Mission Viejo Writer’s Latest Book Takes on Ultimate Mystery--Taxes

“Set Up,” Maxine O’Callaghan’s fourth mystery featuring scrappy Orange County private investigator Delilah West, won’t hit bookstores until November.

But the Mission Viejo author of eight novels already has another new book out this fall. It’s her first nonfiction effort, one that deals with a subject that is near and dear to every writer: income tax returns.

“Practical Tax Guide for Writers,” (Apperson Ltd.; $12) was co-written by O’Callaghan and her daughter, Laura Apperson, a Phoenix tax preparer who specializes in the arts.

The book is believed to be the first tax guide intended specifically for writers.

“My daughter provided most of the core of the book, but it was my job to put it in language that an ordinary person could understand,” O’Callaghan said. “We really tried to make it so a writer could pick it up and understand it. Most writers aren’t really oriented toward doing that sort of stuff.”

The book was written at the suggestion of O’Callaghan’s friend Patricia Wallace, an author and literary agent.

“We were chatting about tax stuff on the phone, and I said, ‘Oh, well, my daughter does that for me.’ One day she said, ‘You know, you and your daughter ought to write a book.’ ”

Now that the book is completed, O’Callaghan said, “Pat immediately ordered a dozen copies for her clients.”

O’Callaghan said that the book, a large-format paperback, provides simple explanations, clear instructions and sample schedules and record-keeping forms that will help writers claim all allowable deductions. Also included is information on estimated taxes, filing extensions and even audits.

“The most important thing is at the end we take you step-by-step through every form you need,” she said. She added that the book includes answers to “all the kinds of things I’ve heard over the years from my (writer) friends, questions they’ve had and worried about whether they did it right.”

In essence, she said, “I put together what a writer needs to know, and my daughter provided the tax knowledge.”

The book is being sold only by mail order--the $12 price includes shipping and handling--and may be ordered by writing to Apperson Ltd., 15420 S. 38th St., Phoenix, AZ 85044.

Brighton & Lloyd, the small publishing company founded three years ago by Lila Amor of Costa Mesa, continues to be a family affair.

The company’s first book, a 1988 children’s story called “A Handful of Magic,” was written by Amor’s mother, Stella Fabian of Santa Ana Heights. Now Brighton & Lloyd has published “The Opal Mystery,” Fabian’s latest book, which is intended for readers in the fifth to eighth grades.

“The Opal Mystery” ($3.25) features two 12-year-old cousins--one an American and one an Australian--who join forces in Australia’s Outback to help solve the disappearance of the Australian boy’s opal-miner father, who has been accused of stealing a bag of valuable opals.

“The Opal Mystery” is the first in a planned series of “Boomer” mysteries to be written by the New Zealand-born Fabian. And who is Boomer? A half-wild kangaroo, of course.

For those who can’t afford to pay up to $45,000 to have Legacy Publishing of Newport Beach turn their life stories into 20-copy hand-bound heirloom autobiographies, LifeWorks Press of Laguna Niguel offers a less-expensive alternative.

It’s called Family Matters--The Heritage Book.

For $495, LifeWorks Press provides would-be subjects with questionnaires designed to help them organize their life stories. The company’s editors then take the answers and turn them into a narrative. The result is then printed and bound in a deluxe hardcover master copy and in four soft-cover copies.

LifeWorks Press was founded earlier this year by Randall and Kaoru Oguri Kendis. As anthropologists and parents, Randall Kendis says, “we felt a deep personal tie to ‘heritage’ and wanted our three sons to know about the lives, experiences and feelings of their grandparents. We created the first Family Matters books for them.”

Using a questionnaire format, LifeWorks Press also offers the “Desert Storm Experience,” which veterans of the Persian Gulf War can use to document their experiences, impressions and feelings in book form.

For more information, call LifeWorks at (714) 643-9473.

It’s billed as “a book that reveals your relationship with your own body!”

Laguna Beach author Aileen Goodson describes “Therapy, Nudity & Joy” (Elysium Growth Press; $24.95) as a cultural study of the causes and effects of body shame, the history and psychology of clothing, and nudity in ancient and modern cultures.

Goodson, who has a master’s degree in psychology/gerontology and a doctorate in sexology from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, is a co-founder of the Elysium Institute, a clothing-optional center in Los Angeles County.