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The Donald’s nephew is taking readers through the hilarious journey of a narcissistic man desperate to be part of fictitious Trump-like circles. Today author David Desmond sits down with Book Addict Editor Angela Wilson to chat about his new novel and what it is like growing up in the fishbowl of the rich and famous.

David, tell us about your latest, The Misadventures of Oliver Booth: Life in the Lap of Luxury.

The Misadventures of Oliver Booth is a satirical novel that follows Oliver Booth, a shady antiques dealer, from Palm Beach to Paris and back again as he tries to cheat a wealthy widow out of her fortune. I won’t give away the ending, but along the way we meet up with lots of crazy characters who are ripe for ridicule, including investment bankers, interior designers, trophy wives, all of the usual suspects. It’s a lot of fun.

Is the narcissist Oliver based on a certain someone you’ve met, or several someones?

Oliver Booth is a composite of a number of people that I’ve met. Even though every narcissist feels that he or she is unique, the fact that Oliver is narcissistic doesn’t really distinguish him from the people with whom he associates because that personality trait runs rampant in wealthy communities. I’ve encountered many people who are much like Oliver, and my experiences with them enabled me to create the character.

You have a lot of experience watching the rich and famous. You are the grandson of famed real estate developer Fred Trump and nephew of “The Donald.” What was it like growing up in that world? Did you always find yourself poking fun at some of the craziness of it?

To be honest, I always considered my family to be pretty well grounded during my childhood. My grandfather Fred and my uncle Donald both shared a desire to work hard and succeed, but my grandfather tended to avoid the public eye. Donald, as you may have noticed, has taken a different approach, and it has worked very well for him. He didn’t really explode onto the public scene until the 1980s, though, and I was fully into adulthood when the public perception of my family changed so dramatically, so it really didn’t have an impact on me during my formative years.

When you decided to write Oliver Booth, did you worry at all about how it would be perceived in Trump circles?

No, not at all, because there aren’t any shady antiques dealers in my family! My greater concern was how the book would be received in Palm Beach because that’s where I make my home. In fact, an audience member at a recent reading actually asked me, perhaps jokingly, if it had become necessary for me to hire bodyguards. I really haven’t had any problems, though, because the people who deserve to be satirized rarely have the degree of insight that would be necessary for them to realize that they’re the target of the satire.

Oliver Booth wants nothing more than to become part of the rich and famous “in” crowd. There are a lot of people out there today who want that same thing. What drives people to want this? Do they get what they bargained for once they get there?

Insecurity. It’s really that simple. Rather than make an effort to get to the root of one’s dissatisfaction with oneself and one’s life, many people instead opt for superficial status symbols. You know, they buy a Bentley, they join the “right” club, they marry a trophy wife. The most extreme example, of course, is plastic surgery, but the superficial trappings of status and financial security will never lead to inner happiness. I mean, what’s the point of buying a Lamborghini in Palm Beach when the speed limit is 30 miles per hour? Essentially, this is a community of people with too much money and too much free time who are trying to impress others who just can’t be impressed.

I love how some of the names in the book are a double-edged sword, like Dudley Drane, who heads up the self-help seminars at Morningwood, or Dot Chillingsworth, who is on the Goiter Gala committee. Did you consciously develop character names to signify something?

It’s funny, I can’t recall ever having made a conscious effort to come up with a name for a character, despite the fact that they’re very important to me. They just seem to spring into my mind and only later on do I figure out their significance. Take the name Oliver Booth, for example. As best I can determine, my selection of a name with the letter “O” in three places was probably influenced by Oliver’s portly physique, and those letters also could hint at the number zero and perhaps his absence of character and substance.

Clinical psychology is actually your chosen profession. What appealed to you about it?

Since I was in my early teens, people and their motivations fascinated me. I chose clinical psychology because it was the profession that was best suited to my interest in people. Even though I no longer see patients and now work full-time as a writer, I’ll always be a psychologist in spirit. Having said that, I definitely don’t miss dealing with insurance companies.

As you took classes and learned more about the human psyche, did it put into perspective some of the situations and people you met while living in the fishbowl of the rich and famous?

I didn’t move to Palm Beach, the stomping ground of the idle rich, until long after my training was completed. I’ll tell you, though, some of the crazy characters that I’ve met during the last few years have sent me back to my textbooks, particularly those on pathological narcissism.

You have been married for 16 years to the same woman and also have a 12-year old son. Having a stable relationship is unusual in a world of trophy wives and champagne. Was it important to you - even as a young man - to have a stable relationship? How has being married this long changed your perspective on what you observe in relationships among the elite?

Actually, I come from divorced parents. I learned a great deal from my parents’ failed marriage, and it certainly gave me an incentive to work extra hard on being a good, involved husband and father. Regardless of whether one is wealthy (that’s probably a better word than “elite,” which has a connotation of social merit) or poor, marriage requires patience, effort, and understanding. Wealth is probably beneficial to a marriage because it eliminates one important cause of marital conflict, but I sometimes wonder if wealth is inversely proportional to emotional sensitivity, an absence of which virtually guarantees that a marriage is going to fail.

You have a fantastic Web site for Oliver Booth. It offers a little something for everyone, including fans, journalists and virtual book tour hosts like myself. How important are the Web and social networking to you from a marketing standpoint?

Thanks for the compliment! I’m very proud of my Web site, as well as the fact that I’ve been able to channel my “inner geek” to manage it by myself. The Web and social networking are critically important for success not only in publishing but probably in every industry. As we have seen in the music business, the world is going digital, and I would prefer to ride on top of the wave of technology rather than be caught under it.

Oliver Booth was a Best Books Award Winner from USA Book News. What was it like to receive nationwide accolades?

Tremendous, of course. Every author has certain insecurities about his or her work, and the occasional bad review doesn’t help, so it’s always inspiring to be selected to receive a national award in the face of tough competition.

Does that make you nervous at all for your next release? Does it increase your expectations?

I’ve already completed the sequel to The Misadventures of Oliver Booth, and I would like to believe that it will do well. I’m more concerned about the state of publishing in general and the future of print. Are we all going to be moving toward publishing on the Amazon Kindle? I don’t think any of us really know right now.

You have a reader’s guide to Oliver Booth on your Web site. What types of things do you cover there? What types of book groups would like to read this book?

The Misadventures of Oliver Booth is well-suited to book clubs that like to have fun. The newspapers are full of stories that make us feel sad and stressed, and I’m always happy to discover a club whose members have decided to enjoy themselves and not succumb to the pressure of reading the latest fashionable but torturous self-help book. On the other hand, although I didn’t set out to write a “message” book, my reader’s guide can help a book club take its discussions to a slightly deeper level, with questions such as, “Does money have the power to corrupt, or must one first be corruptible?” That’s an interesting question, and its nice that it can be raised by a book that’s also entertaining.

What if a book group wants to chat with you, whether in person, or via phone or Internet. How can they do that?

I certainly welcome invitations to participate in book clubs, either in person or by phone or Webcam. The best way to reach me is through the e-mail link at www.oliverbooth.com.

How do you stay inspired as an author?

The answer is both very simple and very complicated. The secret is to live life. It can only be through living life to the fullest that an author can continue to evolve as a person and thus as a writer.

Who are you reading?

I joke that I only read books by deceased Frenchmen, and, although I love Balzac, Flaubert, and Maupassant, I also admire Evelyn Waugh and certain contemporary writers. They’re too numerous to name individually, but those to whom I’ve turned consistently over the years include Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, and Gabriel García Márquez. Perhaps my favorite author during the last ten years is a person who has a remarkably deep understanding of the human condition, Haruki Murakami.

What can fans expect in your next book?

The sequel follows Oliver Booth from Palm Beach to New York, where he does battle with an evil socialite in the seamy world of high-end real estate. It was a lot of fun to write a sequel in which Oliver was no longer the bad guy and actually attained some moderate level of success, although not entirely due to his own merits.

Where can we find you on the Web?

My Web site is located at www.oliverbooth.com. It contains excerpts from The Misadventures of Oliver Booth, essays that I’ve written on a variety of topics, information on my background, and lots of additional things, including a link to a parody Website that I created for the Goiter Gala, a ridiculous fake benefit that I mention in my book.

I’m also very proud of my blog. It seems that everybody is producing a blog these days, but most of them seem to offer nothing more than tired YouTube videos and photographs of the writer’s cats. It took me some time to come up with an alternative approach, but then I realized that it might be interesting to post entries in the voices on my characters. If you read my blog, which is located at therichlife.wordpress.com, you’ll find that Oliver Booth posts on Mondays about Palm Beach, Bernard Dauphin, a character who enters my book as a French waiter, posts on Wednesdays about Paris, and I post on Fridays on a variety of topics. Take a look, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it!