Getting a book published has been my lifelong dream. Several years ago, I attended a bookstore signing at which the author was late to arrive, so the store owner led the audience in a group discussion by asking: “What do you most want to see in a book?” My answer was: “My name as its author on the cover.” Although publishing HOW MY BOOK CLUB GOT ARRESTED was the realization of my dream, having my name on the cover has proved to be problematic.
Due to my book-club members not wanting to get hauled into court yet again, all of the names herein have been changed, including my own. All of the events, on the other hand, occurred as written and were witnessed/perpetrated by one or more of us. Most of our conversations were recorded by a prototype voice-to-text app (which, btw, my computer-whiz son designed; {my publisher didn’t want me to include the name of this software program, but if you ask a computer expert to recommend the best voice-to-text app on the market today—with such first-rate voice recognition that it can identify up to eight different speakers—that will be my son’s}) :). (Okay, yes, that’s a happy face, which is amateurish. I was having fun with punctuation.)
It is an understatement to say that, in my telling of this story, feathers were ruffled. Feathers were plucked and jabbed into sensitive places where no feathers belong. Countless times none of us book-clubbers wanted to believe that we actually said the things the app recorded. This led to a sentence-by-sentence dismantling of initial drafts of this book, even though the text and the software application that produced the text were thoroughly vetted and have been declared accurate by no less than the entire freaking State of Missouri! (I’m a bit touchy on this particular subject.)
Many book clubs are basically wine and cheese parties named after a different book each month. That sounds fun. Cheers! My merry band of book lovers, however, can criticize the daylights out of a book. To date, we’ve discussed some 128 titles and have yet to find a single book that we all held in precisely the same regard.
Imagine, if you will, how things played out when I asked them to critique a book about them—my beloved-but-opinionated friends who were traumatized by the very events described within said book. Are you picturing something along the lines of me as a metaphoric sirloin patty that’s been dropped into a tank of hungry piranhas? If so, that’s not quite right. Out of a complex need to protect one another’s feelings and yet assuage our own guilty consciences, it was more along the lines of five underfed piranhas—myself included—trying to simultaneous eat themselves plus one another, along with the aforementioned metaphoric sirloin patty.
The only thing that presented an even greater challenge was when I gave my manuscript to the sixth member of the book club—my adult daughter. Fortunately, she handled the matter with grace and maturity. (Because I’ve bragged about my son’s software application and I don’t play favorites {which neither of them believe}, I’m joyously announcing that my daughter’s singing, dancing, and acting skills have recently led to her being cast in a musical on Broadway! Yet another reason that pseudonyms were required for all concerned.)
Even though it’s fair to say that the state of Missouri agrees with the narrative herein, it is also fair to say that an average of two points of significant contention regarding accuracy arose on every single page of this book from one or more of my fellow Boobs. (And, no, the word Boobs is not a typo. An explanation can be found in Chapter 1.) Even so, we talked everything through, and the book club remains intact.
A couple of months have passed since everyone in the group was given the opportunity to read and comment on my eighth draft. There will not be a ninth, because one of the members, whose real and fake names shall remain anonymous, threatened to strangle me—and honest to God, at this point, I’d be more than happy to provide a hemp-based (see Chapter 2) rope.
At the onset of the road trip from Boulder, Colorado, to Branson, Missouri, I had envisioned this book as a travelogue. In my capacity as a beta tester for the voice-to-text software, I requested and was granted everyone’s verbal permission to record them. I kept the app running on my mini-iPad in my purse, except while recharging it at night, and my purse was usually with me. What none of us knew at the time was that these recordings would be key evidence in a trial.
And so, dear readers (assuming more than one person buys this book), here is what actually (sort of) happened. :) (My last happy face. I promise.)