'Sex and the City' author Candace Bushnell is hacked, excerpt of her new novel leaked online
Candace Bushnell's computer was hacked by Guccifer, who previously claimed responsibility for posting former president George W. Bush's art online.
Candace Bushnell, who is serving as executive producer for the CW series 'The Carrie Diaries,' a 'Sex and the City' prequel, discusses the show during a TCA panel.
Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
“Sex and the City” writer Candace Bushnell had the first 50 pages of her new novel leaked online after hacker Guccifer made his or her way into her e-mail and posted the novel excerpt as well as other materials online.
The hacker, who has hacked into other well-known figures’ computers and posted information online about former president George W. Bush’s artistic efforts, posted the novel excerpt online, then tweeted about it from Bushnell’s account.
“Here you can read my last book 'killing monica' first 50 pages; enjoy as long as you can!” Guccifer tweeted from Bushnell’s account.
The hacker then uploaded screenshots of Bushnell’s correspondence with her agents as they tried to decide what to do, according to Gawker.
“The pages I sent Heather and Deb Futter at Grand Central Publishing from my new book, Killing Monica, have been HACKED… in other words, the beginning of the new book is now online for free,” Bushnell wrote in an e-mail to her agents.
The excerpt from the book, currently titled “Killing Monica,” features a woman named Pandy, who is telling a cab driver about her problems, including her divorce, as the driver takes her to the airport.
The pages were made available to the public through a link on the tweet made by Guccifer that led to a Google Drive account. The account contained screenshots of the manuscript’s pages.
Manuscripts leaking online are nothing new, of course. O.J. Simpson’s book “If I Did It,” which detailed how Simpson would have performed the murders of which he was accused if he had, in fact, committed them, was leaked online in 2007. Also in 2007, parts of the last book in the “Harry Potter” series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” were posted online before the book’s July 2007 publication.
“Twilight” author Stephenie Meyer found parts of her manuscript of the book “Midnight Sun,” a re-imagining of the book “Twilight” from hero Edward Cullen’s point of view, had been posted online in 2008 and Meyer abandoned work on the manuscript after the leak, writing on her site that she felt “too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun.”
More recently, “Girls” creator, writer and star Lena Dunham had her 66-page book proposal posted online after she submitted it to Random House and, after the website Gawker posted the entire proposal on its site, Dunham’s legal representation asked that the proposal be taken down. Gawker complied but left excerpts of the proposal in its article.