COOS BAY — Justin Buckles didn’t know what he wanted to do when he graduated from Marshfield High School 10 years ago. Between taking care of his sick grandmother and attending Southwestern Oregon Community College, he hadn’t had the slightest inkling that he would go on to work in entertainment.

Within a few years, he was the production manager of “American Idol,” working in constant contact with the likes of Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Carrie Underwood as he kept things running behind the scenes. But the job was demanding, and after almost four years of working at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week, Buckles quit, just before the show’s fifth season premiered in January 2006.

“My experience on ‘Idol’ was four years of … it wasn’t hell on earth, I loved every minute, but there were times I didn’t see my friends for six or seven months,” said Buckles, 28, while visiting Coos Bay to see family and attend his class reunion this weekend.

Since leaving the show, Buckles has demonstrated his need for a slower pace by writing a book and starting a Web site, which just launched last week: www.consumertreehouse.com, where users can post reviews of any type of consumer product or service.

Though he’s on vacation, he can’t escape the constant buzz of his Blackberry as he works out kinks to the site with his designer and deals with any of the five agents reviewing his book for publishers.

The book is a memoir — the story of growing up in Coos Bay, experiencing the culture shock of Hollywood and landing a job on America’s top-rated TV series.

It all began when Buckles’ mother suggested he write a screenplay about his experience as a caregiver for his grandmother, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Without knowing the first thing about writing screenplays, Buckles took up the challenge, creating a script that drew interest from the production companies of Oprah Winfrey, Drew Barrymore and Babyface.

After graduating from Southwestern, Buckles moved to Los Angeles in 2000. Beginning with work on student films for the Los Angeles Film School, Buckles made contacts that led to a job at E! network, where he worked for a year before getting in at “Idol.”

Initially hired for “American Juniors,” a short-lived companion series featuring child performers that aired in summer 2003, Buckles then moved to “Idol.” Though the show is only on air from January through May, Buckles emphasized that the work is year-round with no break.

Graduating from assistant production coordinator in season 3 to production coordinator in season 4 and production manager in season 5, Buckles advanced without gaining free time or an understanding of how to explain his job concisely.

“I spent days running around, holding a laptop, on the cell phone or on a walkie talkie, scheduling, ordering, confirming, yelling at people, being yelled at,” Buckles said. “There’s just the production manager and the production coordinator. We ran everything.”

Buckles said he was the handler for all the celebrities, fetching cigarettes for Cowell, pulling Abdul off her cell phone when she was needed on the set and dealing with the celebrity guests. But Buckles said he was never starstruck after the first week on the job, and he got used to running into celebrities at the grocery store near his Venice Beach home.

Though things were always busy, Buckles said it was during the summers when the show travels for auditions that it was the busiest, describing three months of 18- to 20-hour days with no days off.

“You get to a venue at 4 in the morning,” Buckles said. “You’re half-asleep because you went to bed at midnight. You pull up to this huge, giant stadium, and there’s 20,000 people lined up. You want to crawl back into bed.”

Instead, Buckles would spend the day communicating with the 50 employees who travel with the show, reviewing contracts, trying to get set up for the next city and look at bills from the previous city while dealing with what’s going on in the city he was in, and making sure each of the 20,000 got at least a 30-second audition before the day was done.

“It’s ironic that I was in charge of all the catering but never had time to sit down and enjoy a meal,” Buckles said. “You stay at amazing hotels and get paid for it. But I couldn’t really enjoy it because you don’t get any time off.”

After finishing auditions for season 4, which Underwood eventually won, Buckles went back on the road working auditions for  “So You Think You Can Dance,” which is run by the same production company as “Idol.”

When he’d advanced as far as he could and couldn’t take the constant work anymore, Buckles left to work as production manager for A&E’s “Gene Simmons Family Jewels.” Though it was a breeze compared to “Idol,” he left after one season to pursue individual ventures, like the Web site, which he hopes to build into something he can sell.

“Nothing is ever handed to you,” Buckles said. “No one’s going to stop you on the street and ask, ‘Hey, do you have a really good idea for a Web site or a TV show?’ You have to make it happen for yourself.”