While Kendall and Kylie Jenner may have grown up on reality TV, the young celebs are still typical teenagers at heart.
Maya Sloan, who served as the ghostwriter for the Keeping Up With the Kardashian stars' first novel Rebels: City of Indra, opened up about what like to work with the E! beauty's in an essay she penned for Cosmopolitan, in which she details how she came to work for the Jenner sisters, as well as the ups and downs of her unique job.
Always wanting to be a writer, Sloan stumbled upon her first ghostwriting venture when she was teaching a course at Pepperdine University on African-American studies. After inviting actress Sheryl Lee Ralph to come and speak to her class, she offered to write Ralph's book, and thanks to its subsequent success, she was soon offered an opportunity to work with the Jenner sisters.
Admitting that she had never watched Keeping Up With the Kardasians in addition to having "no experience" in sci-fi, Sloan's husband saw the offer as a great opportunity and urged his wife to take the job.
"I met with the Jenner sisters at the 21 Club in New York City," Sloan writes. "The key to writing someone else's story is to find out who they are, which is hard to do with teenage girls who grew up as celebrities on a reality show. So I started pummeling them with questions, trying to break down that wall. I asked how they envisioned their characters and the world of the book, the emotional connotations they wanted to represent, and even the hair color and fashion sense they thought these characters would have."
The author landed the job after her husband draw a mock-up of what Kendall and Kylie's characters might look like. "Teenagers respond to visuals," Sloan explains.
And while the Jenners may not have written the sci-fi story, Sloan says they were still involved in the process.
"The Jenner sisters didn't do any of the writing, and they've been very upfront about that. But they were very much a part of it," she reveals. "They had strong opinions, and we met in New York, where I was now living, and Skyped throughout the process. They read drafts, gave me notes, and I would revise based on what they wanted.
Noting later that she understands why Kendall, 19, and Kylie, 17, "have to put up a wall," she recalls when she was finally able to get to know the girls on a deeper level. "Behind that wall, which I eventually did break down, are two real girls. They have all the angst, emotions, and intense love of any teenager. That's what I tried to bring out in the book."