The Next Big Thing

My first novel, Shrink Rapt, was a flop. It was pretty funny in spots, and I thought it was quite groundbreaking back in 1985: A neurotic young woman and her equally nutty shrink finally find love as mother and daughter following his gender reassignment surgery. Who knew that was a snooze?

My next book, The Amazing Richie!, was based on a true story and centered on twins who were child stars on TV. Now adults, one of them suffers a traumatic brain injury on his fiftieth birthday. Afterwards he becomes gay, shocking his wife and three kids, and goes on to fame and fortune in the world of competitive Scrabble. Sounds like a winner to me, but nobody who has read it, if anyone, has gotten back to me with any reviews, and 20 agents said no thanks.

So I am now working on another book and I think this one will sail to the top of the charts. The working title is A Novel Novel. It's about a teenage girl named Willow Willow Bernstein. (Her parents loved the name.) Despite being anorexic and bulimic she is still very fat, yet attractive like many fat women are, as we certainly all would agree. Willow Willow secretly harbors an Islamic terrorist lover, Ali Ali Oksenfree, in her family's ski condo in Baden-Baden. Ali Ali has quit high school to become a rap star and is intent on becoming famous for his incendiary music, then blowing up all of America's treasured national monuments starting with Mt. Rushmore.

Sounds boring, I know, but here's the catch: they are both vampires! Ali Ali is also a wizard and is slowly teaching Willow Willow many of his skills; she can now fly and is thus able to get through airline security in a snap. She can also talk to animals and communicate with the dead and the unborn, and completely understands the writings of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and all the words to the song "Louie, Louie." Being vampires, the toothy twosome consume lots of blood and meat, usually while listening to their favorite band, Duran Duran.

Eventually Ali Ali is hired by the CIA and the FBI and learns all of our government's secrets, like who really killed JFK, what brand of peanut butter Elvis favored, whether or not Caitlyn Jenner had bottom surgery, and where they actually filmed the bogus moon landing. (Turns out it was Bora Bora.) He runs for president and is easily elected since his opponent, Oprah Winfrey, was discovered to be wearing a fat suit all these years and is actually a mean thin person with no weight problem whatsoever. Nobody knows the new president is a vampire or an Islamic terrorist. (They find out in the sequel.)

Willow Willow becomes the First Lady even though the two never married since no straight couples marry anymore, only gays have big weddings and especially designer wedding cakes. After a health scare -- she comes down with beriberi due to a thiamine deficiency -- she moves the White House to Walla Walla and Camp David to Paw Paw, loses a lot of weight, writes a best-selling diet and exercise book and eventually gets her own talk show on cable.

I am very excited about it.