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October 27, 2008 11:34 AM

GUEST BLOG: Andrew Crofts

Last week, an article in the Guardian cast aspersions on the celebrity of a book character, Steffi McBride's. Steffi's creator, Andrew Crofts, wasn't best pleased! Over to Andrew...

In the Guardian Books Blog, Linda Jones has suggested that Steffi McBride, whose rise to fame I have chronicled in The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride, is a "D-list" celebrity – but Steffi is an A-lister from head to toe, as anyone who has seen her YouTube performance on the Steffi McBride website can see with their own eyes.

She makes daily appearances in everyone’s homes on The Towers soap opera and on the covers of all our favourite newspapers and magazines; she won a Bafta for goodness sake and had a Christmas number one – would Ms Jones call Kylie "D-list"?

Just because Steffi has had so many lurid and revelational stories written about and by her obviously dysfunctional friends and family, that should not in any way reflect on her status in the celebrity listings.

Having spent so much time with her myself I believe passionately that Ms McBride is without question an icon of our times and the story of her rise to fame is a fable of mythic proportions. She is a national treasure and I implore people to visit her website, see her talking for themselves and make their own judgements.

So why, people ask me, did I decide to encourage Steffi to have her own website, talk to the camera and put the result on YouTube, organise writing competitions and a celebrity quiz and then to twitter and chat on Facebook? The answer is simple – I thought it would be fun. A book like Steffi’s may have serious lessons in it about how to become famous as well as heart-breaking examples of some of the pains and perils that go along with being a much-loved household name, but above all else I wanted the book to be enjoyable for her to work on and enjoyable for readers to discover.

The vast majority of people buy books that they have heard of through “word-of-mouth”, but “electronic word-of mouth” vehicles like Trashionista are an even more powerful way of spreading the message to the most important people; the ones who want to know the truth about what it actually feels like to be Steffi McBride.

I wanted as many people as possible to hear about Steffi’s story as quickly as possible – and that means I have to ask her to network in any way she can – something, fortunately, that she is very good at.

Look out for a competition to win copies of The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride - coming soon!

Came straight to this page? Visit www.trashionista.com for more female fiction news, reviews and interviews.

Posted by Keris on October 27, 2008 in Guest blogs | Permalink

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