Former model Amanda Kerlin dishes on the fashion industry in her debut novel, SECRETS OF THE MODEL DORM, co-written with Phil Oh. Here, Kerlin jumps from the catwalk to talk with BOOKGASM about the fictional exposé – your basic field day of sex, drugs and haute couture.

BOOKGASM: How you decide to go from “I lived this” to “I need to write about this”?

KERLIN: It was always something we joked about while we lived in the model dorm – “Oh, we totally have to write a book about this” – but it wasn’t until a year later that I guess the stars were aligned and we both had a bit of free time on our hands. And the success of shows like AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL, 8TH & OCEAN, PROJECT RUNWAY, etc., inspired us to get off our asses and strike while the irons were still hot.

BOOKGASM: The book is clearly marked as a novel, but how much of the fiction is based in fact?

KERLIN: Much of the story is actually based on fact, but taken from several points in her career. But pretty much every character or scene is inspired by reality; it’s just the timeline that was mostly fictionalized. I mean, living in a dorm with a rotating cast of crazy beauties – it would be impossible not to have a bunch of juicy stories to tell.

BOOKGASM: Speaking of that, did you experience anything in the model dorm too salacious or outrageous to write about, or was it a case of “anything goes”?

KERLIN: We pretty much have our scandalous bases covered: coke snorting, backseat blowjobs, impotent club owners, binge-drinking models, coercive agency owners, nympho Mormon teens – you know, the usual. We figured we’d just throw it all out there, and if it didn’t pass our publisher’s legal review, then we cut it. But pretty much everything passed, except for the part when … oh, wait, never mind.

BOOKGASM: Have you experienced any fallout from people you know who perhaps didn’t like the way they were portrayed, whether or not they correctly assumed they were the ones on which the characters were based?

KERLIN: Well, “The Agency” is obviously a wee bit upset at us for writing the book, but the agency owner in the book is really a composite of all the booking agents Amanda has dealt with throughout her career, so one couldn’t pin the “villain” in the book to any one real-life character. But as for the other models, most of them got shipped back to the Ukraine or Latvia, so we haven’t seen them since they left the dorm anyway. And either way, their grasp of English was a bit dubious, though we did sell the Russian translation rights, so I think maybe we’re going to be getting some angry e-mails from Svetlana sometime soon.

BOOKGASM: Do you have plans to do another book in this vein or to venture into other subjects for your next novel?

KERLIN: Another book in the series would be great. There were so many times recently when we’d go, “Oh, shit, remember the time that … damn, that would have been perfect for the book!” If our book does well sales-wise, we’d love to do a sequel. We’ve also had a few meetings with producers about a film/TV version, so hopefully a series of MODEL DORM books could be a reality. –Rod Lott

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