Candy Spelling
* 5/2/09 2:00 PM at Borders Books – Stockdale highway. Bakersfield, CA.
Carole Gene “Candy” Spelling (born September 20, 1948) is an American author. She is the widow of Aaron Spelling.
Candy Spelling, author of STORIES FROM CANDYLAND (St. Martin’s Press, April, 2009), had a 50-year hiatus from writing. In the meanwhile, she excelled in school cooking and sewing classes, was a cheerleader, model, interior designer, married twice, had two children, became one of Hollywood’s most-famous wives, built the largest home in Los Angeles, ran a gift store, designed dolls and jewelry for cable shopping networks, and performed public service work.
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Candy’s first published work was 1957’s “How I Gave My Father An Ulcer,” a letter to her father apologizing if food she made using the Betty Crocker junior baking set he bought her gave him an ulcer. Her parents thought the letter was worthy of publication, and submitted it to the local Los Angeles newspaper. It ran, and readers were glad to learn that Candy’s father did not have an ulcer. Happily, she continued baking and went on to excel with a clear conscience as a Home Ec major in junior and senior high school.
Fifty years later, Candy was asked to start “blogging.” After looking up what that was, she began with celebrity website TMZ.com, offering advice and counsel to troubled young celebrities. She then became a columnist for The Huffington Post and a contributing editor to Los Angeles Confidential Magazine.
Now, two years later, her first book has been published and became a national bestseller within days of reaching stores. The book spent two weeks on the NEW YORK TIMES bestseller list and entered the LOS ANGELES TIMES list the first week of May. It topped the bestseller list at local store, Book Soup, for two weeks, and booksellers from Sony eReader to Barnes & Noble to amazon.com and Borders reporting STORIES FROM CANDYLAND’s rise up the charts.
“I was married to one of America’s greatest storytellers, a man who helped define pop culture for decades,” Candy says. “Aaron loved hearing my stories, but I never thought about writing them for anyone else. Now that I have written my book, I wish I would have started earlier, so Aaron could have read the stories.”
STORIES FROM CANDYLAND is a confection of stories and adventures in Candy Spelling’s magical life, with tales and revelations ranging from how her shyness made her hide out in Rock Hudson’s bathroom; a family vacation to Europe that combined a train trip, White House visit, ocean liner and 52 pieces of luggage; how she relies on her dogs’ good judgment to help her evaluate people; sharing parenting advice she received from experts such as Dr. Spock and Mr. Spock; how she created a modern-day Hollywood mogul’s office, and more. Her stories trace Candy’s pop culture influences and how they influenced her life with Aaron Spelling, motherhood and everyday experiences.
One look at the library of Candy Spelling’s Los Angeles home tells a visitor all he or she needs to know. The beautiful room has more bookshelves than can be easily counted, and each is filled with leather-bound scripts that make up the thousands of hours of television and films created by her late husband, television’s most-prolific writer and producer, Aaron Spelling.
References: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/8944/
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