We were treated to Nicole Richie’s latest masterpiece yesterday – click here for a refresher –and of course you know that that Snooki troll has signed a book deal, and now, via Just Jared I just had the great pleasure of reading an excerpt from Hilary Duff’s upcoming novel.

It’s called Elixir. Of course it is. And it’s about a girl, a photojournalist, who has famous parents and must uncover a mystery and fight her feelings for a hot guy while doing so.

I couldn’t breathe.

Wedged in the middle of an ocean of people, I gasped for air, but nothing came. The heat from a million writhing bodies radiated over me, their sweat weighing down the air. I searched anxiously for an escape, but painfully bright lights strobed on and off, clouding my sense of direction.

I was losing it. I was going to pass out.

I forced in a deep breath and tried to talk myself down. I was fine. It wasn't like I was anywhere dangerous. I was on a dance floor, in the most exclusive nightclub in Paris. People lined up all night in the freezing cold for even a chance to stand where I was now.

It didn't help. The techno beat thrummed into my brain, five notes repeating over and over and over until I knew I'd have to scream. The crowd pushed even closer and I couldn't move my arms, could barely turn my head, and I had a sudden vision of this being forever, an eternity packed in this tiny space as confining as a coffin.

Like my father's coffin. Did he have a coffin? Was he even buried? Did anyone even know when he died? Was he alone, lost in the jungle? Was he attacked by animals? Was he found and tortured? Had he prayed for us to save him before it was too late?

That did it. Now I was hyperventilating. I closed my eyes and forced my arms up and apart, swimming for dear life through layers of writhing, grinding bodies. I nearly cried when I felt a burst of winter air on my face. I'd made it out to the balcony. I staggered to an open love seat and leaned against its back as I drank in gulp after gulp of fresh air.

I was back; I was okay. I took another deep breath, this one calm and centering, and looked out over the nighttime Paris skyline, the Eiffel Tower bathed in yellow lights. It was beautiful. Automatically I reached for the camera bag dangling at my hip, but of course I hadn't brought it to the club. I sighed and let my hand drift to the silver iris charm I always wore around my neck. I ran my fingers over its three upright petals and three drooping sepals. The petals represent faith, valor, and wisdom, my dad had said when he fastened the necklace around my neck on my fifth birthday. You already have all those things in spades, little girl, he'd continued, then knelt down to look me straight in the eye. But when things get tough and you forget, this necklace can remind you.

Click here if you want to read the entire first chapter of Elixir by Hilary Duff, not a fragrance.

I mean... it doesn’t bring on the fontrum as hard as Nicole’s. (And they have Joel Madden in common too!) As Duana just noted as well in the Teen Reads article, whatever gets kids reading... I guess. I just...want it to be harder. I don’t want Hilary Duff, Nicole Richie, and Snooki for f-ck’s sake to be able to share a noun with Zadie Smith or Lionel Shriver. Author.

Can we come up with another word?

Because On Beauty could not have been written by just anyone. And, well, Priceless and Elixir probably could be. In not that much time either. Let me try the same cheese for 10 minutes.

Lotus
Deep in the Yunnan rainforest, hidden behind a thousand year rock, and only found when the sun’s reflection bounces off the mountain at exactly the right angle, there is a cave that holds my secret. It is a secret that has determined the course of my life, that has taken away from freedom, that has informed all of my choices, choices I’ve since learned were never my own.

In my heart, in my darkest lonely moments, when the moon is not so much a friend but a judgement in the sky, I struggle with my fate, and I bitterly curse the blood that runs through my veins, blocking me from the life I have dreamt of, that remains forever out of my grasp.

But I cannot deny the pull. It’s a thrum from deep inside my body, beyond the soul, beyond consciousness, beyond the beyond and what can rationally be explained: it’s a mystical yearning that was embedded into my story even before my story was written, that has brought me to this place today, ready to claim my birthright, ready to defend to my very last breath, that which has bound me, and that from which I can never walk away.

The Lotus will only answer to me. And it’s waited 20 years for me to find it.

Attached – Hilary Duff leaving the hair salon yesterday.


Photos from Wenn.com