Okay, I'm going to resist the temptation to be a smart-ass. Little sister Emily (and little brother Stephen) have been maligning me in this Guestbook. I'd really like to be mean and nasty and say bad things about them, but I guess I won't.

As you know, I AM the only child of Jesse and Angelioux MarxLennon. Of course, I have no memory of Mom and Pop ever living together. I remember it as Pop and Chrissy, Mom and Tony. Until just a couple of years ago, using Mom and Pop in the same sentence was something I'd never done.

I spent the school year with Mom and Tony. I spent the summers with Pop and Chrissy. How weird was growing up like that? Only a little weird actually. Despite the fact Mom and Pop would hardly talk to each other, they somehow managed to have the same rules for me to live by. Okay, Pop and Chrissy weren't quite the neat freaks Mom was, but it was pretty much the same.

The weirdest thing about being Jesse and Angelioux's kid was the genetic thing. Look at them and look at me. Mom looks Japanese. Pop looks very Anglo. Face it, I look adopted. Of course, as a kid, I avoided the whole problem explaining things by not living with my real parents. By that I mean that since I was either with my Mom and step-dad or my Pop and step-mom, people would just assume my REAL father or my REAL mother were African-American. That was pretty handy.

Feeling like the "odd one" however was probably what pushed me into writing. I started writing stories when I was in about the fourth grade. The teachers loved it. They'd have me read my stories to the class during English. This actually made me pretty popular since it meant my classmates got a break from diagramming sentence structures.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't like the attention it got me. As I hit junior and senior high school, I found out that being an "artist" was just as effective as being an athlete when it came to attracting girls. Pop told you how he never really had a girlfriend until he was in college. Well, I was 14. But there's no reason to get into THAT.

I had my first short story published when I was fifteen. It was a detective story set in the "not-so-distant future". I got $500 for it. So inspired, I wrote a total of seven stories using the same set of characters and the same setting. Thank you, "Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine."

Okay, I can hear some of you now. "Wait, I read 'Asimov's'. I don't remember seeing the name Levi MarxLennon."

To borrow one of Emily's favorite expressions, DUH! I don't publish under that name. Does the name Lucius Willis sound more familiar?

I took the characters from that series of short stories and combined them with some of the themes and settings from other stories I wrote and built my novel, Daemon's Rainbow. It was a big hit. At 21, I had a best selling sci-fi novel at a time when sci-fi was very popular.

And last year MGM decided to buy the movie rights. I get to work on the screenplay.

It's funny. Even though the screenplay is only about half done, there's already talk of casting roles. I hear Arnold is interested in the lead. I don't see Arnold as Daemon, but, hey, do I care? If the company thinks Arnold's the man, then Arnold's the man.

Let's see, both Emily and Stephen have complained that I present myself as an only child on the talk show circuit. It's true. I also talk about growing up in Chicago rather than in Louisville. But then again, I call myself Lucius Willis as well. It's not that different from Pop going by Jesse James. I just carry it out a little further.

Okay, lots further. But it's not hurting anyone. I really don't understand Stephen and Emily's problem. I don't think they'd really want people to know we're related. Hell, Emily's embarrassed by Pop's local fame. Does she REALLY want me to show Oprah her picture on national TV?

Anyway… that's about it. Just wanted to get my two cents in before Emily starts whining about what a nasty brother I am. From what I understand, young Laura's got some nasty comments about growing up with Miss Perfect as it is.

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