Candace Bushnell’s upcoming novel leaked by hacker Guccifer

Candace Bushnell, author of “Sex and the City,” is the latest to fall victim to Guccifer, the hacker who exposed former President George W. Bush’s secret life as a painter, New York magazine reported.

Taking control of Bushnell’s email, Twitter account and website, the hacker posted the opening pages of Bushnell’s upcoming novel online. The book is tentatively titled “Killing Monica.”

After breaking into Bushnell’s email account Tuesday, the Guardian reported, the hacker tweeted a link through Bushnell’s official Twitter feed to a Google Drive account (currently still online) filled with screenshots of her novel’s first 50 pages.

These were sourced from emails to her publisher, Grand Central. “Here you can read my latest book ‘Killing Monica,’ first 50 pages” the hacker tweeted, “enjoy as long as you can!” In the drive there are also a few personal photos and emails.

Nor were Bushnell’s attempts to get the pages taken down immune. Frantic emails between the author and her publisher, in which Bushnell writes, “Oh dear, this is terrible,” have been tweeted in screenshot form as well. As of Wednesday morning, the tweets themselves have been removed from Bushnell’s feed.

According to the Smoking Gun website, Guccifer has previously claimed that “his hacking interest revolves around exposing members of the illuminati.” Former targets have included Bush, members of the Council on Foreign Relations, prominent economists and a Federal Reserve Board official.

It is unclear how Bushnell, the creator of flirty, fashion-forward New Yorker Carrie Bradshaw, fits in to this scheme.

Bushnell isn’t the first novelist to have her work leaked online: in 2008, a partial draft of “Twilight” author Stephenie Meyer’s “Midnight Sun” was posted and distributed online. Meyer was so upset by the leak that she put writing the novel on hold.

“I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on ‘Midnight Sun,’” she wrote, “and so it is on hold indefinitely.”

For Busnell, the leak might not turn out so badly. As Jack Perry, a publishing consultant, wrote in Digital Book World, it could in fact be beneficial for Bushnell -- who as yet has made no official comment on the situation. Perry wrote that Busnell’s leaked work could be considered “a major opportunity.”

“The pages are not edited nor approved for consumers. But her fans will know that and will be thrilled to get a ‘sneak peak,’” Perry wrote. “This is great publicity for a book that isn’t even written yet.”

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