By The Way The Real Truth behind Book Number Seven By Emory Jones
A
s you may or may not have heard, I just finished my seventh book. It was a big deal at my house, but probably not yours.
imagine—inadvertently typed in that I had written “sex” books instead of “six” books.
Now, I don’t mention that to brag. In fact, lots of writers would laugh out loud to hear somebody say they’d only written seven books. Stephen King probably would.
They even listed them as including Zipping Through Georgia, The Valley Where They Danced and Distant Voices.
I bet ole Isaac Asimov would, too. I mean, if Isaac was still alive and all. They say that man wrote more than 500 books and so many short stories, he lost count his own self. On top of that, he mailed 90,000 letters. They weren’t all to his mama, either. Clearly, Isaac knew a lot more people than I do. Why I doubt I’ve written 50 letters in my whole life, and that’s counting all those to the draft board. Anyway, the new book is about my pet pig Cunningham. Cunningham thinks I wrote it to tell folks what a fine pig he is. He’s even bragged about that some to his mama up in Iowa. But, while he is indeed a fine pig and all, I didn’t really write the book to honor Cunningham. No, the real reason is very different indeed. And a little embarrassing, to tell the truth. You see, a particular periodical (not this one, I promise) for which I sometimes write a piece or two made a most distressing mistake. In journalism, errors are known as typos. And this little typo caused quite a commotion. At least it did at my house, but again, probably not at yours. The story itself was fine, if not memorable. I mean, I can’t even recall the subject matter, and I wrote it. No, the trouble came at the end where they put a little blurb about the essayist.
At first, I didn’t understand how something like this could happen. But then again, there are lots of other things I don’t understand either. Like why you have to have a license to fish but can drink liquor without one—things like that. And soccer. I don’t think anybody understands soccer; I don’t care what they claim. But typos happen, so I’m not really all that perturbed about that little printing error they made. Truth be told, I’m kind of flattered. Besides, that small typo did cause a temporary spike in book sales. Visits to my website went way up, too. But then the letters started coming. And you wouldn’t believe what some of those people were asking me. I only wrote back to one person, though. And that was just to tell “Roy in Royston”—assuming that’s his real name, which I seriously doubt—he oughta’ be ashamed of himself. Thank goodness Cunningham didn’t open that letter before I did, bless his heart. Anyway, to keep something like this from ever happening again, I decided to write the seventh book. It was the only way out for me. Just please don’t tell Cunningham the real reason I wrote the book. I honestly think it would break his achy bacon heart.
There, where it should have said I had written “six” books, someone—that college-boy intern they hired last summer, I
Emory Jones grew up in Northeast Georgia’s White County. After a stint in the Air Force, he joined Gold Kist as publications manager. He was the Southeastern editor for Farm Journal Magazine and executive vice president at Freebarin & Company, an Atlanta-based advertising agency. He has written seven books. Emory is known for his humor, love of history and all things Southern. He and his wife, Judy, live on Yonah Mountain near Cleveland, Georgia.
72 GML - March 2021
