'Glee's' Chris Colfer's YA Novel Based on His Film Due in Nov.

9:03 AM PDT 8/9/2012 by Andy Lewis

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"Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal" will extend the story of the film, which was written by and stars the young actor.

Glee's Chris Colfer, has a YA novel coming in Nov., based off of Struck by Lighting, the indie film he wrote and stars in.

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Little Brown Books for Young Readers announced today.

The book will be released on Nov. 20. The film is also scheduled to hit theaters later this year.

The YA novel follows on the heels of Colfer's just-published children's book The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell, which debuted at no. 1 on The New York Times Children's Chapter Books bestseller list.

The novel, Struck By Lightning: The Carson Phillips Journal, is not a straight adaptation of the film so much as an extension of the story told in the movie.

In a release, Colfer said, "When production wrapped, I wasn’t ready to say good-bye to these characters and was thrilled when Little, Brown asked me to adapt the story into a novel. I felt the best way to tell Carson’s story was through his critical eyes in a journal.

He further described the book as "a story about adolescence, told through the eyes of a teenager, for other teenagers.”

The movie is a dark comedy about Carson Phillips (Colfer), who blackmails the most popular students in his school into contributing to his literary journal to help his chance of getting into Northwestern University. It received a strong reception when it debuted earlier this year at the Tribecca Film Festival.

The book will be released simultaneously in print, ebook and audio.

The film, starring Allison Janney, Christina Hendricks, Dermot Mulroney, Sarah Hyland, and Polly Bergen, as well as Colfer, is also scheduled for release sometime at the end of the year.

Andrew Smith, Vice President and Deputy Publisher, and Alvina Ling, Executive Editorial Director, acquired the book for Little Brown. Colfer was repped by Coast to Coast, and Glenn Rigberg at Inphenate.