Rick Springfield to publish wacky novel ‘Magnificent Vibration’

Pop star and actor Rick Springfield will publish his first novel, “Magnificent Vibration,” in 2014, and it looks like it’s going to be pretty wacky. That’s despite its mainstream pedigree; “Magnificent Vibration” is coming to us from Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

Here’s Touchstone’s description: “[T]he novel portrays a hero who has hit a dead end in his life, but who serendipitously receives a 1-800 phone connection to God via an inscription in a mysterious self-help book that may just give him a shot at saving the planet. Magnificent Vibration is a potent tour de force that is by turns hilarious, poignant, spiritual, over-the-top, and deeply meaningful.”

I don’t doubt that Springfield has the capacity to write well. His memoir, “Late, Late At Night,” was a bestseller. And like everyone else who listened to his hit “Jessie’s Girl,” I learned the word “moot” from him. How many pop stars write songs that send you to the dictionary? Rick Springfield tops that very short list.

“The only good grades I ever got in school before I was kicked out were for creative writing,” Springfield said in his publisher’s announcement. “I thought that fiction might be in my future but then my career took a different path once the Beatles showed me what a blast being in a band could be. Writing my memoir ‘Late, Late at Night’ reminded me how much I love the craft. So I decided to give fiction a shot again. Magnificent Vibration is the result. I’m still not quite sure where it came from, but once I got going, it practically wrote itself. I’ve heard writers I admire speak of that phenomenon, so maybe I’m on the right track.”

Or maybe not. The announcement for “Magnificent Visions” is sending up wacky red flags. The connection to God is a rather tired trope -- but by 1-800 number? Does anyone under the age of 30 know what an 800 number is? That it comes in a self-help book is a little wacky; that he has to save the planet on top of that, well, we’re going far into wacky-land.

Not that it matters what I think, “Magnificent Vibrations” will be published by Touchstone in May 2014.

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Carolyn Kellogg: Join me on Twitter, Facebook and Google+