Hollywood Nightmare

By Kristina Adams

The world according to Trinity Gold...

 

Does Trinity Gold have it all? She's hot, she's talented, and the whole world loves her.

 

But she's full of secrets.

 

Not just hers, but those of her friends, costars, and, most importantly, her enemies.

 

What will she reveal? There's only one way to find out…

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kristina Adams
• Release date: Jul 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201893507

Book preview

ALSO BY KRISTINA ADAMS

What Happens in Hollywood Universe

What Happens in…

What Happens in New York

What Happens in London

Return to New York

What Happens in Barcelona

What Happens in Paphos

Hollywood Gossip

Hollywood Gossip

Hollywood Parents

Hollywood Drama

Hollywood Destiny

Hollywood Heartbreak

Hollywood Romance

Standalones

Behind the Spotlight

Hollywood Nightmare

Boxsets

Welcome to the Spotlight

What Happens in… books 1 and 2

What Happens in… books 3 - 5

What Happens in… the Complete Collection

Hollywood Gossip books 1 - 3

Afterlife Calls (as K.C. Adams)

The Ghost Hunter’s Haunting

The Ghost’s Call

The Mummy’s Curse

The Necromancer’s Secret

The Witch’s Sacrifice

The Mean Girl’s Murder

Nonfiction

How to Write Believable Characters

Writing Myths

Productivity for Writers

Hollywood Nightmare

A standalone novel from the What Happens in Hollywood Universe

Kristina Adams

Copyright © 2023 Kristina Adams

All rights reserved.

This book or any part of it must not be reproduced or used in anyway without written permission of the publisher, except for brief quotations used in a book review.

First published in 2020. This edition published in 2023.

ISBN: 9798201893507

Cover design by Kristina Adams. Stock images by Suherman and Labib_Retro from Adobe Stock.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

This is a standalone story from the What Happens in Hollywood Universe, but it will make more sense if you’ve read either the What Happens in… series or Hollywood Gossip books.

It centers around the main antagonist from both series, sharing her point of view in the style of a fake celebrity memoir. This is the darkest book in the What Happens in Hollywood Universe, so please proceed with caution if you’re sensitive to themes of rape, drug/alcohol addiction, or child neglect.

PROLOGUE

People think when you’re rich and famous, you have no reason to be depressed. Or angry. They think everything in your life is gold-plated. But we all know the story of King Midas. Having a golden life has consequences. It comes with sides of loneliness. Of heartache.

Being a celebrity is no different. On the outside, we must make everything look perfect, while on the inside, we’re falling apart. Why do you think so many celebrities succumb to the pressure?

Nothing has changed since Peg Entwistle threw herself off the Hollywood sign in the 1930s, not really. We’re still expected to perform like robots with unlimited energy. If we fail to fulfil those expectations, we’re replaced. Because who doesn’t want to be famous? Who doesn’t want an endless stream of money? It sounds like the answer to all of life’s problems, but it creates just as many as it solves.

A study done a while back showed that after you reach a certain amount of income, your happiness stagnates. Real happiness isn’t about money—it’s about purpose. It’s about finding a reason to exist. But nobody likes to hear that. They want to hear that all their problems will be solved if they just have more money. If they’re more famous.

But if your purpose in life is to be famous and have more money, you’re asking for depression and anger. Fame and money are addictions like anything else. The more you have, the more you need them to sustain you. You need more attention (good and bad). You need more lavish tchotchke dotted around your house to prove how rich you are. You need more, period.

I guess that’s the trap I fell into. I became addicted to a life of fickle fame and fortune. Sometimes I wasn’t really sure if it was what I wanted, but it was what I needed to survive. As soon as the spotlight started to focus on someone else, I got jealous. I’d do anything to get the attention back on me.

But when the attention was on me, I felt like I was bacterium under a microscope. Everything I said and did was dissected to the Nth degree. I kissed a girl. Was she my new girlfriend? I was in a movie with a guy. Was he my new boyfriend? I couldn’t just go out and have fun—people were always looking for an underlying motive. If I tried to let my hair down, I’d be pushed back into the box that society had created for me. A box that I never asked for, I might add. But the further into the box I go, the bigger it gets and the harder it is to get out. It’s like trying to find the edge of the universe when you’re in the middle of it and it’s constantly expanding. It feels like an impossible mission.

I still haven’t broken out of my box, but I hope that reading this book will show you that I’m so much more than the (ex) daughter of a movie producer and drug addict, a movie star, or a singer. I am Trinity Gold.

ONE

I was born Trinity Baum Sorrell. My father already had two children from his previous marriage.

I don’t remember my mother; she died when I was two. My mother’s family blamed my father. My father blamed me, since she’d died while holding me.

Had she gone to see a doctor, they could’ve told her that her body was shutting down. They could’ve saved her. Maybe. Can you ever save an addict?

*

I wasn’t my mother’s first child, but I was the first one to survive. Even before you factor in the decades of drug taking, she was told she’d never have kids. She was also told having kids would fix all her problems. She was told she needed to settle down with a nice man and have a nice baby and they’d live a nice life with nice things and everything would be nice.

We think Women’s Problems aren’t understood now, but things have come a long way just in my lifetime. It was in the 1980s, before I was born, that my mother was told all of this. She was even told it by