Hollywood or bust! Ralph, Mona, and Dorothy all made their ways across America to la-la-land in a reality that looked significantly different than the steamy, dreamy, easy success sold in the glossy and newsprint pages of the tinseltown fan-mags.

None of these promising talents can land even a supporting role. Getting abused as an extra is the best they can aspire. Even regular jobs are elusive because the town is overloaded with starry-eyed wannabees. Dorothy is the first to be arrested. She’s been shoplifting to make ends meet, and her dubious career ends abruptly when she’s caught stealing a car and sentenced seemingly as a poster-child for Hollywood hopefuls turned criminal—with a three year bit.

That leaves one less would-be actor to compete with the other 20,000+ suckers hoping to find the yellow brick road to stardom. Ralph and Mona share an apartment platonically with each on a separate route to advance their nonexistent careers or face the harsh realities of The Dream Factory and give up.

The balance of the novel gives readers a close-up POV of the promises, scams, and exploitation of the movie business and its cast of outrageous misfits. Many lessons are given—some learned, some ignored. Home is a fast-paced, bumpy ride through the backdoors of tinseltown told through the eyes of three hapless hopefuls lured West by the one-in-a-million success stories in which a star is born every minute.

Horace Stanley McCoy (1897–1955) worked as a sports editor and radio broadcaster before moving to Hollywood to pursue an acting career, that eventually lead to screenwriting. He also worked his share of odd jobs, including that of a bouncer at the Santa Monica pier. During the early 1930s we wrote detective fiction for pulp magazines like Black Mask, Detective-Dragnet, Detective Action Stories and several others. His first novel was also is most famous due to the 1969 movie of the same name, starring Michael Sarrazin, Jane Fonda, and Gig Young, made 14 years after McCoy’s death.

I Should Have Stayed Home was published three years after Horses and is dedicated to Joseph T. Shaw (Black Mask editor), Oliver Hinsdell (an acting coach for MGM, who brought McCoy to Hollywood from Dallas), and Ben Plazza (an actor most famous late in his life for his part in The Blues Brothers).