Manhunting rocket jockey Lisa Marie Nowak may have destroyed her reputation, her ties to NASA, and at least one good pair of diapers, but a quick-acting true crime scribe is already banking on a book deal about Nowak's stellar breakdown.
In one of the fastest sales in recent history, Diane Fanning and her agent, Jane Dystel, peddled a proposal to St. Martin's Press (her longtime publisher) yesterday for an undisclosed sum, according to Publisher's Marketplace and GalleyCat. "We started pitching it literally yesterday morning," the author told Radar from her Texas home. "But my agent really did all the hard work."
Fanning's editor, Charles Spicer, declined comment, but the writer's track record with St. Martin's is a long one. She has penned more than six true crime titles for the house, including the recently published Baby Be Mine, which covers the Bobbie Jo Stinnett/Lisa Montgomery case in Louisiana. Under the Knife, the story of psuedo-doctor Dean Faiello and his many victims, will hit stores in April of this year.
"This isn't like the other true crime I've done," Fanning says. "It doesn't involve murder." Then again, none of her other subjects wore a nappy to the scene of the alleged crime.