Jame's career as an author (writing as Rebecca James) received a significant boost when he was selected to finish Helen Van Slyke's "Public Smiles, Private Tears" when she passed in 1979.

Here's a short quote about that experience:

Public Smiles, Private Tears" is not only Bev's story - it is the story of an entire generation of women who find themselves in a world where traditional standards and assumptions no longer work. There is Ruth who followed the rules, Marion who broke them, and Sylvia - who created her own. Here too are the men who loved them, used them, worshiped them from afar, hurt them - and sometimes left them. Helen Van Slyke draws upon her own experience in the glittering world of the powerful to tell a fascinating story of the people she knows so well: their successes and failures, their triumphs and tragedies, their public smiles and their private tears.

This is Helen Van Slyke's tenth and final novel, the first half of which she had completed before her untimely death on July 3, 1979. Although she had begun writing only nine years earlier at the age of fifty, she achieved international acclaim as the author of such bestsellers as "No Love Lost," "A Necessary Woman," "The Mixed Blessing," and "The Heart Listens." James Elward, novelist ("Storm's End"; "Tomorrow is Mine") and playwright ("Best of Friends"; "Hallelujah!"), had always admired Helen Van Slyke, both as a writer and as a person. When he read the unfinished manuscript of "Public Smiles, Private Tears," he truly felt that it was Helen's greatest achievement, and immediately began the enormous task of finishing the book. The result is a novel so completely faithful to the spirit of Helen Van Slyke that it is sure to captivate and move her readers just as her previous books have done - a fitting tribute to a writer beloved by millions.