About the Author

Short Bio

Bill Fuller (Redondo Beach, CA) is a television writer and producer. As a producer, his credits include Hope & Faith, For Your Love, and Living Single. Before becoming a producer, he was the executive story editor on the long-running series Night Court and story editor for Newhart, as well as a writer for numerous other television series for Lifetime, Paramount, USA, NBC Universal, HBO, Disney, and others.

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Long Bio

I was seven years old when I took my first stab at writing, penning a sequel to the movie Mary Poppins with Crayola crayons and construction paper. I eventually traded it to a friend for three packs of Batman cards, but the fire had been lit.

Growing up in a small town in Ohio, I honed my writing skills by working on school newspapers and yearbooks and writing the occasional play to perform with like-minded kids in my neighborhood. In junior high, I co-created an independent newspaper called Laugh Out that poked fun at everything in our world. I’d like to say the administration shut us down, but our little paper perished due to lack of interest. But it was fun for the whole two issues it lasted.

After graduating from high school, I went on to the University of Notre Dame, where I convinced myself I was going to shift gears and become a lawyer. At the time, it seemed like a more surefire way to make a living than writing, but once again my passion got the best of me. I wrote for the university’s newspaper, magazine and yearbook, for which I eventually served as editor.

A month before graduation, I sat my parents down and told them I’d decided I didn’t want to be a lawyer. I wanted to be a journalist. I can still remember my mother’s loving words: “Journalism is a dirty, lousy profession.” She may have been right, but she didn’t deter me from pursuing that path. So, during my year of shame at home in Warren, Ohio, I got a job at a weekly newspaper writing news stories and movie reviews for the astronomical rate of $5 per article, prompting my mother to add “cheap” to her rant about journalism. I also applied to graduate schools and was accepted to Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Journalism.

After earning my master’s in newspaper journalism, I set out to get a job in my chosen field. Three months and a stack of rejection letters later, I headed to Los Angeles to spend time with a Notre Dame buddy and apply for work. I’d always wanted to see L.A., so the prospect of getting a tan and finding a job appealed to me. And yes, maybe I had a hidden agenda, knowing I’d be in the city that was home to the entertainment industry.

A few weeks into pounding the pavement, seeing the sights and sleeping on my friend’s couch, I landed a job in public relations at Toyota’s national headquarters just south of Los Angeles. During my five years at Toyota, I made several lifelong friends, wrote speeches for executives, assisted with the Toyota Grand Prix, edited the company’s magazine and helped recruit basketball players for the company’s world headquarters in Japan. I also developed a reputation as a screw-up, thanks to pratfalls I used to make around the building with a friend.

That friend and I turned out to have another thing in common. We both had the crazy dream of writing for movies and television. So on a hot day in August, Jim Pond and I bade Toyota farewell and set out on the mission of breaking into a business everybody told us was “closed to outsiders.” For awhile, that certainly seemed to be the case, especially since we didn’t have a single contact in the entertainment industry. But a year later, after spending almost as many hours scarfing the free food at happy hours as we spent at the computer, we wrote a spec script that got us our first agent followed by our first in a series of freelance writing jobs. That, in turn, led to our first staff job, on a quick-to-disappear sitcom called Normal Life. Thankfully, the story didn’t end there. We were hired as staff writers and eventually producers on shows including Newhart, Night Court, Living Single, For Your Love, One on One and Hope & Faith. That was an incredible time. Collaborating with a group of equally zany people to put a show together every week was the job of my dreams.

Eventually, my writing partner and I made the mistake of growing older, and the jobs slowed down. I considered trying to get a regular job, but my track record persuaded me that I was never going to be happy doing something conventional. So I found another outlet for my passion—writing novels. To make it a bit easier on myself, I decided to make my first novel an adaptation of a screenplay we’d written back in the day called Gipp, a true story about a star-crossed romance involving the legendary Irish halfback, George Gipp. I spent six months molding the screenplay into a novel I’d eventually call The Forever Year, and another six months making it halfway decent. Then I began the arduous process of getting an agent. I was lucky enough to get one, but despite his best efforts, he was unable to sell the book. So after lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth, I started a second novel, A Girl’s Guide to Landing a Greek God, and lo and behold, it sold.

These days, I’m working on a sequel to that novel while enjoying life in Redondo Beach, California. I have a golden retriever named Tria who’s finally getting used to seeing me yell, throw things and otherwise practice the art of writing a novel. Other than writing, I love running on the beach, watching college football, going to movies and reading fiction.

Eventually, I got that very first novel back from my childhood friend with the Batman cards. The Mary Poppins sequel now proudly graces my coffee table.