Cook - The Debt Collectors Handbook : Collecting Debts, Finding Assets, Enforcing Judgments, and Beating Your Creditors

Call this page the GUILT PAGE. The author feels guilty about all the business associates, buddies and family members who the author abused in transforming the book from an ephemeral dream in the wee hours of the morning to a 640 pages of hard text at the crack of dawn. The author pestered everyone in getting the book proofread. Please read it. Please make your corrections. I will name the book after you. I will make you co-author. Some authors can be a total and complete jerk. Super jerk.

The author shoved the manuscript in front of everyone. Some authors really feel bad about browbeating a lot of folks into helping write book including the basic research. The author wanted friends and family to read a manuscript that crawled out the literary critical care unit. The author would say, Please please and please read my book. Pretty please with sugar on top. Please tell me that I am the rival to Stephen King which is a total lie. Tell me anything. I will give you my first born. No, I will give you my dog. Take the dog, which is a better deal.

An acknowledgment page shows the world that the author is a decent, kind and wonderful human being. This is another total lie. The author has to express that the book is the product of many folks, not few, and without their help, the book would be cooked, fried, fricasseed and burn to the crisp. The book might look good as a crispy critter. Yum Yum. Tastes like chicken. The author needs to sound, look and appear, I know that this is impossible, like a kind and grateful human being. Gadzooks!

The acknowledgment page thanks everybody who nursed the tome along. Kinda. The author thanks competing authors for their insights. Is this sincere? No, silly. Are you nuts? The author thanks his (or her) lucky stars that the number #1 mucky muck in the field didnt publish the super duper blockbuster that would blot everyone including the penitent author. Had Mr. Super Duper beaten the author to the punch, his first run would languish on sidewalk for free. Did you know that the world still needs two pound door stops? What a Godsend for some books.

The author thanks libraries, universities, research tanks for access to their archives. Is this genuine? Maybe. The running joke is that the chair occupied by the scholars in the study room to examine the materials (you cant take them outthat would be theft, folks) is still warm to the touch from the last fellow who sat in the same chair and studied the same materials. Crap. A warm chair means that the author better get this book out the door to the publisher before a competitor beats the author to the punch. Why should the book appear in someone elses rear view mirror? Mr. Super Dupers blockbuster book would wipe the author off the face of the earth. The author would certainly learn what Number 5,000,000 means on the Amazon list. Any ranking less than 100,000 are bread crumbs on the publishing floor. Any ranking less 500,000 falls between the cracks on the publishing floor. Any ranking less than 2,000,000 needs an electron microscope.

How about thanking members of the office or staff for proof reading, typing or researching the manuscript? I thank my administrative assistant, Joe, for his herculean effort in proofreading my manuscript. What the author meant to say was that the first draft was impenetrable. This sucker would stop a .45 bullet. Joe spent months translating the book into commonly understood English. Joe introduced the author to grammar, spelling and syntax. Too bad, but Joe retired on disability which was based double cataracts, which is awful given that Joe is 30. I thank my secretary Mary for her diligence. Her diligence consisted of parading one excuse after another to avoid coming to the phone so the author could finish the manuscript.

How about thanking the family? I thank my wife because I was able to hide in the study for 6 months, took a big hit in income, and never took a vacation. How many books are you going to sell? Can we take a trip on the proceeds? Are you channeling Hemingway, Steinbeck, Shakespeare or Louis LAmour? Is this Stranger in a Strange Land, the Sequel?

As your author, I am going to pass on the lot. Who do I thank? I am going to thank Carol Mann of Mann Literary Agency. I circulated a prcis of the OJ Chapters, which kicked the literary doors wide open. She grabbed me before I fell into literary oblivion. I also thank the American Bar Association and particularly Richard Paszkiet in giving me an unbelievable opportunity to publish this book. Call this book my literary life jacket. Ill do better than Jack Dawson. Rick is my hero.

The other object of my gratitude are a place and the persons who inhabit the place. I am grateful to the English Department of the University of California at Los Angeles who gave me a classical education. I am grateful to the academic staff, but among everyone else, the most important was Professor George S. Rousseau who taught 18th Century English literature and particularly Alexander Pope. I guess that Professor Pope had my number. Professor Rousseau clued me into the fact that while I might not succeed in in academia but that I might have a crackerjack career in engineering and maybe, as you can imagine, law.

Tales of Chicken Delight

Every college student has a part-time job, and more than one. Mine was off the beaten path. I was a Chicken Delight driver for the outlet located in Beverly Hills. The store was located on South Doheny right off Olympic Blvd and adjacent to the famous zip code of 90212 that introduced the Tupperware as the moniker for plastic surgerys new look. The Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles crowd loved Chicken Delight. I spent a year delivering boxes of fried chicken.