He's been called the literary love-child of Sidney Sheldon and Jackie Collins. On today's episode of Pop Confidential, Jamey Giddens and Luke Kerr welcome author JJ Salem, whose steamy new novel The Strip drops Nov. 8 from St. Martin's Press. The Strip, a companion novel to Salem's USA Today Best Sellling novel Tan Lines, brings back troubled rock goddess Billie Shelton, who has been reformed at the hands of a controlling husband and now sells out casino showrooms in Las Vegas. Billie's best friend is Kristen Fox, a popular chick lit novelist, who has a series on HBO based on one of her raunchy reads. Then there's the two womens' therapist, Jennifer Payne, a marriage and family counseling expert, trapped in her own loveless marriage. When high-priced male gigolo Cam Lawford enters their orbit, these three women find their lives forever altered.

When Salem isn't dishing his new novel, he's talking with the PC guys about the recent TV development boom for classic pot boiler novels, with ABC planning an adaptation of Judith Krantz's Scruples and NBC rebooting The Valley of The Dolls. Could Salem possibly be working on a primetime sudser of his own? You'll have to download the interview to find out.

The talented writer also dishes about the current crop of primetime soaps he's enjoying, from ABC's Revenge to The CW's Ringer. He also shares his love for classic primetime soaps like Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest and Knots Landing, all of which he writes about on his own fun blog Bonkbuster Diaries. Any fan of glossy soaps and/or raunchy beach reads should get a kick out of this interview!

Follow JJ Salem on Twitter and visit his official website for more on his must read books.

  READ MORE

While TV audiences are loving every minute of Amanda Clarke/Emily Thorne's (Emily VanCamp) deliciously-wicked plot to avenge her father on ABC's smash Wednesday night sudser Revenge, Em's antics are far from groundbreaking. The seemingly-sweet, yet deadly-as-a-pitbull socialite hails from a long line of primetime drama queens who knew all-too-well that revenge is a dish best served after dark.

10.) Amanda Clarke/Emily Thorne, Revenge

Hell hath no fury like a cherubic little girl, whose idyllic life was turned upside down. When Amanda Clarke's (Emily VanCamp) father was hauled out of their magical, Hamptons beach house and framed for a crime he didn't commit, she lost everything. Flash forward to Amanda learning the truth—that her late father's mistress Victoria Grayson (Madeleine Stowe) had conspired with her husband Conrad (Henry Cznery), and their treacherous inner circle of vipers, to make the world believe Amanda's dad David Clarke (James Tupper) had betrayed his country by funding terrorists—and it's easy to see why this particular East Coast heiress has more on her mind than Spring Fashion Week.

Now all grown up and going by a new name, butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth socialite Emily Thorne is determined to pay back all of her father's enemies one-by-one on ABC's Revenge. Whether it's drugging one of her target's soup, in order to out his extramarital indiscretions with his wife's best friend, or getting her oddball, tech wunderkind minion Nolan (Gabriel Mann) to literally computer hack apart the lives of those who cross her, Emily is proving she will stop at nothing to get justice for her father.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see if falling in love with childhood crush Jack Porter (Nick Wechsler), a townie in financial trouble;  or Daniel (Joshua Bowman), the Grayson's dreamboat scion (Or both!) will be enough to derail Emily's plans. Let's hope not, because we're having entirely too much fun watching the mega rich and misbehaving get what's coming to 'em! 

Photo credit: ABC

  READ MORE

Talk about a blast from our soapy pasts! Sexpot Morgan Fairchild has scored a guest star gig on Fox's medical drama Bones, according to TV Guide. The original Jenna Wade from Dallas, who also appeared on such sudsers as Falcon Crest, Flamingo Road and most recently The Bold and the Beautiful, is set to play a toy company owner who must contend with the remains of one of her execs being found, leading to a medical mystery on the procedural. Look for Fairchild to show up in the third episode of Bones next season.

Photo by PR Photos 

Even if you do not follow literature, you are no doubt aware that the title of this post is a phrase associated with the worst kind of lazy, pedestrian, obvious writing imaginable. "It was a dark and stormy night..." is, to put it bluntly, synonymous with the word "bad."

Bad in and of itself isn't always a bad thing, as there are varying degrees of badness from which to choose. For example, there are things that are "so bad they are good," like The Pussycat Dolls and RuPaul's Drag Race. There are other things that are really bad, like white people dancing to "Push It" and Julie Chen hosting Big Brother. Then you have things that are so atrocious, inspiring more WTF moments than a Samantha Harris post-performance interview on Dancing with the Stars that you question your sanity for sitting through it without clubbing a baby seal.

By "you" I mean "me," and it might not take too much of a stretch of the imagination to guess how I felt about Friday's abominable, lobotomized episode of All My Children that climaxed with the shooting of "a legendary character." READ MORE

Over the past few weekends we've been reminiscing about the greatest bitches from our favorite primetime soaps. We've fondly recalled Dynasty's larger-than-life Alexis Colby (Joan Collins) and Knots Landing's feline seductress Abby Fairgate (Donna Mills), but no discussion about primetime soap divas from the 80's could be complete without the most cunning, lethal, downright venomous one of them all–Falcon Crest's Angela Gioberti Channing ( the late Jane Wyman).

For nine pot boiling seasons veteran film actress Wyman (the ex-wife of then-President Ronald Reagan) ruled over the fictional Tuscany Valley wine vineyards as the indominable Angela, a woman wouldn't think twice about stabbing her own children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews in the back if it meant maintaining control of her grandfather's legacy, Falcon Crest. Some say it was The Angel Formerly Known as Lucifer in the Garden that fateful day with Eve and Adam, I say it was Angela. READ MORE

Frank Runyeon is returning to daytime, according to Soap Opera Digest.

The actor, whose soap credits include Another World, General Hospital, Melrose Place, Falcon Crest, Santa Barbara and As the World Turns, is set to play the father of All My Children's Reese (Tamara Braun), Forrest Williams.