James Frey messed me up. A few years ago he wrote A Million Little Pieces, a memoir about his addiction to drugs that was light on facts and heavy on fabrication. It didn’t bother me that the book was a sham, but when he fessed up and was summarily shamed by Oprah on national television, it created an image problem for pathological liars with literary aspirations everywhere. See, I’d been planning to write my own fake memoir, or fauxmoir, because while memoirs are super popular, I haven’t led a memoir-worthy life. “I am a middle school teacher from Connecticut…” God, I practically fell asleep just writing that sentence. But what if I told you I’m a middle school teacher from Connecticut who, while visiting Waziristan, stumbled into Osama bin Laden’s cave, which was plastered floor to ceiling with photos of Laura Bush in her underwear? What if I told you that one of my kids is actually the product of one wild night in the Miami Airport Marriott with Regis and Kathie Lee? I was working on tying these storylines together when the A Million Little Pieces debacle made the fauxmoir seem less like a can’t miss bestseller and more like something I just made up. I don’t know; I’m still trying to move forward, but unless I can get around Philbin’s demand for a paternity test, I’m going to have to change a bunch of names and call it a novel based on a true story.