He's Bacckkk!

Thursday's New York Times reported that author James Frey has just signed a deal with HarperCollins for his next novel titled Bright, Shiny Morning.

I first wrote about Frey in January 2006 here. I did another piece about a year ago here.

You remember Frey. He wrote a "memoir" called A Million Little Pieces published by Random House in 2003. Two years later, in October 2005, Oprah recommended the book, sending it straight to the top of the best-seller list.

There was only one problem. Significant portions of the book were simply not true. Angry readers sued. One reader in particular--Oprah--took a strip out of Frey's hide in public on her show. While I couldn't find a video of the show itself, I did find this Daily Show clip.

In settlement of the lawsuits, Frey and Random House agreed to pay $2.35 million to consumers, to pay the lawyers' fees for both sides and to make a donation to charity.

According to the Associated Press, Riverhead Books (a division of Penguin) dropped Frey's two-book contract after he admitted "extensive falsifications in a second memoir, My Friend Leonard, published by Riverhead ..."

I find it really interesting that Frey is now being published by a THIRD of the big six or seven publishing houses.

I'll be waiting to see what happens next.