After a career spent helping tell other people’s stories, two-time Emmy Award-winning television editor and Coachella Valley resident Rich Mikan is finally telling one of his own.
Writing under the pen name Morra Lee Grey, Mikan has released his first novel, Libertine: The Presidential Dossier, Volume One. The political thriller and satire has fun with sex, celebrity, pop culture, consumerism and the absurdity of American politics.
Mikan’s television career has included work for Extra, Access Hollywood, CBS, NBC, ESPN, the Disney Channel and The Oprah Winfrey Show, where he won two Emmy Awards for editing. For the past 25 years, he cut television promos for the Fox Television Network in Los Angeles. The story of Libertine had been developing in his head for years. Suddenly laid off from FOX, Mikan sat down and wrote. Every day. No days off. For nine weeks. Some days, he spent 12 hours at his laptop.
“I wrote not only with inspiration, but with a tremendous amount of desperation,” Mikan said. “After nearly four decades of thinking about becoming a writer, I finally stopped thinking about it and became one.”
At the center of Libertine are Miriam Stone and Ronald Mundt, two presidential candidates whose secret relationship ended 40 years ago. Now, as they battle for the White House, long-buried secrets threaten their campaigns and everything they’ve built. Once they shared a bed; now they want the same job.
Learn more at www.libertinebooks.com.
Here’s an excerpt from Libertine: The Presidential Dossier, Volume One.
TWENTY-FIVE: Mojo Potatoes
The disillusionment with the relationship crept in quietly, like a slow leak in a roof that goes unnoticed until the ceiling collapses into the living room.
At first, they dined at the best restaurants in Jacksonville. Ronald knew all of them, knew the owners by name. Well, it was his father, Aldous, who knew them and had established the relationships. Ronald was mostly viewed as an afterthought they had to deal with. Aldous would order without looking at the menu; it didn’t matter if it wasn’t on the menu. Whatever he ordered would arrive as if by divine providence. That is real power. Miriam, who had grown up eating whatever was on sale at the Jewel, sat across from him thinking, So this is how the other half lives. She was not complaining; this was something she could get comfortable with. She was, as it turned out, getting ahead of herself.
It was a Tuesday night when Ronald first suggested Shakey’s Pizza. She assumed it was a joke. It was not. Shakey’s, it turned out, was Ronald Mundt’s favorite restaurant. He had strong feelings about the pizza. He had even stronger feelings about the mojo potatoes.
Oh … and the hat. He loved wearing the Shakey’s Pizza boater-style straw hat. It was something a barbershop quartet or a vaudeville performer would wear. It looked ridiculous. Ronald had given a busboy three dollars to steal him one that he kept permanently in the trunk of his car. He wanted it to be available if they ended up at Shakey’s.
The mojo potatoes were, she would concede, good. They were crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and generously seasoned. She ate them. She appreciated them. What she did not do was discuss them for 10 minutes.
Ronald did.
The first time she sat across from him at Shakey’s and listened to his analysis of what distinguished a great mojo potato from a merely acceptable one, she found it kind of charming. He could drone on and on about the most meaningless shit. Ronald had very strong feelings about the Shakey’s in Orlando. He vowed never to eat there again. It wasn’t about the quality of the food. It was the “tourist prices” he found offensive. Ronnie then went on a rant about companies gouging hard-working Americans.
The third time they went to Shakey’s, she found it even less charming. By the fifth visit, please take off that stupid hat. I’m embarrassed sitting with you! Jeezus! She had developed a mental exercise she deployed whenever the mojo potato monologue began, which it always did. She would toss down about half her gigantic mug of beer, breathe through her nose, and wait.
What made the Shakey’s visits particularly memorable was Mundt’s obsession with the banjo player.
Not all Shakey’s locations had live entertainment. The one on the questionable side of town that Ronald favored did. A man in black pants, a white shirt, a red vest, a black bolo tie, and that stupid fucking hat would play banjo. Seriously! Jeezus! The banjo player took the small stage and played fast, foot-stomping banjo music with the cheerful ferocity of someone who had never been told to stop. Ronald loved this. Ronald loved it the way children love fireworks and cats love chasing laser pointers. His eyes would go wide and bright. His jaw would go slack. He would guzzle diet soda, shovel pizza and mojo potatoes into his open mouth while staring at the stage with an expression of pure, unmitigated joy.
Miriam, watching this, developed a coping mechanism. She imagined she was a paleoanthropologist who had been transported back in time by roughly 600,000 years and was observing on the Serengeti plain an early human ancestor crouched over a freshly acquired goat carcass alongside a generous serving of mojo potatoes. She would imagine writing in a journal … The figure was a mostly upright hominid, perhaps fifty kilos, jaw working steadily, eyes tracking something in the distance. … Every few moments, unprompted, it would say one word. Not clearly. The primitive animal would mutter Banjo. If Mundt went on longer than usual, her fantasy would conclude with her receiving a Nobel Prize for her decades-long research on Mundtanthropus vulgaris.
She did not share this fantasy with Ronald. She filed it away alongside several other observations about the man she was dating, in a mental folder she had quietly labeled, without quite meaning to, “who he actually is.”
She did not stop going to Shakey’s. She told herself it was because the mojo potatoes were worth it. She was not entirely wrong.
Years later, during the campaign, at a fundraising stop in Tallahassee, a young reporter asked Miriam what she had eaten the night before. She had been in Jacksonville. She paused before answering. The pause of a woman doing something deliberate, and she said, “Shakey’s Pizza.” She let it sit. Then she said, “Many of you think my opponent, Ronald Mundt, and I have nothing in common. But we do. We both love the mojo potatoes at Shakey’s. Don’t we, Ronnie?” Now the crowd roared. She said it pleasantly, with a small smile, and moved on. The reporter nodded and moved to the next question. Several thousand miles away, in whatever office Ronald Mundt happened to be occupying that afternoon, he would know exactly what she meant. He still had the hat. She had not forgotten any of it, and she was telling him so with a plate of seasoned fried potatoes. It was the most satisfying poke she took at him all week.
The race between the candidates in Florida was too close to call, and Ronald Mundt and Miriam Stone were doing all they could to win. Since the 1960s, Florida has voted for a Democratic president only five times. With the team in the Sunshine State for a few days, Gavin Sinclair was personally visiting local campaign offices to encourage them to do some good old-fashioned door-knocking. The offices Sin couldn’t visit had Julia Weinfeld show up to rally the troops. The pair didn’t share their feelings in texts or emails, but they both knew Florida had already slipped away.
For years in Florida, the Mundt name, specifically Aldous Mundt, had the stink of a Florida swamp attached to it. But the name of Aldous Mundt and Florida were no longer entwined. After Aldous passed, the Peninsula Grand was renamed Mundt Jacksonville. Within weeks, every property Aldous owned was rebranded as a Mundt property. Each one stamped with the same golden “M” Ronald Mundt pressed onto everything he touched. Ronald Mundt was now the face of Mundt Enterprises, and he made sure everyone knew it. He was no longer a person. He transformed himself into a brand. People remembered him from his endless television commercials. Ronald didn’t do any actual work, other than showing up, holding a product, and smiling. His daughter Kerplunka ran the business. But Ronald’s face was the company’s brand. Sinclair’s own research showed that Mundt voters were not voting for Mundt the man. They were voting for Mundt the brand.
Miriam had an early fundraising breakfast, an intimate donor luncheon at a small art gallery, and a late campaign rally. Julia pushed back the rally start time so they would get coverage during the West Coast evening newscasts. It was going to be a long day for Miriam and the team.
It was pouring rain at 6 a.m. when two Secret Service SUVs and a dozen police motorcycles exited the hotel parking garage. One turned left; Miriam was in the one that turned right. Even with the police escort, the ride to Sanibel Island would take almost an hour. Julia and Sin had to do a few local TV shows, so Benningfield was to give Miriam her morning briefing during the ride, something he had never done. She looked more tired than usual, so he had been letting Miriam sit in silence. She was watching the raindrops on the window. “Ms. Stone?” No response. “Ms. Stone?” Miriam continued looking out the window. Finally, Benningfield said, “Excuse me, Miriam?” Her head slowly turned. She didn’t smile, but her face said she had heard him. Miriam reached for her bag that was sitting between them. She began removing items from deep inside her bag. “Voilà.” Miriam smiled and put on a pair of large dark sunglasses before returning her attention to the raindrops racing across the SUV’s windows. If Sin or Julia were in the SUV, Miriam would not have gotten away with it.
She did not stop going to Shakey’s. She told herself it was because the mojo potatoes were worth it. She was not entirely wrong.
Dr. Tula Ashline had been shadowing the campaign for a few weeks. She couldn’t officially travel with Miriam and the team because an M.D. with a psychiatric residency on a presidential campaign’s travel manifest would be a gift to opposition research. Sin knew if it leaked, Ronald Mundt would be on Carlton Buckley. He would look at the camera, tilt his head, hold up one finger beside his ear, extend it, and rotate it in slow, deliberate circles. Unhurried. Theatrical. Until his eyebrows went up. His lips pressed together in a suppressed grin before he said, “Cuckoo! Cuckoo! I told you Mindless Miriam was nuts!”
Hamilton Lightfoot Lee wasn’t directly linked to Miriam’s campaign. So, he became the person who handled the things that couldn’t be handled officially. Hamilton set up a shell LLC to absorb the cost of Dr. Ashline. The campaign never saw it. The FEC never saw it. Miriam was kept in the dark about the details of it all.
Miriam felt safe with Dr. Ashline. She found her voice peaceful. Watching the rain, Miriam was replaying her last visit with the doctor in her head.
Dr. Ashline leaned forward in her chair. “I want to be direct with you,” she said. “Is that alright, Miriam?”
“Of course.”
“I don’t think you’re being fully transparent with me. I’ve noticed a pattern. You bring up difficult, real things, and I believe what you tell me. What I don’t believe is that it’s the whole picture.”
Miriam looked at her. “What makes you say that?”
“You analyze,” the doctor said. “You contextualize. And you never quite get to the bottom of anything.” Miriam said she was trying, but she wasn’t.
“Miriam, I can’t help you with what you don’t bring me. You do understand that.”
“What do you think I haven’t brought you?” There was a stretch of silence. “I’m sure there’s plenty.” Dr. Ashline picked up her pen.
Benningfield could see Miriam was coming back to life. Watching out the window of the SUV, she thought, So, I’m supposed to tell you I wore a strap-on when I had sex with Ronald Mundt. Is that the kind of transparency we’re going for?
Even without Benningfield’s morning briefing, Miriam was flawless at the fundraising breakfast. Returning to Fort Myers, Miriam was upbeat. She called Sin, Julia, and Hamilton on the way to the luncheon. It was Benningfield’s turn to look out the window at the rain. Miriam was watching Benningfield. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Excuse me, Miriam.”
“The rain. The rain on the windows. It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Benningfield? I could watch it all day.”
© 2026 Morra Lee Grey.
