Lent has written features films, like “Hellseeker,” and writes books. His first book, “Breakfast with Sharks,” based on the business side of screenwriting, came out in 2004.
Two years ago, Lent decided to write a fourth book of fictional Christmas letters and put it online.
An editor from Simon & Schuster in New York saw it and ordered it.
The company bought the rights in 2006 and released it in time for this holiday season under the title “Christmas Letters From Hell — All the News We Hate from the People We Love.” It’s now No. 2 on Amazon.com’s best-selling list for holiday books.
It was just the project senior editor Amanda Patten was looking for.
“I’ve wanted to do a collection of family holiday letters,” she said.
“I personally am always entertained by these in-depth newsletters. They’re very funny to read. I think people who send them don’t realize how funny they are to other people.”
For legal reasons, they couldn’t publish real letters, so the next best thing was a spoof of the common themes of holiday letters, she said. All of the letters come from Lent’s imagination.
“I think he’s hilarious,” she said. “That’s why we signed him up.”
Annual Christmas letters seem to have a certain form, Lent said. When they try to be funny, they’re usually not, and often are unintentionally humorous. They are more like annual reports to shareholders, he said.
“There are pie charts, growth charts on their children and medical charts on the state of someone’s sciatica,” Lent said. “And a collection of new prestige items — cars or boats they’ve acquired over the past 12 months.”
