Here's another excerpt from my novel-in-progress. The new working title of the book is The Valley. That's because it's based on my experiences in Porn Valley.
"'Sick,' Xerxes mutters under his breath, staring at the stack of pancakes in front of him. That was one way to describe his mother. Sick. Sure. If chronic tachycardia, anterograde amnesia, and near catatonic hypersomnia, due to thirty-odd years of excessive by any human measure, mind-boggingly self-abusive, and wantonly addictive daily ingestion of diazepam constituted an individual, or, say, an individual’s mother, being 'sick'--if that, well, then, yes, his mother was sick. If bathroom drawers stuffed to the gills with prescriptions filled by half a dozen personal doctors, not a one of which knew of the others, and a now dead father who knew of every single one of them, for he had paid every one of their bills, because God knows she couldn’t, for popping pills was the closest thing that she had ever had to what could all too generously be called a 'job'--if that, well, then, yes, his mother was sick. If falling asleep at the wheel while driving him to his first day of school, if falling down in the grass in one’s housecoat on the way to the mailbox and not even trying to get back up again, if falling face first into a plate of chicken and peas not two feet from his own, while his father pretended not to notice but instead took another bite like nothing was happening, while the walls were crumbling all around them--if that could be considered a 'sickness,' a 'disease,' a 'problem,' well, then, yes, his mother was sick. Absolutely. Why not? Yes, Xerxes decided. If all that, then: Yes. His mother was very unwell, indeed." -- The Valley
