Francine Pascal, the creator of the Candy Valley Excessive e-book collection, has died. She was 92.

Her daughter Laurie Wenk-Pascal mentioned she died of lymphoma at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan on Sunday, July 28, The New York Occasions stories. ipromiseyoumedia reached out to Pascal’s writer.

Born in Manhattan on Could 13, 1932, Pascal grew up in Jamaica, Queens, and located success with the younger grownup collection in 1983. Pascal created Candy Valley Excessive, which consisted of 181 books, and wrote the primary 12 books. Quickly, a crew of writers would keep the tales of similar twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield within the fictional Los Angeles suburb of Candy Valley.

“Candy Valley is the essence of highschool. It is that second earlier than actuality hits, whenever you actually do consider within the romantic values — sacrifice, love, loyalty, friendship — earlier than you get jaded and slip off into maturity,” she mentioned of the collection in an interview with ipromiseyoumedia in 1988.

Earlier than Candy Valley Excessive hit cabinets, Pascal studied journalism at New York College. She then labored as a contract author for True Confessions, Trendy Display, Cosmopolitan and Girls’ Dwelling Journal.

She married her first husband Jerome Offenberg, and the 2 divorced in 1963. The previous couple shared three daughters. Their daughter Jamie Stewart died in 2008.

Pascal later married John Pascal a yr after her and Offenberg’s divorce. The 2 had been working collectively on the Sixties cleaning soap opera The Younger Marrieds, which jumpstarted Francine’s writing profession, and have been collectively when he died in 1981. Talking with ipromiseyoumedia in 1988, Francine remembered her late husband as “a beautiful man, a beautiful father, a fantastic author.”

Along with writing for the small display screen, Pascal wrote a number of books for adults, together with one nonfiction e-book in regards to the Patty Hearst trial, The Unusual Case of Patty Hearst, in 1974. She additionally penned grownup novels Save Johanna! in 1981 and If Needs Had been Horses in 1994, a fictionalized memoir about her life together with her late husband, John.

By the late Nineteen Seventies, she ventured into the world of young-adult novels with Hangin’ Out With Cici in 1977 — which later acquired a sequel and was developed into a day TV particular. Then, in 1979, she launched My First Love and Different Disasters and the next yr, The Hand-Me-Down Child.

Then, after one dialog with one other editor, Pascal was impressed to jot down a teenage model of the hit CBS collection Dallas and shortly realized she had a success on her arms with Candy Valley Excessive.

The hit e-book collection adopted Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, whom she described to ipromiseyoumedia as “probably the most cute, dazzling 16-year-old women conceivable.” After she wrote the primary 12 books, a number of spinoffs adopted, together with Candy Valley Twins, Candy Valley Youngsters and Candy Valley Junior Excessive.

The e-book collection, which might go on to promote 200 million copies, centered on a particular demographic of readers: teenage women. Throughout her 1988 dialog with ipromiseyoumedia, Pascal mentioned, “These books have uncovered a complete inhabitants of younger women who have been by no means studying. I do not know that they are all going to go on to Battle and Peace, however we’ve created readers out of non-readers. In the event that they go on to Harlequin romances, what? They will learn.”

After she stopped writing the books herself, she would draft outlines for different writers to observe and depend on her “bible,” which described the characters and their interior webs all through the lots of of books.

The Candy Valley collection first led to 2003 — 20 years after its debut. However in 2011, it restarted with Candy Valley Confidential, set 10 years after Candy Valley Excessive.

By no means miss a narrative — join ipromiseyoumedia’s free every day neighborhood to remain up-to-date on one of the best of what ipromiseyoumedia has to supply​​, from celeb information to driving human curiosity tales. 

Pascal can also be survived by her two daughters, six grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren.