Though I still haven't finished this book, the first 180 pages are truly insightful. Perhaps the most pleasant surprise about Jeffrey Stepakoff's "Billion-Dollar Kiss" are the numbers. Exact numbers. How much each task is worth within the industry. Good read. Definitely recommended.

Billion Dollar Kiss is one part memoir, one part crash course in television history, and two parts pure fun. Stepakoff tells of his life in Hollywood--from his days living in a garage and subsisting on meals scraped from the leftovers on other people's plates, to his days flying back and forth from L.A. to North Carolina in a tiring attempt to smooth down tensions on the set of Dawson's Creek--in a voice so vibrant and engaging that the book becomes nearly impossible to put down. When he talks about the elation he felt after selling his first script, the story is so enthralling that you feel the rush, too. When he describes what it's like in the "writer's room" as a show's writing staff struggles to come up with 22 episodes for a season, it feels as though you're right there in the room with them.

Intertwined with his own story is the story of the television industry itself. Material that could be dry and boring in another writer's hands becomes fascinating
in Stepakoff's. It doesn't hurt that lots of juicy behind-the-scenes information is sprinkled throughout.

This is a quick read and definitely worth while for anyone interested in television, and especially for those who dream of possibly writing for TV one day themselves. (And for those interested in the current writer's strike, this book will make a lot of things clear for you, and explain the years' worth of events leading up to this whole situation.)

Verdict: Highly Recommended. ( )