Ellen Byerrum Novels Adopted for Small Screen
Character Appears in TV Movies as Creator Moves to Full-Time Writing
Ellen Byerrum sees herself as a reporter with another interest. She has now gone full-time from a Washington, D.C.-based trade press beat to authoring mystery novels. It is a move she spent the last few years making as she began producing books as part of a series known as Crime of Fashion.
But it was one Byerrum had to balance between her day job covering the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and later the Consumer Product Safety Commission and writing fiction when she could. She did it as long as possible, she said in an interview with Suite101.com. “It’s really left brain, right brain.”
With her hard news beat focusing on government regulation, Byerrum knew she wanted to write fiction and free herself of the need for footnotes in her books. “You’re always thinking sources and attribution and really it’s nice to make things up,” she said. Still, as a reporter, she tries to lend a certain reality to what she writes and has based some of it on research and her own experiences. “In fiction, you have to write the whole thing. In non-fiction, you can write a proposal and get a contract.”
Lacey Smithsonian Goes From Novels to Cable TV Movies
Her lead character in the novels is Lacey Smithsonian, fashion reporter for The Eye Street Observer in Washington. In June, Lacey made the transformation to the small screen when the Lifetime Movie Network broadcast two movies, “Killer Hair” and “Hostile Makeover,” on consecutive weeks based on Byerrum’s novels of the same title as part of a series of murder mysteries. Both can be viewed as well on the LMN Web site.
With the novels, Byerrum’s objective was to show a different side of Washington, not the main power players, but “kind of the people behind the power,” she told Suite101.com. “Being a reporter, [Lacey] is a kind of detective.” Because Byerrum was able to see how people in government dress as part of her work, she sought to counter the notion that some professional women were unable to dress well. In addition, Lacey was influenced through Byerrum by comic strip newspaper woman Brenda Starr and Rosalind Russell’s portrayal of Hildy Johnson in the film “His Girl Friday.”
Fashion Angle Key to Production of Movies on Lifetime Network
Byerrum’s other published novels include “Designer Knockoff,” “Raiders of the Lost Corset,” and “Grave Apparel” She sought out movie deals for her books and attended a conference with some 80-90 writers in California in 2006 sponsored by Sisters in Crime, an organization for women mystery authors, on how to sell their books to Hollywood.
At the end of the conference, everyone had five minutes to pitch their books to producers. “I could tell that I had caught them,” Byerrum recalled about her presentation. She had looked first at pursuing a theatrical movie before a producer at Lifetime became interested. A fashion connection already existed on the network with Lifetime airing ”Project Runway,” a fashion-oriented competition series hosted by supermodel Heidi Klum. She reached a deal for the two movies to be filmed back to back in Vancouver, with some exterior scenes shot in Washington, including one in which Byerrum briefly appeared.
David Hinckley, in a June 20, 2009 television review in the New York Daily News, “Lifetime’s ‘Killer Hair’ just won’t do for mystery buffs,” said some of the book’s lines suffered in the transition to a movie. He cited Lacey’s fashion-oriented comment that someone should avoid wearing the same dress to a second funeral, and simply stay away and send flowers instead. “On the printed page, that may sound breezy and witty. On the more literal television screen, it just sounds self-absorbed.”
Robert Lloyd, writing in “‘Killer Hair’ on Lifetime Movie Network,” in the June 19, 2009 Los Angeles Times, found “the mystery not especially gripping, the resolution almost arbitrary, the characters low on substance and sometimes sense,” while concluding the TV adaption was “nevertheless pretty consistently enjoyable.”
Byerrum’s Stories Reflect Parts of Her Own Reporting Career
Before she began writing novels, Byerrum wrote plays also with elements reflecting her previous years as a reporter. Early on, she covered police and sheriff beats, was a city and county reporter, and did a movie review column and photo features. Her plays were written under the pseudonym “Eliot Byerrum” because she found more men playwrights were having their work produced. Byerrum holds the rights to her novels and they could be produced as plays though any production would need her permission.
Byerrum holds private investigation registration in Virginia through a class she took for background and understanding of the field. Some PI work is similar to what investigative reporters do in knowing where to look, she told Suite101.com. She used what she learned in one of her novels, “Armed and Glamorous,” when Lacey takes a course for certification as a private detective to try to work the crime beat on her paper.
Now that she has left reporting, Byerrum said her attention shifts between what she’s working on currently and the next project. “I think I always have a structure when I start. I know pretty much who the culprit is or I discover that on the way.” She usually knows the shape of the story when she writes but always recommends learning about a subject of interest for potential material.
Author Ellen Byerrum
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"Killer Hair" by Ellen Byerrum
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