involved with someone else when she
met her future husband, was molested
by a stranger at a nude beach, and was
propositioned by an elderly French
duke after lunch at his country estate.
PASCAL That’s absolutely true. I can
see him now, standing on the bed
with his robe open: “Let’s f---!” I
can’t tell you how stunned I was.
Fearless
(1999)
Pascal’s second-most-successful YA
series tells the story of Gaia Moore, a
17-year-old girl who does not feel fear.
PASCAL I thought to myself, “What if
a girl was born without the fear gene?
Wouldn’t that be fantastic?” Courage
is a very important thing to me; I
never think I have enough of it. And
fear is something I have too much of.
I remember there was a skier called
Hermann Maier, and he took incred-
ible risks—I thought, “There’s a
person who if he’s not born without
fear completely, it must be so tiny.” I
just fell in love with that idea, and
that’s when I wrote Fearless.
Fearless ran for five years and 36
installments—like SVH, Pascal cre-
ated the stories while ghostwriters
wrote the books—and Simon & Schus-
ter debuted a spin-off series, Fearless
FBI, in 2005. Gaia even got her
own TV show...almost. In 2003, The
WB announced a series based on
Gaia’s FBI adventures, but the drama
(starring Rachael Leigh Cook and
exec-produced by Jerry Bruckheimer)
failed to jell creatively and never
made it to air. For that, Pascal is
grateful. The author is now working
on a new adaptation of Fearless—but
it’s not for the page or the screen.
PASCAL [The TV show] had it all
wrong. They had a Gaia who was
almost silent. I talked to them about
it—I sent endless emails, which they
probably put in the garbage. It was
really just so wrong, and Gaia was so
terrible. I don’t know what they were
thinking! At the end it was so bad,
[Bruckheimer] put it in the can,
which is where it has stayed. I wrote
him a letter and said, “Thank you.”
Playwright Jon Marans and I have
written a musical called The Fearless
Girl. Right this minute! We’re just a
couple of weeks from recording the
music. Jon and I wrote the book and
the lyrics, and Graham Lyle, who
wrote several Tina Turner songs, he’s
written the music. It’s really exciting.
It’s about Gaia—she’s outspoken and
tough. She’s outrageous, she’s incor-
rigible. She is the nightmare teenager
with no fear—and because of that,
because she doesn’t have the fight-
or-flight [response], she only knows
fight. She’s not quite Superwoman,
but she’s very close. She can’t fly.
The Ruling Class
(2004)
As one of Pascal’s only YA books that
wasn’t part of a series, The Ruling
Class—about a teenager named
Twyla who clashes with a nasty clique
of girls at her new high school—was
overshadowed by a similarly themed
pop culture phenomenon.
PASCAL I saw something on TV
about “mean girls” [a phrase popu-
larized by Rosalind Wiseman’s 2002
book, Queen Bees & Wannabees],
and I thought, “That’s great!” I sat
down and started to write Mean
Girls. I was halfway finished [with
the book] and then [my agent] Amy
said, “Bad news—Tina Fey is shoot-
ing a movie called Mean Girls.” So I
had to rename it The Ruling Class.
[Being] first is crucial, and I
wasn’t. I still think that message,
that the strongest way to defeat a
bully is in unity, isn’t emphasized
enough. I think it should be taught
in schools, because not only would
it be effective, it’s exciting. It’s like
the army of the good.
The Legacy of
Sweet Valley
At 81, Pascal remains busy. In addi-
tion to the Fearless musical, the
author has an adult novel coming
out next year, and she also recently
I WANTED TO
END SWEET VALLEY
AFTER 20 YEARS,
WHEN IT WAS
STILL STRONG
AND LOVED.
revised the book for Mack & Mabel,
the 1974 musical written by her late
brother, Michael. (New York’s
Encores! theater series will stage
the production in February.)
Though she has no plans to revisit
SVH, over the years Pascal has
grown to appreciate the series in a
deeper way.
PASCAL I never really had the
respect for Sweet Valley that I had
for my other YA books. I felt it was
a kind of soap opera, and that was
kind of a lesser thing. I was wrong,
because it had [an] enormous
effect on people. Essentially it was
very important and deserved
[respect]—now I see it. At least a
quarter of the fan mail that I got
started off with “I used to hate to
read...” It was sometimes from the
kid, and sometimes from the par-
ent, who would say, “She used to
hate to read...” That’s the best thing
that happened [with Sweet Valley].
That and money. �
Francine Pascal
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