Posted on 12/02/2004 7:25:55 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (AP) - Infighting and power, alliances and revenge - it's just another day at the nation's capitol. Now California Sen. Barbara Boxer has mined her workplace for a suspense novel in which the main character is an activist senator who does battle with right-wing ideologues.
That may sound familiar to anyone who knows the liberal Democrat's record. But Boxer said the as-yet-unnamed novel, her first, is purely a work of fiction, though the characters and scenes are drawn from her 12 years in the Senate.
"A lot of what is in the book clearly comes from my world," Boxer said. "The clash of the political and the personal, it became very interesting to me, and the role of the media in all of this. And so I took all of those things and I wrote a story."
The novel is set for publication on Election Day 2005 by Chronicle Books in San Francisco. It tells the story of Ellen, a social activist who runs and wins a Senate seat after her husband, the original candidate, is killed. The third main character is an ambitious, right-wing journalist.
Boxer began writing the book longhand in 1999 on flights to and from California, and teamed up with San Francisco novelist Mary-Rose Hayes a year ago to finish it more quickly.
"I thought, by the time I get this done I'll be in the nursing home," Boxer said.
Boxer declined to disclose how much she was paid as an advance. Senate ethics rules allow lawmakers to keep profits from books they write, but Boxer said she hasn't decided what to do with the proceeds.
Boxer is only the latest member of Congress to try her hand at fiction. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., published a pair of thrillers in the mid-1990s - also featuring a female senator - while former Sens. Gary Hart of Colorado and William S. Cohen of Maine teamed up on a couple of spy thrillers in the mid-1980s.
Early in her career Boxer was a journalist for a small weekly in Marin County. She just won re-election to a third Senate term. She said writing the novel was an enjoyable escape from reality, but was hard work.
"What you learn when you write a novel is it's not about writing a novel, it's about rewriting a novel," she said.
Oh boy, I bet this will be an intellectual tour de force.
A bit of wishful fantasizing there, Babs? How's your marriage, BTW?
Ahh, Boxer's don Quixote to Mikulski's Sancho Panza, fighting the windmills of right-wing fanaticism.
How many abortions does she have?
And so I took all of those things and I wrote a story.
So that's what she's been doing all these years. She is just like John Kerry, no meaningful legislation in twelve years, just a lot of grandstanding.
My first reaction upon reading this is:
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!
What a piece of crap that book will be! Can you imagine that ditzy broad writing a novel???????
In the book does Ellen, the politician, tell the right-wing journalist to "shove it"?
In the end, the heroine is ground up to harvest her stem cells.
Hey Boxer? Save us all the trouble and quit your day job, so you can spend more time in your little suspense fantasy world.
Too funny. Massive free time with massive egos...watch out!!!!!!!!!
She has been in fiction since she entered politics
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