Rick Copp was two years out of New York University's Tisch School of
the Arts when he was tapped at 24 years old to become a staff writer on
the enormously popular NBC sitcom The Golden Girls in 1988. It was a
once in a lifetime opportunity, especially for a boy from Bar Harbor,
Maine, who grew up dreaming of living underneath the famous Hollywood
sign, a dream that became a reality soon after his arrival in Los
Angeles. He spent the next fifteen years writing for a wide variety of
feature films, television series and animated shows, even occasionally
acting in some episodes.
In 2001, Rick decided to fulfill another goal and write a mystery
novel. He had been playing around with a character named Jarrod Jarvis,
a former child star on a hit '80s sitcom called Go to Your Room! who
had his very own catch phrase, "Baby, don't even go there!" Jarrod's
unbridled curiosity led him to investigate a series of sordid Hollywood
murder mysteries in between acting auditions. The first book The
Actor's Guide to Murder (Kensington, Nov 2003) was very well received
and was followed by two sequels The Actor's Guide to Adultery
(Kensington, Nov 2004) and The Actor's Guide to Greed (Kensington, Nov
2005), which was nominated for a LAMBDA Literary Award for Best
Mystery. He wrote a stand alone book called Fingerprints & Facelifts
(Kensington, July 2007), an homage to his favorite TV series as a
child, Charlie's Angels. A crack team of female private investigators
known as the LA Dolls, who had a very successful detective business in
the late '80s were long retired and living separate lives, but were
forced to reunite when someone from their past began targeting their
children. Lifetime Television optioned the book for a TV movie and
hired Rick to adapt his own novel as a teleplay.
Another childhood obsession of Rick's was collecting comic books and he
was able to realize yet another dream by writing a graphic novel
Celebrity Zombie Killers (Ape Entertainment, March 2010), best
described as "a twisted, hilarious mash-up of MTV's The Hills meets 28
Days Later."
In 2010, when Rick's sister won an award for her cooking column in
their hometown's local paper, he saw an opportunity. He writes
mysteries. She writes recipes. Combine the two for a new book series.
And the Hayley Powell Food & Cocktails Mystery series was born. The
brother and sister writing team have collaborated under the pen name Lee
Hollis on eleven books to date with three more on the way as well as
three holiday anthologies. Rick has also created two more new series as Lee
Hollis including the first Desert Flowers Mystery, Poppy Harmon Investigates
(Kensington, 2018) and the first Maya and Sandra Mystery, Murder at the PTA
(Kensington, 2019).
He is also the co-creator, producer and star of the hit web series Where the Bears
Are (2012-2018), which has been a phenomenal online hit over the past seven
years with over 40 million views.
