Allen, Lloyd

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Allen, Lloyd

PERSONAL:

Male.

CAREER:

Writer, producer. Creator of music videos and Internet entertainment projects.

WRITINGS:

Being Martha: The Inside Story of Martha Stewart and Her Amazing Life, John Wiley (Hoboken, NJ), 2006.

ADAPTATIONS:

Being Martha was adapted for audio, Blackstone Audio, 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Lloyd Allen's first book, Being Martha: The Inside Story of Martha Stewart and Her Amazing Life, is a biography and overall profile of Stewart, Allen's one-time neighbor in Connecticut. With the spate of negative stories accompanying Stewart's arrest and conviction for insider trading in the ImClone business, which ultimately sent the entrepreneur to prison, Allen decided to set the record straight on a woman whom he personally found friendly and practical. His profile of Stewart is based on insider interviews not only with Stewart, but also with her mother, her daughter, Alexis (with whom he is a personal friend), her sister, Laura, her brother, George, and the many friends and associates she has had over the years. Allen takes the reader through Stewart's early years as a model, then stockbroker, and caterer, showing how this Connecticut homemaker could become a successful author and one of the world's most successful businesswomen, heading her own company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Allen also follows the Stewart trial and deals with her time in prison and how these experiences affected her. Reviewing Being Martha in Booklist, Barbara Jacobs felt the book provides "a flattering portrait," but that "nothing is probed in detail."