One of my early projects for this website was to put together a list of books about Guiding Light. It took longer than I thought to find, read, and review each one so I decided to do something I thought would be faster. I decided to put together a list of the fake books that only exist in Springfield. I thought this would be easier to find than the real books, but it’s proven a far harder a task than I thought it would be. Tonight I’m offering up an update of my original post on Blake Marler’s books. I’ve discovered several things over the years that I’ve included as updates to that post, but I think it’s time to reorganize and repost what I’ve found.
Blake Book Signing
Blake “Chrissie” Thorpe Marler, first driven to write while she hung out pregnant at the Bauer Cabin (not wanting Ross to realize he was the father of her baby since she wrongly believed Holly and Ross had developed a romantic relationship at that time). Eventually Blake produced two best-selling novels. Subsequently Blake uses that fame in her investigations aka snooping (like when she discovers Gus’s true identity during Danny’s murder trial). She later used this experience to serve as Henry “Coop” Cooper’s book agent and was considering writing another book herself when the show ended.
I kindly had Blake’s titles confirmed for me by welovekeifer They were published under the pen name Darlena LaCrosse, originally this was to keep Ross from realizing Blake was the author and she kept using the name for her second book to cash in on initial fame.
Blake’s Writing
One True Love – Set during an approximately World War II era romance, OTL told a fictionalized account of the Hoss story where they get a happy ending. Blake’s versions of Holly and Ross often appeared before her on screen to act out scenes from the book as she wrote it. They even talked to her to comment on her writing and how realistic or unrealistic it was and what she should be writing. Blake called the Holly character Clarissa, the Ross character Armand, and the Blake character Christina. Holly accidentally got hold of some chapters and the book was first published as a serial story in the Springfield Journal. Ross eventually realizes Blake wrote the book and deduces to look for her at the Bauer cabin finding her at the cabin just in time to help deliver their daughter, who they name after the Holly character in the book, Clarissa.
Hearts Alone – (Don’t expect this part to make sense – it was just plot point so swallow hard and just accept it. ) While looking around for a love story to tell in her second book (rather than use any of the incredible Springfield love stories – Manny, Bloss, Quola, and Jeva spring to mind as great novel possibilities) and after discarding writing about Cassie & her experiences with Richard (which Blake had done at least some preliminary work on – see below), Blake chooses to focus on the story of Selena Davis’s (recently revealed mother of Drew Jacobs, currently dating Buzz Cooper) hidden past which involved a long term affair with Danny’s father Miguel Santos (who was married to Carmen at the the time) which produced a much talked about, but never actually seen on screen son. This let us have the few glimpses we had of Miguel on screen. Sadly we’ll never know which image of Miguel was closer to the truth, Carmen’s or Selena’s as we see and hear of him chiefly through their memories and each has a lot of their own self-image tied up in how they saw Miguel.
Unfortunately, Blake failed to adequately disguise the people involved in the book and almost immediately everyone figured out it was about Miguel Santos. That the woman was Selena took a little longer to come out, but out it came with Maria Santos (aka Abuela) realizing Selena was the woman. It’s less clear that Carmen realized it (she was busy with her own troubles at that time) and the goons after Selena were unspecific about who gave the orders. Blake has a book launch party for it at Company and begins her investigation of Gus there. She later apologizes to Danny if the book brought up bad memories. Danny told Blake he had heard from many people it was a good book, but that he hadn’t read it himself because he didn’t want to look back on that part of his life. He felt only bad memories and revelations waited there (and by this point who could blame him) and he was much more interested in his future with Michelle than in revisiting his father’s past. This was during the time that Bloss and Manny were the closest, but sadly they never even really acknowledge the important beat of them being once and future step-siblings and therefore in-laws.
The cover above is Hearts Alone. The image above was the closest thing to a clear shot of the cover. It says Darlena La Crosse on the top above the sunset and Hearts Alone below. Attend Blake’s Book Launch Party for the book here:
https://glmanny.wordpress.com/2015/01/26/blakes-book-launch-party
Apparently Blake used that early research on Rassie to produce a short story she published on her author’s website:
True Romance – SOMEDAY MY PRINCE WILL COME: Cassie’s Story – A web publication
http://web.archive.org/web/20021001072758/http://www.soapcity.com/gl/behindthescenes/blake_marler/romance.html
Blake’s Author Website
Thanks to Soap Opera 451 for putting me on this website.
A second archived version with a different letter from Blake:
Blake’s Author Bio
http://web.archive.org/web/20021015001920/http://www.soapcity.com/gl/behindthescenes/blake_marler/bio.html
Blake Marler’s Web Diary – Tory Granger
http://web.archive.org/web/20030205231959/http://www.soapcity.com/gl/behindthescenes/blake_marler/diary.html
Scenes from the Show
Conversation about book
Ross Discovers Blake is Darlena LaCross.
https://glmanny.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/ross-realizes-blake-darlena-lacross
Ross discovers that Blake being Darlena means he’s the father of her baby.
https://glmanny.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/christmas-1999
Robansuefarm is the handle of one of Manny and Guiding Light‘s biggest fans following in her family’s footsteps of Guiding Light fandom since 1939. This blog is an effort to make it easy to find Guiding Light and especially Manny online. Check back here for her blog, find fanfic previews and fake WSPR newscasts on her YouTube, find podcasts that look back to old shows and audios of her fanfics on Blog Talk Radio, and finally follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
Tags: Blake Marler, Blake Thorpe Spaulding Marler, Bloss, Carmen Santos, Danny Santos, Darlena LaCrosse, GL, Guiding Light, Holly Norris Bauer Thorpe Lindsey Reade, Hoss, Michelle Bauer Santos, Miguel Santos, Ross Marler, Selena Davis
Glmanny's Blog 
January 5, 2016 at 1:50 am |
[…] in and asks Maria if she knows what this book is about and holds up a copy of Blake’s novel, Hearts Alone. She acts dumb and he tells her that it is a story of a mob wife having her husband killed because […]
June 30, 2021 at 8:25 pm |
Why write a love story about your love and his mistress? And then go and name your kid after the character of said mistress? Because that makes sense.
Not.
July 1, 2021 at 1:16 am |
It really never did make sense at all. I kind of thought it was a call back to when they did something similar when Phillip wrote his novel. I did like the characters answering back and commenting on what she was writing.