Movie Star Joins Writers for Atria Novel

by Felicia Pride, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 4/26/2007

What happens when you pair a husband and wife writing team with a movie star to coauthor a detective novel? That's what S&S/Atria Books will find out this July when the house publishes Casanegra: A Tennyson Hardwick Story, a murder mystery co-written by actor Blair Underwood, American Book award–winner Tananarive Due and her husband, Steven Barnes, a New York Times bestselling writer.

Casanegra will be released in July with a first printing of 100,000 copies, and the book has been chosen as the July pick of the Essence Book Club. Malaika Adero is the editor for Due and Underwood, but Casanegra was conceptualized outside the Atria offices. Underwood purchased the film rights to Due's 1998 novel, My Soul to Keep (HarperCollins), which is currently in pre-production. An artistic relationship was formed and Due, Underwood and Barnes kicked around an idea for a detective novel before bringing it to Adero.

Casanegra is a tale about Tennyson Hardwick, an actor who falls into a new career as a private investigator and must solve a murder that he's been framed for. While Due and Barnes are the lead writers, Adero says Underwood brings a unique sense of character development—not to mention raising the book's appeal as a film project. "The book has been designed as a series," Adero said, "and will likely translate to film with Blair being the prototype for Hardwick."

Atria is working with Underwood's publicist to arrange selected appearances with his coauthors. Currently, Underwood is shooting his feature directorial debut, an independent drama, Bridge to Nowhere, and he has a recurring role opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the CBS comedy, The New Adventures of Old Christine.

This is Underwood's second book project. In 2005, Atria published Underwood's Before I Got Here, a collection of stories and anecdotes about the wisdom of children that's in the tradition of Bill Cosby's Kids Say the Darndest Things. The book has about 50,000 copies in print, and Adero said the book "sold very well."