Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner is writing his first novel, publisher Little Brown said Wednesday. Heather the Totality will be published in fall 2017.
Told from multiple perspectives, the story centers on teenager Heather and the people, including her parents, who compete for her affection. Little Brown describes it as “a dark fable set in contemporary Manhattan … about three people from two worlds who are on a collision course in pursuit of a beautiful child.”
Weiner told The New York Times that the genesis of the story was a tense conversation he witnessed between a teenage girl and a companion in Manhattan one day. Weiner thought she was in some kind of “animal danger” and scribbled a short note about the scene to himself.
Little Brown editor-in-chief Judith Clain said the story evoked Henry James with an “Edgar Allan Poe feel.” Weiner added that he had no immediate plans to try to bring Heather to the screen, but “it would make a good movie.”
Weiner, of course, is best known for Mad Men, which ran seven seasons on AMC before ending in 2015 and earned him nine Emmys. Since the show concluded, he has directed an episode of Orange Is the New Black. Weiner told the Times that he’s also working on a play and more fiction.
