Who is Eden Francis Compton, anyway?

Spoiler alert, I wrote BELLE.

My book, BELLE, which comes out on February 4, 2025, has the name Eden Francis Compton on the cover as the author, with my name underneath. A lot of people have asked me who Eden Francis Compton is, and there’s been some confusion on why I share credit with her.

The first time I tried to explain it didn't go that well. After about 10 minutes of going around and around, I realized they were thinking Eden Francis Compton was an actual person. They wanted to know the details of working with this author. What other books had she written, how did I know her, was she one of those writers like James Patterson who has a fleet of writers to churn out books, and how much leeway did she give me.

But the truth is that there is no Eden Francis Compton.

The name is a pseudonym for William Roetzheim and Randy Becker, of Level 4 Press, publishers of BELLE and many other books. According to the Level 4 website, their mission “is to create entertaining, thought-provoking books that are destined to be great films and television series. With approximately 50 writers, a dozen editors, and creative professionals from the publishing and entertainment industries, each book is targeted to a specific film market and crafted to ensure a consistently high quality.”

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Their business model is to create stories, hire writers to write those stories, publish the book, and then pitch that property to become a film or series. Randy and William create story ideas in many genres under many pseudonyms. Eden Francis Compton is one of them. Here’s her profile picture on their website:

And her* profile says, “Eden Francis Compton enjoys exposing the dark underbelly of humanity while diving deep into the human heart, the human psyche, and the wonderful absurdity of life itself. Eden is a published and anthologized poet, with several literary awards for poetry. Eden's debut novel, Emily (Level 4 Press, 2022), was praised for its ‘madness’ and ‘lovely language.’”

I learned about Level 4 Press in the early fall of 2020 from a writer friend. I went through the application process, which involved submitting a writing sample, and was hired in October. They had several stories they needed writers for, and gave me the option to choose. I don’t recall what the other two were, except they were genres and characters I didn’t have any interest in.

But BELLE jumped at me for a few reasons. First, I love the 1890s time period. It’s called the Gilded Age, but it was “gilded” for only a small percentage of the population. It’s more than a hundred years ago, but in a lot of ways it’s very modern and similar to our own time. What was life like for everyday people in the 1890s?

BELLE is more violent than my usual reading fare, but I do find myself intrigued by crime, especially cons. I can’t lie to save my life, so people who lie with abandon are absolutely fascinating to me. It was an absorbing challenge to get into the mind of this woman who was determined to succeed and had no compunction about committing evil acts to make it happen.

I’ve been saying it took me 3 years to write, but as I’m looking back at my records I realize that’s wrong. I started writing BELLE in the fall of 2020 and turned in the final draft in March of 2024, so that’s actually 4 years. Four years of writing for an hour or two every morning before work. Then several months of proofreading passes, a layout pass, some final tweaks, and voilà, off it went to the printer.

Circling back to the Level 4 Press business model, yes, they are shopping BELLE around to try to get it made into a film or series. I don’t have any hand in that process, but the better the book does, the more interest there will be in cinematizing it. At one point, William told me that 50 preorders would garner interest. So if you would like to see BELLE on the silver screen (or your 50-inch at home), you can help by spreading the word and encouraging people to preorder.

I think this newsletter is long enough, so I’ll say good-bye here. In future newsletters, I can go into more detail about the process of writing a book to spec and answer questions like, How much detail did they give me? (A lot.) How much leeway did I have to change the story? (Almost none!) Did it take any creativity at all? (Tons!)

If you have questions or comments, I’d love to hear! I’m new to Substack and I’m still learning, but I believe you can leave a comment below. You can also find me on Facebook, Instagram, and my website jennifergossduby.com.

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*I call Eden “she,” but you’ll note that the profile doesn’t use a pronoun and her name is a little ambiguous. “Eden” is typically a female name, but it can also be male name. And “Francis” is the male spelling of the name (as opposed to “Frances”), but is Francis a first name or last name? So it’s an open’s name to me, I go with “she.”