Just before my family’s business collapsed, I’d separated from my wife of nineteen years, and was therefore unable to distinguish between those two great liberations. The company, the girl I married and I had, all three of us, since high school, been a strange ménage a trois—and the splitting apart was both wrenching and inevitable. We’d become as incompatible as different plaids.

The company had once been the biggest and most innovative in its little field, but by the 1980s, was in precipitous decline. I was named President & CEO the same year a vicious family feud was settled for a lot of money, money that was sorely needed to modernize the business. We tried our hardest, but after seven years, the bank modified our loan agreement, hired a turnaround manager and insisted we offer up the company for sale.

The breakup of the marriage was more my doing, or undoing, depending on how you look at it. I was almost forty. My ambition had fizzled and seeing my diminishing chances of being an accomplished athlete, tycoon or virtuoso guitarist humbled, and then hobbled, me, which I’m sure made me a lot less attractive to my wife. I had elaborate fantasies of spending my days reading and writing poetry, activities which I’d forsaken, along with romanticism, in my late teens. I was exhausted from being the sole breadwinner supporting my wife and four children and I was either foolish or clever enough to tell her that. I will spare you the details of our deliberations, the separation, and the reaction of our children, except to say I was fitted with a mouth guard by my dentist and advised by a wincing physician to take as much Xanax as I needed. Really, he told me. Go ahead.

It was under those circumstances that I started writing a novel.

I went to the Southeastern Bookseller’s Association (SEBA) meeting in Winston Salem, North Carolina. This is a gathering of book publishers and bookstore owners, with a smattering of authors thrown in. It is a time for meeting and greeting, as well as schmoozing and signing. It is a chance to see and be seen, and it is all a lot of fun.

The driving force behind this event is a lady named Wanda Jewell. I learned this when I first got there and met a lady who was looking at the Mercer University Press display (where I was hanging out). I introduced myself and she told me who she was and added, “I am Wanda’s assistant.”

I then showed my complete ignorance by asking “Who’s Wanda?’ That is when I learned the lady of the day is Wanda Jewell. Later when Paula Millen, of the South Carolina Book Fest Millens, and I were walking around we ran into Wanda Jewell, and Paula introduced us. Wanda is as down to earth as anyone you would ever want to meet. Not at all as formidable as I expected.

Looming over the aisles at SEBA was my picture. I had brought a big poster with me that I sat up on an easel to try to draw people to my books. I don’t know if it sold any books for me but it sure did get people’s attention. As my friend Jackie White always tells me, that big-a** picture is worth its weight in gold.