I do like Tori Spelling quite a bit, but her new publicity tactics are throwing me for a loop. Tori is pimping her latest book, Spelling It Like It Is, and she seems just as hungry as she claims to be. Maybe she really does need the money for Dean’s vasectomy.

This week’s issue of Star had a throwaway story about how Candy Spelling is preparing to be trashed in Tori’s new book. Candy certainly won’t be the only topic of discussion. Radar Online has word that Tori has a very long line of subjects in what seems like a not-so-nice book. She’s even trashing Katie Holmes as a “plastic” robot who “can’t sing for sh-t.” That’s super harsh! Katie sang about five years ago in an episode of “Eli Stone”. She wasn’t terrible, but she didn’t make a grand impression either. It sounds like Tori has a bone to pick with Katie, who was supposedly “an old friend” but didn’t know Tori had kids. Here are the details:

Spelling and Holmes first met years ago, when Holmes was on Dawson’s Creek and Spelling was still on 90210.

“A friend of mine at the time did a movie with her, Teaching Mrs. Tingle,” Spelling explains, and soon the group decided to get together for drinks at Trader Vic’s restaurant and bar in Los Angeles.

“Dawson’s Creek Katie was exactly what you’d expect,” Spelling writes. “She was wearing jeans and a tank top. Her hair was down. She was shy but engaging, and altogether pretty adorable.”

Flash forward several years and Spelling was waiting to meet with vocal coach Eric Vetro for her new TV movie The Mistletones.

She writes, “as I sat waiting outside his music room, I heard his prior appointment working with him in the other room. It was some actress singing horribly off-key … That made me feel better. I heard him say good-bye and then the actress walked out of the room. It was Katie Holmes.”

Holmes stopped to say hi, as Spelling writes: “I didn’t know whether we should hug or shake hands. But the signal from her was immediately clear: Don’t even come close. I instantly got nervous. We clearly weren’t going to catch up on the last ten years. And we certainly weren’t going to talk about her husband, Tom Cruise.

So instead, Spelling says, she pulled out “the mommy card,” complimenting Holmes on her daughter, Suri and telling Holmes she had kids her own age. Holmes didn’t bite, responding “Oh, do you?” Spelling claims. “Then I was annoyed,” she writes.

“Come on. Okay, I know you’re busy. But you’re in the public eye. Don’t tell me you don’t follow the tabloids. Don’t tell me you don’t know anything about other celebrities and their kids.”

“Then we stood there,” she says. “She was just plastic. In a perfectly polite way. … My pits were drenched. I never sweat. It was that awkward. I thought, I know you’re not a robot because you can’t sing for sh-t”

Spelling continues, “As my anxiety faded, I just felt sorry for her. I hadn’t expected her to reminisce, but this was a totally different person from the girl I’d met at Trader Vic’s. I felt sad for her. Those paparazzi photos, the ones where she looks like she’s miserable but putting on a happy face? That’s what she looked like in person.”

“Not long after that encounter,” she says, “the news would break that she and Tom had split up.”

[From Radar Online]

Tori’s taking some cheap shots at Katie here, right? I don’t expect Katie to engage Tori in battle for these remarks. That’s not Katie’s style. In Katie’s defense (and at that point), she was kept in a Scientology-enforced bubble for over six years of her life. Everything she read or watched on television probably had to be filtered through either Tom or her CO$ handlers. I’m sure tabloids are not on their pre-approved list of publications.

Scientology or not, Tori seems pretty uppity to be getting upset at Katie not knowing about her kids. It’s not like they were BFF. She and Katie had drinks together at a few bars back in the day. Big deal. I’ll give Tori one thing though — Katie is not the greatest singer in the world. Tori could have been nicer with her wording.

Here’s that clip of Katie singing and dancing on “Eli Stone.”

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet, Pacific Coast News & WENN