The columnist E Jean Carroll, who last month won $5m from Donald Trump after he was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming her, is co-writing an online romance novel with the former US president’s niece.
Carroll and Mary Trump are also working with the law professor and author Jennifer Taub, the New York Times reported.
“It’s completely unlikely and weird and counterintuitive,” Trump said of the novel, which the Times said will be released on Substack over the next year and which the authors hope will find a publisher.
The project grew out of a pandemic-era Zoom knitting circle, the Times said.
Called The Italian Lesson, the novel will tell the story of “an American woman with a secret past who tries to reinvent herself in Tuscany, where she opens a cafe and meets a handsome local vineyard owner”.
Mary Trump is the author of two bestselling books, the memoir Too Much And Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man and The Reckoning: Our Nation’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal, which considers the impact on America of her uncle’s rise to power.
According to the Times, Trump started writing the romance novel on her own. Carroll, the longtime author of an advice column in Elle magazine, helped “with tips for writing bedroom scenes and realistic romantic scenarios”, the paper said.
Trump told the Times the novel was “not soft-core pornography” and argued with Carroll over whether the novel could be called “erotic”.
“I don’t have it in me,” Trump said.
“Mary, you do,” Carroll countered, adding: “I think we are going to have some very delicious scenes, as only Mary can describe them, so they’re going to be a little weird, but trust me, there are going to be some erotic scenes.”
Carroll’s case against Trump arose after she described her mid-1990s assault in a 2019 book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, an allegation he denied. She is now seeking new damages from the former president, over his remarks about her after the ruling against him in a New York court last month.
Taub is a law professor at Western New England University in Springfield, Massachusetts. Her latest book is Big Dirty Money: Making White Collar Criminals Pay.
Carroll told the Times the Substack novel would be “a no politics zone”, adding: “We’re giving you an escape.”
Mary Trump said she was not worried that co-writing a romance novel might detract from her role as a commentator on politics and her uncle.
“Some people said we’re tarnishing the brand – what brand? I don’t really care what anyone thinks, or if people go, ‘Oh, it’s a romance novel and you’re not a serious person.’
“If you want to insult me, if you want to be mean to me, that’s what Twitter is for.”
