Torrid affair with millionaire conman leads to Hilton Head Island woman’s first novel

You know that feeling you get when you’re at the north-end Reilley’s in the middle of a weekday afternoon, sitting at a high-top, sipping a water, and a Hilton Head Island author suddenly reads a sex scene aloud to you from her new novel — a roman a clef at that?

Oh, that’s never happened to you?

Well, it did to me.

“I looked at him and thought, ‘We haven’t made love yet and who’s to say whether or not we’ll be good in bed together?’,” Janice Sisson, who is retired and lives in Shipyard with her husband, Audie, said to the both of us in a mostly low voice as she read from “Mile High on a Millionaire.” “... Doc seemed to have read my mind as he placed his hands on my waist, turning me sideways and gently laying me down on the island and caressing me lightly.”

I was leaned in as closely as I could be to her, leading with my right ear in the hopes of creating some sort of sound-suction wherein every word she read would be vacuumed directly into my head and not make their way out to any unprepared table passerby.

Not that anyone at Reilley’s would’ve cared.

They weren’t the ones having flashbacks of a 6-foot tall fleshy, frowning and tsking nun named Sister Maria standing in front of them with a head shaped like a butternut squash and jowls loosened by years of disapproval.

“Miss. Farrell. What. Are. You. Listening to. And in PUBLIC?”

When Sisson was done, she smiled and I re-entered polite society.

“See? I tried to be classy. There’s no cuss words. There’s no mean sex.”

She was right. This wasn’t “Fifty Shades of Grey” by any stretch. But Sisson also does not hold back in this book, which is a short and true account of an unusual love affair she had at age 23 with a high-profile multimillionaire con artist.

Sisson uses pseudonyms in the novel, but she told me the man’s real name, and I went right to Google that very night because I needed to know what his deal was.

His deal was some time in prison.

And a mention in another book, written by an also-imprisoned associate of his, about pumping iron after 50.

“So … hmmm,” I said to Sisson. “You said your parents read this?!”

No, no. Only her mother has.

And she would be OK with her father reading it, since he also lived through that time with her, but he hasn’t yet. (Do it with one eye covered, sir, and your cardiologist on speed-dial.)

Her adult daughters have also read her book. So has her husband of 13 years, who digested every word in many, many small pieces over the 20 years it took her finish it.

Now, Sisson wants everyone else to read her story.

Then she wants readers to see the film version of it, which she sees as an eventuality but only after the book reaches the heights she has dreamed for it and becomes a best-seller. (It would, actually, make a good movie.)

And she’s leaving the future open to a sequel just in case people want to read more from her.

No matter the book’s destiny, though, writing an account of this time in her life was very important to Sisson.

She experienced a world beyond anything she could’ve imagined growing up in Kentucky farm country. There were rides on a private jet. Fancy dinners. Jewels. Being treated like a princess at every turn. And, like I said, lots of sex.

She even had a much less montage-y version of “The Pretty Woman” shopping scene, but without the judgment of Rodeo Drive shop girls and, um, without being a prostitute as was Julia Roberts’ character in that movie.

Basically the man gave Sisson money to buy a dress for their date that night. Roy Orbison started playing in my head when I read this, but I’m probably stretching things here.

At first, Sisson approached the book the way one would an autobiography. Scene for scene as she remembered them.

She spent years wearing out computers as she relived that time in her life. And she wrote despite a severe allergy to paper during the final years.

But because her editor and lawyer strongly urged her to change all names and identifying details, “Mile High on a Millionaire” became scene for scene as she remembered them, but now with the flexibility of fictionalizing her experience where appropriate.

“This was closure for me,” she told me, but not “closure” in a bitter way.

Sisson loved this man deeply and remembers him fondly for who he was with her, but he had defrauded her city and the many good people she had come to know through work at the shell company he set up.

He had disappointed her.

“I changed the ending of the book for closure,” she said.

“How did the affair really end?” I asked her.

“Well, I broke up with him. (That’s) in there. When I found out he’d lied …”

She shook her head.

“I like the woman I’ve become through all of this.”

I became interested in Sisson’s story when I read a line in a press release for the book. It said she wanted to inspire other women to find their millionaires.

I jumped in with both feet — but they were the feet I had as a preteen when I thought finding a rich husband was an admirable Top 3 goal, when the plot of “Cinderella” seemed like an ideal professional trajectory, when I did not yet know that some princes wear fake crowns.

Now I see “find millionaire husband” as an irrelevant and sad entry on an antiquated to-do list. I’ll make my own millions, thank you.

And then find a billionaire husband.

Sisson’s press release was wrong, though. Or rather, I had read it the wrong way.

She isn’t urging women to marry for money.

Not at all.

“I never did it,” she said.

She rubbed her husband’s shoulder, the man she says is her soulmate and rock, who has taken care of her through illness and supported her dream of writing this story. The man she calls a genius and brilliant and the best.

“When I met him,” she said, half-joking, “he was driving an old striped pickup.”

Sisson does want her readers to look for their millionaire, though, in the sense that they should seek the love of someone who will bring joy to their lives.

“Look at yourself in the mirror to see if you like what you see,” she said. “And look for someone who makes you happy, makes you smile, who takes care of you and is nice.

“Get a good man.”

This story was originally published June 19, 2016 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Torrid affair with millionaire conman leads to Hilton Head Island woman’s first novel."