Some things are best left executed until after the parental units pass away: posing for Playboy, stand-up comedy using said-parents and precious little sister as material, writing a salacious tell-all book about a college internship with a certain U.S. senator, converting to an opposing religion, etc. My latest novel fits in this category nicely, wedged snug and tight in between posing for Playboy and releasing a tasty excerpt about a Faith & Values senator to Rolling Stone.

Based on a soon-to-be true story, The Darlings of Orange County is a cautionary tale, a skewering satire of ridicule and our heroine Veronica Darling. Set alternately amongst modern-day NYC, L.A., San Diego and Orange County, Veronica sets about to fight an insipid society that all but spits upon her intellectual books. Frustrated by the lack of interest in her well-written, historical-fiction she comes to the conclusion that the only way to become a legitimate writer in America is to write the most filthy, trashy, lustful, violent, murderous, drug-riddled novel she can conjure. The final impetus for this desperate move? Veronica reads the New York Times Best-Sellers list one morning and finds the number one slot held by "author" Raina Schein Pussy (daughter of aging British rocker Buck Pussy) and her title: My Vagina Loves You: a Picture Book

I am, as the Edwardians would say, made of sterner stuff: the healthy sun-belt product of hearty Scots, early-American pioneer and Native American folk, as well as inimitable, industrious Eastern European-Jewish stock. Fittingly, my parental units are equally durable. Ergo, I cannot wait for them to pass away to sell my sinful stories; I myself could be a hundred years old by then and who wants to see a centenarian in a beaded mini on the Red Carpet?

They have expelled this trash from their library as, quote, suitable only for the slums! That will sell 25,000 copies for us, sure!

-appropriately, Mark Twain on the ban of Huckleberry Finn