Fran tempted me, but it's really my own fault

FranIAm got tagged with a meme: to tell seven untrue facts about oneself. She played along like a good sport, tagged some others (while giving them right of refusal) and invited those who felt so inclined to play along too.

Well, how can I claim to write fiction and not want to do something so silly?

So, here it is:
SEVEN UNTRUE FACTS ABOUT MYSELF:
1. I am the love child of the late Prince GustavAdolf Oscar Fredrik Arthur Edmund, Duke of Västerbotten, and an anonymous New England commoner of German descent, as they celebrated the surrender of Japan. My legitimate half-brother was born eight days before me and is the current King of Sweden. My adoptive father was very proud of the family legend that his mother’s line traces back to Axel Oxenstierna, Count of Södermöre and Lord High Chancellor of Sweden from 1612 until his death in 1654. Dad never lived to learn his son is the half-uncle of today’s blogging prince. (Which means, of course, that I can have no intentions upon HRH. Ucky!)

2. In the 1970s I founded a small off-shoot Baptist denomination with liturgical tendencies, St Irenaeus Orthodox Baptist Fellowship, but the group faded when we could find no one in apostolic succession who would make me a bishop. I gave up that dream and became an Episcopalian instead.

3. I have seventeen published erotic novels under nine different pseudonyms though the payment therefrom hardly justified the effort. Even my best friends do not know about this (or they didn’t until I clicked “publish.”)

4. I have visited three countries not reflected in the stamps on my passport and the less said of those incidents the better. Valerie Wilson and I once posed as a married couple but Joe has nothing to worry about. (No one bought it but we did successfully pass as a couple pretending to be married for personal rather than political reasons and all was well.)

5. I was nowhere near the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel on the night of April 27, 1973, and the rumors that I was are unqualifiedly false. I do not know a Mr. Blackmun and have no links to the diamond trade.

6. Through the miracles of modern technology I have managed to remove the tattoo on my knuckles acquired during my summer in Fresno County Juvenile Hall. It was merely a survival technique in that environment and meant nothing. Thanks to my size I was nobody’s bitch in juvie.

7. “The Mystery of Appleton’s Orchard,” my first short story for children, was a distant contender for a Caldecott thanks to the brilliant illustrations of watercolorist Daisy Fegnor. Alas, distant contenders don’t get mentioned in the public records.

I am delighted to add that several true, or partially true, items are mingled in with this little foray into prevarication, which makes it more delicious.

All may, none must, some should play along.
--the BB