by Catherine Shu

Never judge a book by its cover.  Or, for that matter, by its author’s name.

Take, for instance, Francine Pascal, the author of the seminal teenybopper series “Sweet Valley High.”  According to her biography, Pascal is a middle-aged woman with thick white hair who owns a home in the South of France and has three children.

But on the bookshelf, however, “Francine Pascal” is a guise assumed by a bevy of ghostwriters who can range from creative writing grads fresh out of college to freelancers out in the Midwest to Micol Ostow, a 28-year-old editor at the Penguin Group in New York City.

If teens become particularly attached to a series, as they did to “Sweet Valley High,” their vociferous reading appetites can demand a new title each month.  “No one person can keep up with that,” Ostow says.  And when a publishing house decides to create a new series, they will sometimes invent a pseudonym for a non-existent author.  This way all the books in the series will be shelved together, no matter how many different writers it ends up having.

Teen fiction and ghostwriting have a long history together.  For example, Carolyn Keene, the author of the “Nancy Drew” series, never existed.  She was a pseudonym used by many authors, both men and women (if Carolyn really existed, she’d be over 100-years-old by now!).

Ostow has ghostwritten for many popular young adult series, including the tie-in novels for the television shows “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Charmed” and “American Dreams,” and Pascal’s “Fearless.”

Ostow’s first ghostwriting gig, “Wired,” the 33rd “Fearless” book, came about because she had worked extensively on the series as an editorial assistant at Simon and Schuster.  After she stopped working there, Ostow was invited back to write for “Fearless,” which details the adventures of Gaia, “a girl born without the fear gene,” because she was familiar with the series’ tone.

“The writing style developed out of the concept for the series, which is supposed to be edgy.  It’s about kick-ass girl power.  It’s the opposite of ‘Sweet Valley High,’” which is preachy and fluffy but in a good way,” Ostow says.

Francine Pascal developed the concept for the series along with Simon and Schuster editors and continues to formulate plotlines.  But, like Nancy Drew, “Fearless” has been ghostwritten from the very beginning.  Ann Brashares, herself a best-selling teen author (“Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”) wrote the first novel in the series, setting the tone for all the other books- and subsequent writers. 

Ostow got the same opportunity this year, when Penguin created “Camp Confidential,” a series about summer camp for ‘tween (the age bracket between pre-teen and teenagers) girls.  The editors came up with a name- Melissa Morgan- for an author who exists only as a byline.

As an editor, Ostow also hires ghostwriters for Penguin’s young adults division.  She pays close attention to each writer’s resume to make sure that they aren’t matched up with a series that is beyond their range.

“‘Fearless’ was edgy and had a lot of martial arts, so people who had written for ‘Sweet Valley High’ weren’t suitable because they couldn’t write fight scenes,” Ostow says.

But sometimes the demands of satisfying a teenage readership can stretch the talents of even the most accomplished writer.

“We signed up a writer for ‘Camp Confidential’ who is one of the best young adult authors out there.  But she had a really hard time because she’d never been to summer camp,” Ostow says.

Ostow describes her own entry into the world of teen fiction as a “very organic” process.  After graduating college, she started working for Simon and Schuster’s free press (trade non-fiction) department.  But she wasn’t happy there and had started looking elsewhere for new jobs when a position opened up in the young adult division.  “I had even forgotten that it was there,” Ostow remembers.  She got along really well with the editor she worked with and “just sort of stayed.”

Ostow claims that seeing her work appear under someone else’s name doesn’t feel too weird.  “Especially in the beginning because I was just starting out, and I was so excited to see something I’d written in print.”  There was one surreal incident, however.  “One day my dad opened up ‘Fearless’ number 33,” says Ostow, who refers to her books by their series numbers, “And there was a dedication to Joanna.  My dad was like, ‘who is Joanna?’  It was Francine’s niece.” 

Ostow has a teen novel of her own, the romantic comedy “30 Guys in 30 Days,” coming out in June. 

“For the most part, I would say that I care more about my writing when my name’s on the cover,” Ostow says, “Though if I turned in something that was bad that I’d ghostwritten, the editor would never hire me again.  But there is something about having your name on the cover.”