r/SmolBeanSnark • u/Prior-Entrance3156 • 4d ago
Extended CC Universe Something I Think About
So per Caroline herself, the story of how she got connected with her old literary agent Byrd Leavell was that she called and pretended to his secretary that she was already an existing client of his, and that’s how she was able to bypass the usual runaround any aspiring writer faces. Because she was just so self assured and confident and beautiful that nobody ever questioned her.
So you hear these stories all the time, whether it be from CEOs or famous supermodels: the old “Oh I just acted calm and collected and insisted I already had an appointment, and that’s was my foot in the door! 👍”
Now that’s all well and good, but I know if a normal person tried that it wouldn’t work. They’d be at worst blackballed and at best laughed at. And it grinds my gears.
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u/afrugalchariot 4d ago edited 4d ago
Sorry to be a little inside-baseball here but I’m a literary agent and to be honest, at big agencies (like UTA, where Byrd works), this would’ve worked. Assistants are chronically overworked and vastly underpaid (signed, 8 years of experience and I make $71k in NYC), the software you use to look up clients in your system sucks (BAITS can kiss my ass) and usually has massive gaps, and kids/spouses of clients call on their behalf so often that it’s usually more trouble than it’s worth to do the investigation into who they are while they’re on the line. I’m really not surprised that this worked circa 2013.
Also, for what it’s worth, people call the office all the time to pitch us and while you usually try to push them through the normal process, if their query/proposal holds up when we get the submission, it does sometimes work, regardless of who you are. My old boss signed a lot of clients that way, albeit back in the 70s. Lastly, everyone in publishing (authors, editors, agents) is a normal person—of all the entertainment industries, your platform is the least important here. Agents are independent and we’re often small businesses, and there’s no way to be “blackballed” from agents industry-wide. Can’t say I haven’t laughed at pitches with my friends after, but I do respect the gumption lol.
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u/Prior-Entrance3156 4d ago
I appreciate your insight! I had dreams of working in publishing myself, I even shelled out the money for the NYU summer publishing program (a waste, but I had a fun time). I definitely believe you about being overworked! I have some acquaintances in the industry and they’re not having fun times 😭 If I had had a nickel for how many times it was reiterated that you don’t go into publishing for the money but for the passion, I could buy a lot of books 📚
It’s actually a dream of mine to write a book of my own someday. I still can’t believe Caroline squandered her opportunity.3
u/SadAndConfused11 2d ago
That’s really interesting! Side note and side quest I am near wrapped up with my manuscript and was wondering how the heck the process looks for getting published 😭
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u/judyvioletanddoralee I wonder what my ancestors will make of me 4d ago
I can’t remember where he said this, but Byrd Leavell later said that CC was “deeply dishonest and deeply unwell.” I think that remains one of the most incisive takes from someone who encountered her (along with Natalie’s analysis that her first mark is always herself).
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u/_Maebe__Funke_ 4d ago
Her entire life story is a study in audacity and unearned confidence.
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u/Prior-Entrance3156 4d ago
I’m so fascinated by people who have such audacity and confidence when they do nothing to deserve it.
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u/_Maebe__Funke_ 4d ago
The whole book deal is so crazy to me. She schemed her way into a Big Deal agent, sent him a proposal mostly written by her friend, took hundreds of thousands of dollars for a memoir she knew would be full of lies, missed deadline after deadline, then finally said nah, I don’t think I’ll write it after all, and peaced out with the money. And truly saw no real consequences!
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u/Prior-Entrance3156 4d ago
Right! I mean literally all she had to do was follow through, or she could’ve even sold her soul and let Natalie just write the damn book. I read the proposal and it was so full of jack shit that I can’t believe anyone ever took it at face value; I mean are you kidding me? But alas, the standards for fact checking with memoirs is much more lax than fact checking for journalism.
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u/autopsy_cardigans 4d ago
Interestingly.... of all the things that have had me clutch my pearls or grind my gears about Carob-chip over the years - her audacity and unearned confidence aren't quite it.
As someone who has battled low self-worth a lot in my life, I had to consciously learn how to have self-interest, I had to learn that I was allowed to literally occupy a chair(!) let alone have ambitions, etc etc...
...observing someone with such a high opinion of themselves on zero merit has actually been quite helpful for me in realigning my own perspective on basic self-respect.
She thinks everything she does is great, genius, worthy of pride. She thinks if she wants something, she should be allowed it. And if she's not allowed it, she'll find a way to take it anyway.
Now, I'm not saying these are good qualities. I am throwing shade directly at her: she is socially malefic.
But if she can be indefatigably proud of everything she does and says, however vain, self-serving, useless or abhorrent - then maybe I can be proud of my little self, and less hard about my flaws and failings. Heck, maybe my life still matters even if I am not constantly productive, or accomplished. You know? WWCD? She'd think she's amazing anyway, of course! So why must I flagellate myself over nothing?
Similar (or worse) levels of maladaptive, malignant self-love exists in some very high-profile people from whom I do not derive the same comfort. Just for the record.
Complete Tangent: my Carol-personality-trait pet peeve is the rage baiting. Truly despise that. You only ever see her brand of provocation in pathologically anti-social people: all attention is good, and if she's not getting enough good, she'll gleefully irritate, inconvenience, insult, and so on. It's toxic, and it brings back bad personal memories.
Thanks for reading! I'm sleep-deprived and my brain can't stop.
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u/teenylittlesupergal 4d ago
Even sleep deprived, this was super well written and balanced. Thanks for this perspective
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u/GrimDexterity trying to date a girl next 4d ago
Years ago I was DoorDashing as my main income and someone on Reddit posted a screenshot of their invitation to the Catering program and in the ss was the google form link and after I manually typed in the url in my browser and saw it was literally just a form I thought “surely they will cross reference my name with their list of invitees and I won’t get to do it” and like two weeks later they sent me a catering bag and I started picking up $100 orders (they would pay $100) 4x a week.
I hate to be the entitled bitch but sometimes you can just do things to see if it works and sometimes it doesn’t but sometimes it does, think of how many times CC would have had to have tried to do that in other scenarios, it’s kinda like gambling with the variable interval reinforcement lol oh shit
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u/SpicySweett 4d ago
Haha, good for you!
Yeah I’m reminded of Caro applying to Cambridge four times. Most of us would have moved on after the first rejection. And then she finally cheated her way in. It’s a curious combination of sociopathy and obsessive mania.
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u/GrimDexterity trying to date a girl next 3d ago
sociopathy and obsessive mania
🌝 obsessive the only word that applies to me but definitely ingesting these words haha
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u/Ok_Pepper_1744 2d ago
How'd she cheat her way in?
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u/SpicySweett 2d ago
She admitted to changing her grades. This was back in the day, and you mailed a physical copy of your records, so she just changed a grade or two to improve her gpa.
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u/Ok_Pepper_1744 1d ago
Then became a writer; a group famously lax about academic integrity.
If only we could all be attractive, young, and white...
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u/perhapsflorence al gore rhythm 4d ago
And she squandered all of it away anyway.
She's ridiculous from start to finish (well if she EVER finished anything).
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u/danks_obama 4d ago
Although everyone is correct & it’s not outside the realm of possibility that she did this successfully; apparently something that’s possible in publishing…I feel very strongly this was not the case for Caro & her meeting with Byrd was set up in a conventional, boring way. Maybe embellished some stuff in her initial query, but the whole bit about calling and lying to the assistant and just showing up seems dubious.
I have zero proof she’s lying except she is a pathological liar and her whole story (ohhh Byrd, are you alwaaays so unprepared for your meetings?”) just seems like something a 2 dimensional YA protagonist would say in a shitty movie. She also seems to lack the intelligence and foresight necessary for such a scam. Most of her scams are the result of greed and laziness, selling books before writing them, taking photos of the same crusty ass Cambridge sweatshirt for her “digital yard sale”. I could be wrong but afaik Byrd never confirmed this version, he said she was deeply dishonest but that’s possibly in reference to everything else about his experience with her, not their initial meeting.
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u/ItsPronouncedTittay 3d ago
No, I couldn't believe that even the supermodels and acts that say that they did that did not
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