Blogocentric Formulations

Nora Roberts, I Got You Babe

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SONG: "I Got You Babe"
ARTIST: Sonny Bono
STATUS: Deceased (skiing accident, 1/5/1998)
ALBUM: Look at Us (1965)


Today's artist is also a musician-turned-politician, albeit a slightly better-known one:

Sonny Bono started his music career as a "gofer" for Phil Spector in the early 60s, and found success with his then-wife Cher when they began performing together. Even though Bono was responsible for writing, arranging, and producing most of their songs (including "I Got You Babe" and "The Beat Goes On"), Cher received most of the recognition as a performer. Bono also played a big part in Cher's solo career, helping her with songs like "Bang Bang" and "You Better Sit Down Kids." He only had one hit song as a solo artist ("Laugh at Me") and eventually returned to working with Cher on The Sonny and Cher Show, a variety show of modest success that was briefly canceled when the duo divorced, but returned for a brief run shortly thereafter.

After experiencing frustration with the political process in trying to open a restaurant in Palm Springs, Bono decided to run for mayor and won the election, serving from 1988 to 1992. He played a major role in establishing the Palm Springs International Film Festival, which is still held every year in his memory. After his four-year stint as the Mayor of Palm Springs, he ran as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, eventually losing out in the primary to Bruce Herschensohn who went on to lose to Democratic candidate Barbara Boxer (our current "junior" Senator who has been in office ever since). Two years later, Bono was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for California's 44th District (serving the South Los Angeles communities of Carson, Compton, and San Pedro). He served in that capacity until his death in 1998. He died from succumbing to injuries as a result of impacting with a tree during a skiing trip. Sonny Bono remains the only member of Congress to have also had a #1 pop single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Bono's daughter Christy (with his first wife Donna Rankin) has been a fixture in the Long Beach community where I lived for almost ten years while my wife and I attended college. She had a restaurant called "Christy's" just a couple blocks from our apartment, and later another restaurant called "Bono's" less than a mile away. Both restaurants prominently featured memorabilia that featured her father.

                   

PROMPT: A popular or classic author I'm embarrassed to admit I've never read is...


Even though the same could be said of Danielle Steel and Jackie Collins who have each sold more copies of her books, I'm going with Nora Roberts for this one. I don't feel bad about not having read strictly romance authors like Steel and Collins. But she's written 49 mysteries in addition to her nearly 100 romance titles, which makes her a more prolific mystery writer (even as a secondary genre) than most authors who spend their entire lives writing in the mystery genre alone. This is the first novel in her "in Death" mystery series, which is written under the pseudonym J.D. Robb:

ASIN: 0425148297	Naked in Death (In Death, Book 1) Product Type: Book
	Amazon's Price: $ 9.99 Buy Now!

As of 2011, Roberts' books have spent a combined 861 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, including 176 weeks at #1. She was the inaugural inductee to the Romance Writers Hall of Fame. Roberts had long wanted to write mystery novels, but her romance publisher at the time didn't want to create marketplace confusion by having her write in two different genres. When she eventually moved to Putnam in 1992, the publishing company was unable to keep up with her prolific output, so they encouraged her to adopt a pseudonym so that they could publish more of her work each year.

In an interesting turn of events, Nora Roberts began her career submitting manuscripts to Harlequin, but was repeatedly rejected. The publisher said that her work showed promise, but they already had their "American" writer, a bestselling author by the name of Janet Dailey. In 1997, though, Janet Dailey admitted to plagiarizing Roberts' work, settled with Roberts, and had her titles pulled from shelves.