew it was magic,'' said Anderson about her not-so-invisible ghostwriter Eric Shaw Quinn.

Pamela Anderson has a new best friend: her ghostwriter.

The 37-year-old model-actress added novelist to her résumé on Tuesday with the release of Star, published by Atria Books. But the former Baywatch babe didn’t do it alone.

”The first meeting we knew it was magic,” said Anderson about her not-so-invisible ghostwriter Eric Shaw Quinn.

Anderson and Quinn were introduced by Anderson’s publisher after she decided not to write an autobiography, opting for a fictionalised version of her life filled with not-so-subtle coincidences.

A few examples: Anderson’s textual counterpart Star Wood Leigh is discovered on the jumbotron at a Miami Dolphins game. Anderson was discovered on the jumbotron at a British Columbia Lions game.

Star posed for Mann magazine. Anderson took it off for Playboy.

Star slept with rockers and Hollywood-types. Anderson did that, too.

Quinn sat side-by-side with Anderson at a book signing on Monday at the Barnes and Noble store in Rockefeller Centre. Anderson twirled for dozens of photographers and signed books for hundreds of fans.

Quinn seemed just happy to be there.

”This is my ghostwriter,” Anderson yelled to the photographers.

”Don’t tell anybody!”

Anderson, who writes a column for Jane magazine, took seven months to create Star. The busty mother of two sons, Brandon and Dylan, from her marriage to rocker Tommy Lee, wrote the novel on a yellow legal pad while Quinn put everything together on a computer.

”We just had fun,” Anderson said. ”It was so natural. There wasn’t one disagreement. Nothing. Now we’re just two peas in a pod. Or two nuts in a shell.”

How did the duo tackle the book’s steamy sex scenes, based on Anderson’s real-life flings with celebrities such as Scott Baio, Bret Michaels and Kid Rock?

”Eric would say, ‘OK Pamela, write some sex,”’ Anderson said.

”Then, he’d look at what I wrote and we tried to keep it serious. But then we just laughed. He’s not shy or modest.”

Neither is Anderson. She appears on the novel’s cover nude, with her ”Star” logo covering her physical assets.

”I’m naked, covered in pink and stars … looking like I’m out of my mind,” she said.

Anderson and Quinn have already begun work on the sequel.

”What are we calling it?” she asked Quinn, who sat by her side in the back of limo en route to another a book signing.

”Star Struck,” Anderson squealed. – Sapa-AP