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Borrowing from my friend and fellow author, Hon. Eugene Sullivan, author of “The Majority Rules”, writing a novel is harder than climbing a mountain and it takes a lot of help to get the job finished. I first want to give God the glory for my creativity and energy to face this task and the strength of the long hours of writing. God inspired the title, and a myriad of other details. I also have to thank my wife and family for allowing me the time and space to work on this project over the years. I am grateful to Susan Wolan for her editorial assistance. My friend, Michael G. Stephens, Ph.D., a creative writing Professor, and author of many novels, plays and poetry gave me ideas, reflections and comments from his vast experience. Mike and I grew up in Williston Park, NY and he said I captured the town as he remembered it. I also had input and stories from many of my Williston Park friends who reminisced with me about these wonder years. I am grateful to my former neighbor, Dagmar Hinote, who spent hours and hours typing my legal pad notes and revising my writing, time and again, draft upon draft. She also spoke German, which helped with the chapter about Germany. I consulted with several doctors about the accident and hospital stay chapters, and effects of medicine on the body, etc. Among them were Helen and Woody Cannon, MD's of Raleigh; Deborah Lewis, MD of Raleigh; and Eunice Smith, a Nurse of Raleigh. Some of the psychiatry about attitudes of teenagers and about some of the medicine, as well, came with the help of John B. Reckless, MD, and former Professor of Psychiatry at Duke University in Durham, NC. I also consulted with Morris Thigpen of Raleigh, a creature of my imagination and he tells some whopping tales! Many people shared their stories about their high school years, and some of their chronicles ended up in the novel. But it is fiction, and exaggeration and embellishment and literary license are tools of the writing trade.
I want to thank the Members of The North Carolina Writer's Network (NCWRITERS.ORG) for their support and wonderful training to all of North Carolina writers. At the conference in Asheville, NC in November of 2005, I met, listened to a great speech about writing, and was encouraged by author, Susan Orlean, staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992. Susan is the author of the New York Times Bestseller, “The Orchid Thief”, among others, which she autographed for me at that Asheville writer's conference. Her book was successfully made into the movie “Adaptation”, starring Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep and Christopher Cooper.
I also met and became friends with author and renown Texas Hold 'Em Poker expert and poker writer, and Chairman of Humanities Department at Louisberg College, Win Neagle, of Raleigh, NC. Later I met and I had lunch with and discussed dialogue with author and Professor of Writing, Brenda Jernigan. I had professional help from William Greenleaf of Greenleaf Literary Services of Port Angeles, WA. I had excellent criticism from Lantz Powell of Southern Literary Agency in Chattanooga, TN, who advised me to rework my novel and advised me with encouragement, that I was a very good storyteller.
I owe a lot of my storytelling ability to one of my grandmothers, “Kate” Hanley Casey, who was born in Ireland, a remarkable woman, who made and sewed by hand the inaugural gown dress of the wife of President Wilson, and called me “Jamie” and died at the ripe old age of 96, who used to tell me stories as I sat on her knee and shared many a story with me about her days in Ireland. So I still may have a lot of “blarney” in me.
Also, I will be forever grateful to my now deceased, but loving in-laws, J. Howard Manningham, Esq. and Mary Manningham, who loved me as their son and listened to these “chronicles” on my couch and encouraged me with their laughter when they were in their eighties. My father-in-law used to say, writing is only “words on a page.” For thirty-five years, “Howard” was President of the Boston Law Book Company, in Boston, MA, and he and Mary were so proud of me when I wrote my first law book, “Judgment Enforcement” and later, when I became a Judge. Their home in New Hampshire, now owned by my niece, Susan, and her husband, Richard Kipphut, became the model for the vacation chapter in this book, which I embellished somewhat, but still is the most beautiful spot I know in America, and Richard and Susan some of the best hosts to all of us who know and love them.
James J. Brown, Raleigh, NC
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