Hope for Change Series

SUMMARY -- "HOPE FOR CHANGE, BUT SETTLE FOR A BAILOUT" is an absurd comedy that starts with the lead character, Larry van der Bix, winning an enormous lottery jackpot, posing the question: "Does it change you?" Best friend Lori Lewis never strays from what is truly important. Nor does Miss Milkshakes, a bombshell web-diva who can't get enough of Lori. The novel speaks to the gap between rich and poor, the collapse of the financial system, and is wrapped in a lesbian love story, a tale of the London Olympics, and how one retains honor and dignity in hard times. THE STORY -- Larry van der Bix, sole heir to a broken family, wins the lottery. Gov. Jerry Brown hands off an oversized check and off goes Larry, in a rented stretch Lincoln, a bundle of hundreds in his shorts pockets and a portable safe welded into the limo's second refrigerator. Best friend Lori Lewis never loses sight of what's important and together they set out to bring home Larry's new-won millions. Larry recruits Miss Milkshakes -- a hypercurvy web diva -- for the drive up California's great central valley. Lori and December fight throughout the trip, until coming to blows when Lori enters their hotel suite to find Larry passed out, with a scantily-clad December straddling him. After ensuring her best friend is alive, an epic battle between jock and diva is streamed live over December’s site, winning fans and sparking a desire that grows into warmth and love. The novel finishes with Lori putting in a gritty performance in women's freestyle swimming, trying to earn a spot at the 2012 London Olympic games. In her quest, she wins much more than medals, learning that what is in one's heart matters most of all. FEATURES -- Jerry Brown, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danish Dogme filmmakers, a pistol-packing open-carry crowd, a brutish and well-endowed fisherman's son, models, singers, actresses and a woman locked for decades in an elegant tower. CAUTION -- Contains a scene in which Cheetos are stuffed up a character's nose. No junk food was harmed in the actual creation of this novel. ABOUT THE WRITING -- The initial draft was written in seven months, on a manual typewriter. The author then spent three months editing the OCR-scan of the original 404-page typed manuscript. ABOUT THE AUTHOR -- Bill Orton is a writer and government worker, living in southern California.

JOE BIDEN CAMEO.... This book was written in 2013 and finished in 2014, when no one could imagine how the 2016 campaign would emerge. Three stories are woven together... -- Larry van der Bix is an invisible man, unseen by women, and unimpressive to men. Even though the dork wins the lottery, and is dragged into a political campaign, the unlikely candidate takes to wearing western garb, quoting Will Rogers and twirling a lasso as the only way to woo voters. How can politics be more absurd? Maybe look at Washington. -- Larry's best friend -- Lori L Lewis -- is an Olympiad who rejoins her beloved U.S. Army, but is stationed behind the lines in America's war on terror, and is the victim of sexual assault by a visiting Congressman. In Afghanistan, she and her commanding officer grapple with the effects of a violent sexual predator. -- Lori's lover is a web diva who crosses the oceans to surprise Lori, sailing on "Dreamboat," a super-yacht Larry bought with lottery millions. On the journey, she is terrorized by her jealous, possessive ex-boyfriend, a stalker who stows away, bringing on a violent showdown that forces the diva to conquer her own fears to fight him off. In the utterly absurd novel, thrown in to the mix is an Italian model who captains the Dreamboat, a crew of hard-boiled sailors, a female lawyer protecting the soldier, and a pair of skateboarders who help fight a band of scurrilous digital pirates, evil politicians, Bollywood dancers, the gravelly-voiced Governor of California and his even the smiling Joe Biden. The book is part of a new genre of "post gender" fiction in which love and courage outrank hatred and domination. Heroism is not defined by one's shape or gender. Perhaps "post gender" fiction coins a phrase, as Dick Bomber etches a name, like Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde.

"Ride That Horse" shows that when America sinks into deep division, even love gets twisted by hate. (Joe enters in chapter three.) This political satire centers on the romance of Lori Lewis and December Carrera, who get dragged through the mud by a Divider-in-Chief, who swings the hammer of hate in his race for president. First published in 2014, " Get Back On Joe Biden’s Horse" opens with slapstick comedy at the now-closed realm known as LIMBO, where three Jewish Angels -- GROUCHO, HARPO and CHICO -- play cards and drink coffee, while a main character -- NIXON's GHOST -- is resigned to spending Eternity emptying the dustbin of history. Nixon's Ghost begs the Angel Groucho for another chance to resign -- this time from Limbo -- when an order from The-Almighty-Boss-in-Chief. For the dead president to be considered for a trip to Heaven, he must teach a newly-elected incompetent dork how to be great in politics. The Jewish Angels and Nixon's Ghost act as the narrative thread haunting three story lines -- the romance of Lori and December, the race against Joe Biden, and a dead president teaching the rules of politics. The dork is Long Beach Councilman Larry van der Bix, who cannot run away from the banana-nosed ghost. Since the dork's newly-hired Chief-of-Staff cannot actually see the dead president, she cannot tell if her boss is simply crazy or actually is haunted by a ghost. After lifting his hand to take the Oath, the Councilman gets booed in his first speech, announcing he will learn how to be great by riding a horse across America to save his best friends, Lori and December. In his year on horseback, Larry crosses the highways and byways of a deeply divided America, as a hate-spitting anti-politician -- Senator Dick Bomber – uses Lori and December in his race against VP Joe Biden. To thousands of disenfranchised horse riders, it doesn’t matter that Larry is insane, as he offers the chance to stand with four-word political declarations. I didn't write this novel to slam Donald Trump, since I published this book before he had announced his race. And a second edition from September 2018 only adds the Jewish Angel Brothers to weave three stories and add humor into a subject that had become almost more fictional than my book. NOTE FROM JAN 2021.... The actual Hater-in-Chief drew a mob outside the White House, spent over an hour frothing the crowd, and dispatched them to storm the Capitol. Is open violent insurrection in the Capitol any different than Senator Dick Bomber leading a Confederate cavalry charge to attack Larry and his peaceful horseback riders approaching the Capitol? (SEARCH "where is he" to find the attack.)

In REEL ONE, readers meet... -- Sister Grace, one of the title characters, who speaks exactly one word in the whole novel, but shows that film can deliver immortality. And the principal characters... -- Lori and December, a soldier and a stripper, who grapple with togetherness, as the married couple drive their kid across America, as COVID and George Floyd show the profound struggles ordinary people face. -- Major Carl Van Der Bix, who is an American Dougboy in World War One, who flies his wings "over there," in a "War to End All Wars," to discover in the slog of conflict and the Spanish Flu, that even during the most brutal killer to ever strike the Industrial Age, love shown by a Lady of the Angels reveals that Heaven can touch us all. -- Councilman Larry Van der Bix, the Dork-in-Chief who is Carl's great-grandson, certainly is lucky, having won both money and power, but must learn that privileges add up to little without the meaning of life. -- Jeanine Harper, the dork's Chief of Staff, who took the job to run the office, only after giving up her own gig on a quirky TV show -- "Duxter," starring Dexter Green, who plays a zoologist who solves murder mysteries, with the help of a flock of wild parrots. -- Karen Joplin and Bobby McGee, a Dynamic Duo doing their "Maine thing" as PR hacks who hitch a ride with Lori and December, with a hippy in her 50s who shows no hesitation to exercise the privilege of spewing harsh views, and the unemployed comedian who must take a gig as her cameraman, since COVID shut down the clubs. and -- The Three Caballeros, a trio of Hollywood stars led by a weightlifter-turned-movie-star-turned-politician, Arnold Spankergrüber, who invades every scene to pitch the dork with a fantastic idea by That Jon Guy and Tom Producer Man for a ridiculous comedy series to poke fun with the 2020 election. In REEL TWO... -- Major Carl Van der Bix will deliver that first reel, showing the Lady of the Angels, to her sister, Astrid Ullagård, the ballerina who must choose whether to leave her privileged life and ancestral homeland for a new but uncertain future with the young American pilot. -- Lori and December discover that even silly material, like a zoologist and parrots, helps their son, Riley, to unlock togetherness. -- Jeanine Harper again meets Dexter Green, the star of Duxter, to discover that love can indeed be real in Hollywood. -- And Larry and Arnold link the reels together, because editing drops the duds so as to deliver fantastic stuff. Thanks for considering my fourth novel. -- Billy Orton, obscure novelist

WHAT DOES THIS NOVEL MEAN? As quagmires unfold, ripples splash even the calmest shores. It’s Summer 2028. Those Bustling ’20s. Four graduates now face their own quagmire, as they celebrate their biggest choices in a tiny town, as flames rise and neighbors must stand together. AND FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.... Because this book is written in “real time,” the author includes the press release which announced that the first half was done, and, like life, it got tweaked and morphed by the fluid nature of reality. NOVELIST FINISHES HALF A BOOK AS CRITIQUE OF RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE (Long Beach, CA) – April 8, 2022 – An obscure novelist who struggled for six years after a massive stroke to finish his fourth novel has managed in the first six weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to crank out 20,000 words on the rippling effects of Mr. Putin’s quagmire. Set in June 2028, the opening seven chapters of “Johnny Rocket & Those Bustling ’20s... Finding Marble for Mr. Zelensky” tells of four high school graduates facing their own quagmire, as impacts of a new Cold War reach the calm waters of Maine. “I couldn’t just do nothing,” said Billy Orton, who finished three novels by 2015, when a stroke and brain surgery kept him at St. Mary’s Medical Center, in Long Beach, for a month. Calling 2016 his hardest year, the former press secretary and PR hack counted himself as the “luckiest soul in America” that year, for while everyone else had to endure the “most miserable awful terrible election in history,” he simply had to learn to walk and talk and reach again. Incredibly lucky in physical recovery, his hardest challenge proved writing. After starting several novels, it wasn’t until 2022 that he proved able to produce “No One Cries for Monå Lizé,” a romantic comedy of two women who win an essay contest and must drive across the country during the outbreak of COVID to take the keys of a dilapidated hotel in a tiny town in Maine. A couple weeks after finishing the book, Orton turned to fiction as his tool to confront the Russia invasion of Ukraine. Starting February 24th, he produced 7,000 words in days, to observe that the war’s impacts will ripple across time to change everything, from life in small towns to Republican candidates running for president. Part One of the novel starts in Maine, using characters from Orton’s fourth book, and includes one teen wishing to enlist in the Army while another wants to attend Columbia University. Weaving military numbers and strategic changes of the war, the first half wraps up in Manhattan, where the teenagers get drawn into a showdown by two Republicans – Governor DeSantis, of Florida, and Ivanka, the former First Daughter – fighting for the 2028 nomination. But even fiction cannot be written in “real time” without being fundamentally impacted – to quote Winston Churchill – “because of the extreme urgency and rigor of events.” When the author began work for chapter six – on March 26th – he intended to put the two Republicans into an epic debate at Madison Square Gardens, but everything got tweaked when the real president delivered a major address in Warsaw on the arrival of a new Cold War. The chapter instead morphed into an address to the nation by President Gavin Newsom. “I created an international incident on the Danube,” said Orton, who invented a crisis, with a Russian warship ramming into an American destroyer in the river that feeds into the Black Sea. Now, rather than a showdown debate, the GOP contenders play political patty cake and plan to flip a coin on who will face President Newsom. “History is not static.” Now done with the first half of the novel, Orton aims to finish the book by Election Day 2022.