I currently have three novels eagerly awaiting publication.

El Artista - an extensive rewrite of my first comic novel, Hack, in which a struggling landscape artist fakes his own death and is resurrected as a Mexican millionaire, all in an attempt to win back the heart of his childhood sweetheart. 100,000 words.

American Corporate - a contemporary comedy chronicling the misadventures of a downtrodden middle-aged family man caught in the middle of a corporate scandal, while his long-suffering wife gets embroiled in a nasty email/blackmail scam. 90,000 words.

Chasing Byron - a whimsical story of an unlikely Louisiana golf hero who, with divine intervention, endeavors to break Byron Nelsons historic 11-tournament winning streak in 1945. 75,000 words. .

El Artista Synopsis

THE SETUP:

            It is a fine new-millennium summer morning in San Anselmo, California and Henry Griffin, a struggling, middle-aged landscape painter, learns from his agent that a rich, famous film producer is planning to attend his art show that evening.

            When the film producer arrives at the California Heritage Gallery he is accompanied by the artists childhood sweetheart, a woman he hasn't seen in twenty years, except in dreams, where she appears almost nightly, a heavenly image of beauty and light. Now he is overwhelmed with desire... and despair, for she is the trophy wife of a rich man. What could she possibly see in a downtrodden, besotted artist?

            The artist, in a state of love struck dementia, hatches an outlandish scheme to win her back: he decides to fake his own death, thereby driving up the value of his portfolio. Then, under cover,  hell continue to produce "undiscovered" work, get rich, and one day return to claim his one true love, and theyll ride together into the sunset to live happily ever after.

            A fool in love can be a fool indeed.

THE CHARACTERS:

Henry Griffin, a 45-yr old landscape painter, divorced, childless, living hand-to-mouth. Griffins epic chokes in golf competition, coupled with his historic capability to be a jack of many trades, master of none, have earned him the nickname "Hack".

Rex Wilcox, Griffins gay agent and owner of the CaliforniaHeritageArtGallery. Wilcox, short, bald, and well into his fifties, still has an embarrassing habit of playing "pocket pool" in public.

Hadley Radner, Griffins 1st grade girlfriend, junior high steady, and high school "tripping" partner. Hadley has spent most of the seventies, eighties and nineties riding horses and Harleys in the Pacific Northwest, moving from one goat-roper husband to another. When visiting San Francisco for her fathers funeral she is "rescued" from her wild life by Michael Morgan and moves to his film "ranch" in MarinCounty.

Michael Morgan, famous, semi-retired producer/director of a series of sci-fi box offices hits, has eschewed Hollywood for the pastoral beauty of the tawny hills and gnarled oaks of northern Marin. He is recognized around Marin by his signature shaved-head, salt & pepper goatee, ever-present shades and black Mercedes limo.

Karl, Michael Morgans big Eastern European bodyguard, former all-star wrestler who has suffered an injury to his spinal cord that has turned him into a simpleton with an annoying tic in his neck that can only be controlled with medication that his boss, Michael Morgan, doles out at his discretion.

Sylvia, Hacks squat, patchouli-scented, panty-less, ever-horny bisexual first wife.

Cyril McFadden, an Irish makeup artist on the San Francisco theater scene and Rex Wilcoxs periodic boyfriend. Cyril helps transform the late Henry Griffin into Paco, the Mexican millionaire.

Paco, Henry Griffins Quixote-esque, Harley-riding alter ego from the grand ranchos of Mexico.

Herte Nyhus, the Norse goddess and golf aficionado that seduces Paco at an Arizona resort, discovering he is not the Mexican he says he is. Her discovery unwittingly sets off the chain of events that lead to the unraveling of Griffins scam.

Barbara Bassett, Henry Griffins pill-popping, chain-smoking sister who decides that she is the rightful owner of her late brothers portfolio of surprisingly valuable paintings.

THE DEATH OF HACK, THE BIRTH OF PACO:

            After launching his rusted Saab off a cliff high above the rocky shoreline of the Pacific, Henry Griffin hides out in familiar spots in the Mt.Tamalpais watershed, plotting his next move. Then, early one foggy morning, he arrives at Rex Wilcoxs apartment in MillValley, crusty and starving. Wilcox, who like everybody else believed that Griffin was in the car and became "shark bait" as the local paper reported, is shocked and amazed that Griffin is very much alive, though barely. Together they decide they must alter Griffins identity, so Wilcox calls his old boyfriend Cyril McFadden, who applies his skills as a makeup and mask artist to Griffins gaunt, dark-featured face and transforms him into a plausible Mexican, along the lines of Robin Williams transformation into Mrs. Doubtfire. Griffins own college adventures in Mexico have given his a loose command of the language, and they decide to call him Paco.

            Upon hearing of Henry Griffins death, Hadleys husband Michael Morgan, who has partially retired from film making and become interested in art collecting, rushes to buy the late artists remaining inventory before the rest of the art-collecting world discovers the work, expecting an eventual windfall. Wilcox arranges a special showing of Griffins remaining work for Morgan, Hadley and Karl, and midway through the negotiation Paco shows ups, playing the shill, and insists that he must own the beautiful paintings.

            In the process Paco fawns over Hadley Radner as if he were Ricardo Montalban in heat. Paco is encouraged when he learns that Hadley was actually quite fond of her dear, departed friend, though she doesnt hesitate to mention what a loser he was.

            When Michael Morgan offers an exorbitant amount for the paintings, Paco pretends that he hears his cel phone ringing and departs on his Harley in a roar.  Suddenly Wilcox and Henry Griffin are rich beyond their wildest dreams.

            Not long after, Wilcox "discovers" a collection of Griffins works in a storage locker in Eugene, Oregon. The paintings, actually created from old photographs by the undercover artist in Wilcoxs new house in Tiburon, are immediately snatched up at uncommonly high prices by Morgan.

            Meanwhile Paco runs into Hadley Radner at the OaklandArt Museum where she has been sent on a scouting mission to ostensibly purchase a new acquisition by California plein-air master Edgar Payne. Together on their "fat boys" (a nickname for a certain type of Harley) they ride out to Alpine Dam in west Marin, one of Griffin and Hadleys favorite "tripping" spots back in high school. Hadley begins to get the sense that Paco isnt who he says she is, and is up to something nefarious though she isnt bothered by the fact that her husband appears to be the victim.

THE MASQUERADE  IS UNCOVERED:

            Then Paco takes off on an extended painting adventure in southern Arizona, taking his jeep out into the high desert  to paint in the mornings, playing golf at the Tubac Golf Resort in the afternoon, and drinking tequila in the hotel bar in the evenings. One late afternoon on the golf course he slices a drive into a parallel fairway, striking an attractive blond Norwegian woman, Herte Nyhus, on the butt. After determining that she is not too seriously injured, she invites him to play the remaining holes with her. They drink tequila, dine together and ultimately end up in each others arms on the practice green, where she discovers that Paco is actually quite white underneath his golf outfit. Griffin admits he is not really Mexican, but Herte doesnt seem to interested in who he really is, preferring to venture onto the golf course to make love alfresco under the starry sky.

            The next morning while Griffin lies passed out in a grass bunker Herte sneaks off to find his bungalow and spies his paintings through the window, though they are unsigned. She leaves him a note, indicating that she is heading back to San Francisco. Upon finding the note Griffin is crestfallen - he did not figure that Herte would be so close to home! He calls Wilcox, who, with McFadden, make the trip to Arizona to rebuild Paco.

            Back in San Francisco, while the interior designer Herte Nyhus is looking through various antique publications for a particular piece of furniture for Barbara Bassett, Griffins sister (though Herte still has no idea who Henry Griffin is), she stumbles upon an ad for an art show, featuring the work of the late Henry Griffin. The painting in the ad looks suspiciously like the paintings she saw in Pacos bungalow in Arizona. She learns that Barbara Bassett is the sister of the late artist and decides to go to the art show.

            Sure enough, Paco is at the show, along with Michael Morgan, Karl, Hadley, Griffins ex-wife Sylvia, Barbara Bassett,  Cyril McFadden and a host of other art dealers. McFadden meets Michael Morgan, who invites him up to the studio to interview with their head makeup man.

            At the show Herte doesnt let on that she knows Paco is a fake, but later, after a few drinks, she takes Hadley outside and confides in her. Hadley is at first furious that her old friend would  double-cross her and her husband, but then she decides that it would be fun to play along in the scam with Herte. Back in the gallery they infer that they know about the masquerade, and Griffin realizes that his days as Paco are numbered, though Michael Morgan and the rest of the art collecting world still believe Griffin is dead and continue to pay premium prices for his work.

THE SCAM UNRAVELS:

            While Henry Griffin and Rex Wilcox stew in their own juices, Cyril McFadden heads up to the film studio for an interview with the manager of the makeup department. Karl shows McFadden to the green room where they review his portfolio, in which there is a "before and after" picture of Henry Griffin and Paco. Karl calls Morgan to the green room, where Morgan realizes that Griffin is alive, and his investment in his portfolio will be worthless if anyone else finds out. Karl decides they must "neutralize" Griffin and Wilcox, and Morgan, who has steadily become more interested in vodka than art collecting, reluctantly agrees. 

            Morgan turns to his wife Hadley to see what she knows, and puts her and McFadden under "house arrest" to prevent them from protecting their friends. One night, Hadley and McFadden escape to the green room where they don costumes and attempt to flee the compound on Hadleys Harley, only to be cut off by Karl in his Mercedes limo at the gate. McFadden commandeers the limo while Karl is berating Hadley and gets away, meeting up with Rex Wilcox at his home in Tiburon where they both decide to leave the country, leaving Henry Griffin alone to face Morgan and Karl.

THE UNLIKELY GETAWAY:

            Griffin decides that he too must go into hiding and, with Herte Nyhus as his unwelcome sidekick, they take the Harley up to Griffins family cabin at PinecrestLake in the Sierra Nevada. Griffin,  through some of Hadleys biker friends, informs her of their whereabouts in hopes she can escape her husband, whom Hadley now realizes locked in the throes of alcholism, and join him. 

            While in the Sierras, Herte and Griffin start to get to know each other, each helping each other through a couple of difficult moments: Herte gets attacked by a bear, and Griffin almost drowns when his legs cramp up in Pinecrest Lake. They begin to share a natural comfort in each others company, though Herte is careful not to allow a "repeat" of their golf course experience, when Griffin was Paco.

            Meanwhile, back in Marin, Morgan convinces his wife that he is not interested in killing Griffin. He only wants to ensure that nobody else learns that the dead artist is, in fact, alive. Hadley agrees to go to Griffin (she knows where he is, but Morgan does not) and talk to him. She is not aware that Herte has accompanied Griffin to the mountains.  Morgan agrees - Hadley may go talk to Griffin, so she and her biker friends head up to the mountains. Karl tails Hadley up to Pinecrest, unbeknownst to Morgan, who, after a particularly gut-wrenching hangover, has decided to give up art collecting and go back into film making. When Morgan cant find Karl in his apartment on the film studio, he comes to the realization that his bodyguard is, indeed, a dangerous, deranged psychotic.

            bAfter a brief warning call from Karl, Morgan takes the copter up to Pinecrest, only to be bound and gagged with his wife by his former bodyguard, who insists that Morgan bequeath the paintings to him. Karl then plans an unfortunate accident for the film producer, his wife, and the artist.

            To Karls disappointment, Hadley escapes from the closet with the help of the housekeeper, commandeers a motorboat, and races to Griffins cabin. Karl attempts to follow her, stealing her bulky Harley and attempting to drive on the lakeside trail, but he loses control of the bike, thanks to his uncontrollable head twitch and  drives it off a cliff into the lake, though it is unclear whether Karl himself joined the Harley in its watery grave.

            After Herte, Hadley and Griffin see Hadleys Harley plunge 60 feet into the lake from atop a boulder on the other side,  they cautiously disappear into the Sierra wilderness, uncertain whether Karl or Morgan are still following them. They arrive the next morning on Rt. 4 and hitch a ride to Carson City, Nevada.

            Hadley and Hack, finally alone together in a motel room in Carson City, Nevada, realize what theyve had in the past, and what theyve lost in their rekindled friendship. Griffin explains how the sole purpose of his ridiculous exploits have been to win her heart, so they could run away to a desert island and live a life of leisure. Hadley, ever the realist, can see that her childhood pal has always had his head in the clouds, which is perhaps the impetus for his natural creative talents, while she has always had her feet on the ground. Nonetheless she admits to a unique affection for her old friend, and, like twenty years before, they share intimacies one more time before going their separate ways.

EPILOGUE:

            Two years later: Hadley Radner, having settled a lucrative divorce, has returned to the high deserts of eastern Oregon to raise horses and train girls to race the rodeo barrels. One evening she receives a large package from someplace in South America, and, upon opening it, finds a letter and photograph from a guy who looks a lot like Henry Griffin,  along with a photograph of a woman who looks a lot like Herte Nyhus, and their newborn daughter, "Hadley".

            The package also contains a number of "discovered" works of the late painter, Henry Griffin, who outside of Michael Morgan, Wilcox, Cyril McFadden, Herte, Hadley and Karl (if hes still alive) is still considered dead. "These will net you a nice little bundle", the note says. Hadley unwraps the paintings, one by one, and finds they are all beautiful, simple scenes from around Alpine Dam, circa 1970, when life and love were a simpler proposition. Finally she gets her old friends message: keep those memories of good times alive in your heart and you will never grow old.

American Corporate

     Rich Momintz, a downtrodden, middle-aged marketing guy with a loving wife, two devoted kids, a slobbering yellow lab, huge mortgage, car and country club payments, has been out of work for almost a year. He has dug a seemingly bottomless hole of debt that will take years to pay off, he drinks too much, smokes too much, eats too much, and can't remember the last time he slept through the night.

     When Momintz gets two surprise job offers on the same day, he has to choose between working at a huge Silicon Valley IT company as a collateral manager, or take a job as the marketing director of a small startup company, backed by the world's largest IT corporation, based in Indianapolis. His supportive family decides he should take the job he really wants, so they pull up stakes and move from the San Francisco Bay Area to Indianapolis.

     No sooner does the Momintz family get settled in Indiana than the company, SynchPoint, is disbanded by their corporate parent, BFC Inc., and the family is moved to Connecticut, where Momintz is assigned a position as...collateral manager. Shortly after his arrival at BFC, he gets involved in a shady co-marketing arrangement with a big customer. He also gets involved in "sex slave" relationship with a demented female French executive, from whom he contracts a vicious case of crabs.

     Meanwhile Momintz' wife, Carrie, has been carrying on an e-mail relationship with a guy known only as "Sunny", and regularly reports the adventures of the Momintz Family Circus, as she calls it, while pushing for a little "afternoon delight" at a motel in New Jersey.

     The Momintz family has traveled from one coast to the other, their son Robbie is failing in middle school, both Mom and Dad are having affairs, and it appears that a "December 32" deal, that the software division had been counting on to make their year-end number, has gone awry.

As they say in Corporate America, "at the end of the day, it's all about synergy."

MAIN CHARACTERS:

Rich Momintz, late forties,  a 230 lb., 6' 2", graying, former high school basketball star turned marketing manager, married with children, strung out on J&B Scotch, Camel Lights, and Vicodin. When he isn't fantasizing about spontaneous sex with just about every female he meets, he writes songs.

Carrie Momintz,  mid-forties, long-suffering yet encouraging, somewhat co dependent, bright-eyed wife. Devoted to her family, Carrie would prefer a more stable existence, but tends to float along with her misdirected husband. She's a little overweight, but still relatively firm in a pair of tight Levi's.

Robbie Momintz, early teens, a handsome, curly-headed nature-lover, budding musician, journeyman athlete, and habitual academic underachiever with a somewhat twisted sense of humor, thanks to his Dad's warped view of the world.

Goldie Momintz, a grammar school-age, willowy brunette with toothpick legs, loves to have her Dad sing her to sleep. 

Deetz Comstock, mid-thirties, VP of Marketing, SynchPoint Software, convinces Momintz to move to Indiana with promises of fame and wealth.

Leroy Sheets, early forties, Partner Marketing Manager, SynchPoint Software, Momintz' frog-faced, Hoosier golfing buddy, professional peer and fellow sex fiend.

Buzz Young, early-fifties, General Manager, Software Division, BFC Software Division, former Marine with a buzz cut, runs a tight ship where everything is a military analogy.

Pierre LeDouche, late-thirties, VP of Sales and Marketing, BFC Software Division, a slight, sour man, on assignment from Paris, married but keeps his French mistress, Brigitte Touliard, beside him in the office.

Dominique Chatelard, VP of Marketing, GlobeNet Brand, BFC Software Division, also on assignment from Paris, has a reputation for wearing outrageous, inappropriate outfits in the office and on business trips, teases her red hair into a frenetic mass of poodle curls, screams at her peers and subordinates on a regular basis.

Joe Cirigliano, early-thirties, VP of Sales, fast-talking deal-maker from Jersey with a big little man complex.

Bill Beeman, early sixties, nobody's quite sure what he's VP of, a white-haired, thirty year company veteran to whom nothing "sticks".

"Sunny", Carrie Momintz' mysterious e-pen pal.

HANGING WITH THE HOOSIERS:

     For most people in the San Francisco Bay Area, the idea of pulling up stakes and moving somewhere else - almost anywhere else - is mildly abhorrent. The idea of pulling up stakes and moving to Indiana, for a Northern Californian, is incomprehensible if not completely insane. Yet this is what Rich Momintz and his family, after 12 nail biting months of unemployment, have decided to do.

     Happily, after a bit of a rough start at the Homewood Suites, the Momintz family finds Indianapolis a pleasantly "user-friendly" place to live. First, they can afford a grand southern colonial that's three times the size of their California bungalow, complete with swimming pool,  heated garage, and giant, stately Sycamores shading a broad expanse of lawn. Momintz and his wife buy new cars, they send Robbie to a private school, and settle into a comfortable routine.

     Momintz finds his new job fun, and challenging, and the Hoosiers he works with particularly entertaining, especially Leroy Sheets, who's mind is often sharing Momintz sex-starved gutter. And, thought the shadow of the mega-BFC corporation looms behind them, the SynchPoint team is infused with a sense of purpose:  to beat Redgate Systems and become the market-leading, premier provider of CRM software worldwide.

     Then BFC decides to partner with Redgate Systems, rather than compete with them, and SynchPoint Software is undone, almost overnight. The Momintz family, after only four months in Indiana, is in a state of shock, and Dad almost dies when he has a stress-related vertigo attack and falls in the swimming pool. Begrudgingly, the Momintz family packs their bags once again and continues their journey East.

WELCOME TO CORPORATE AMERICA:

     After rejecting the higher paying job in his hometown because he didn't want to be a faceless droid in a big corporation, Rich Momintz finds that circumstances have landed him exactly where he didn't want to be, performing meaningless managerial tasks in the marketing department of the world's largest IT company, BFC Inc. Within weeks of his new assignment, Momintz finds himself spending hours on incomprehensible conference calls, wading through equally inscrutable e-mails, while his boss tells him to go "separate" people from the company that he has never met, for no apparent reason. He entertains himself by "instant messaging" his former colleague from SynchPoint, who has since taken a position with BFC in sales, and by watching the wildlife in the meadow outside his office window on the corporate campus.

     Sometimes, like many BFC employees, Momintz attends the interminable conference calls from his home office, during which times, if the muse strikes him, he also works on songs. Inspired by an online conversation with his Hoosier pal Leroy Sheets, Momintz pens a song titled "Next Time Around". His wife Carrie overhears his new creation from the next room and suggests they send it to an old boyfriend of hers who has made a name for himself as a TV actor in Hollywood. Momintz records a demo and Carrie sends it off, hoping that if things don't work out with her e-mail romance, Sunny, maybe Rich will hit the jackpot.

     After a few months on the new job, Momintz is finally handed a juicy assignment, developing a co-marketing plan with the up and coming dot.com survivor, e-Auction. The co-marketing agreement Momintz is assigned to work on is part of reciprocal agreement with the customer that is dependent on their purchase of a significant amount of BFC technology, and is critical to the success of the BFC software sales organization.

     Then, while at a winter sales and marketing "boot camp" in Florida., Momintz is sexually attacked in his hotel by the "queen of mean", Dominique Chatelard, who makes it known that his success at BFC will be at least partially determined by his ability to service her at her discretion. At the same conference, he learns that the e-Auction deal has closed, reportedly on "December  32nd", and that, as a result, the Software Division has exceeded their quota, though Momintz, as a marketing guy, isn't exactly in on the take.

THE DEAL FALLS THROUGH:

     Unbeknownst to Momintz, and hidden from other Software Division executives, the e-Auction deal that he had purportedly helped closed had, at the last minute, fallen through before the previous year end. The VP of Sales, "Little" Joe Cirigliano, withheld this information from the executive team and reported the revenue anyway, confident that, at some point, he would close the deal in the first quarter and make up for the shortfall.

     As news of the failed deal begins to reach the CFO's office, the BFC executive team, in an effort to keep the misstatement of revenue from leaking to the SEC or the press, decides to pay off the employees involved in the transaction and send them quietly packing into the night.

SUNNY'S BLACKMAIL ATTEMPT:

     Meanwhile, Carrie has consummated her long e-mail relationship with her mysterious partner, Sunny, at a seedy motel in New Jersey. Weeks after their tryst, daughter Goldie discovers a manila envelope addressed to her mother and, ever curious, takes it up to her bedroom. Later that night, after Momintz has returned from his golf adventure and is taking his daughter to bed, Goldie shows him the alarming black and white photograph of his wife en flagrante with some faceless character. Goldie explains to Momintz that she thought he should see the photo because it looks like someone is hurting her Mommy. Momintz explains that Mommy is not being hurt by anybody, but that she's singing in bed with Daddy, something he tells her they do frequently. Goldie doesn't think to ask who took the picture, and Momintz sends her downstairs to get the Scotch tape so nobody will know that they've been reading Mommy's mail. While Goldie is downstairs Momintz reads the blackmail note, which threatens to mail the pictures to him, her husband, if she doesn't deliver $50K in $100 bills to their previous meeting place.

     Since the blackmail attempt is already blown, Momintz takes the envelope up to his tree fort and nails it into the space between the wall, thinking that, some day in the future when the tree fort is inevitably condemned, somebody will have a good laugh.

     A few days later, after he discovers that he's been "separated" from BFC, Carrie confronts him with a tube of Elimite, a cream used to treat crabs,  that she has discovered in his dop kit.  Momintz decides that, if she wants to play that game, he'll confront her with the photograph. He drags her up to the tree fort, where, just as he is about to extract the envelope from it's hiding place, the railing on the fort collapses and Carrie Momintz falls to the icy rocks below, injuring her spine.

ON THE MEND:

     Carrie Momintz barely avoids being crippled for life, but for a few months is stuck in a wheelchair, while Momintz surfs the Internet for jobs. Then, one day in a righteous rage, Momintz tracks down Little Joe Cirigliano and discovers the real truth behind the eAuction deal, and who was ultimately responsible for the revenue reporting. With this knowledge, Momintz confronts the perpetrator, and accidentally runs into Buzz Young, who has also discovered the truth of the scandal, though from a different source.

     Time goes by while Momintz unsuccessfully searches for a job and patches things up with his family. One morning in bed, Carrie and Rich read that the SEC has opened an investigation into revenue reporting at BFC, Inc. At the same time, Carrie Momintz gets the opportunity to save the family and becomes the unlikely heroine of the story.