Beverly Bartlett

Who is Beverly Bartlett?

As a serious journalist for more than 15 years, I covered funerals, tragedies, tax increases, school board scandals, horse races, the occasional heart-warming feature and even war. (From the domestic front.) Working mostly for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky, I interviewed visiting vice presidents, traveling first ladies and Fabio. It was all terribly exciting.

But I did not get to cover even one royal wedding – although I did have the opportunity to ask Sarah Ferguson about her dieting tips many years into her career as a former princess.

You can see why I felt something was missing. Ever since I was a child in small-town Missouri – waking early to watch royal weddings a half world away – I believed in my heart of hearts, that there was a great story to be told about a truly remarkable princess, one who is lovely and good-hearted and spunky and not always so sad. One who, perhaps, loved Bruce Springsteen as much as I do!

I looked around the international stage and sensed it would be a hard story to uncover. In Louisville, it is hard enough to scare up a princess to share my daily tea, much less tell me the secrets of her heart.

I finally realized that if I were going to tell the story I wanted to, I would have to make it up!

That was the beginning of my first novel, Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle, which was released by 5 Spot, an imprint of Warner Books, in March 2006. (Warner is now called Grand Central Publishing.)

The second book, Cover Girl Confidential, was released in March 2007. It is styled as the autobiography of Addison McGhee, who came to the United States as a child and grew up to be America’s Sweetheart. So how did she end up in prison and awaiting a deportation hearing? She explains the whole thing in this tell-all confessional!

When not writing fiction, I am a freelance editor and writer for corporate and non-profit clients.