Erica Kennedy.

Journalist Erica Kennedy's first novel, Bling!, about the hip-hop scene, scored the unusual distinction of being bought simultaneously for a book and a movie by Miramax. The story tells of a mogul of the trendy music scene who sets out to make a megastar out of a small-town singer. The books is "brilliant and unputdownable," says Miramax Books editor-in-chief Jonathan Burnham, who made the book deal. Noted in Publishers Weekly, He compared it to an African-American Valley of the Dolls."