By Gail Roughton
Jude Pittman and I have a multi-faceted relationship. She’s my publisher, my writing partner, my friend. Our lives have the most fascinating mixture of similarities and differences. The foremost difference is she’s West-Coast Canadian and I’m Deep-South American. The foremost similarities are two-fold. We’re both writers, and we’re both paralegals with extensive legal backgrounds who’ve spent more years in law offices than either of us care to admit. Unlike many cyberspace friends, we’ve actually met. That’s because Jude masterminded a wonderful ten-day vacation to Hawaii (specifically Maui—she’d been offered the use of a friend’s condo for two weeks) last April that included me and her daughter Roxanne, who’s also a Books We Love editor. Roxanne’s also my editor because she refuses to let anybody else edit me. I'm not sure if that's because she loves my books or because she's scared of what I might come up with unsupervised. I protested that no, I couldn’t come. And Jude refused to let me not go. That’s not awkward phrasing. That’s the literal truth. She refused to let me not go. It wasn’t just a vacation, it was a writer’s retreat. An opportunity to brainstorm on our then in-process project, Sisters of Prophecy – Ursula. Then my husband chimed in. “You might not ever get the chance again!” So I went. Jude’s a steam rollin' jauggernaut, an immutable force of nature. Don’t believe me? I can prove it.
Jude Pittman and I have a multi-faceted relationship. She’s my publisher, my writing partner, my friend. Our lives have the most fascinating mixture of similarities and differences. The foremost difference is she’s West-Coast Canadian and I’m Deep-South American. The foremost similarities are two-fold. We’re both writers, and we’re both paralegals with extensive legal backgrounds who’ve spent more years in law offices than either of us care to admit. Unlike many cyberspace friends, we’ve actually met. That’s because Jude masterminded a wonderful ten-day vacation to Hawaii (specifically Maui—she’d been offered the use of a friend’s condo for two weeks) last April that included me and her daughter Roxanne, who’s also a Books We Love editor. Roxanne’s also my editor because she refuses to let anybody else edit me. I'm not sure if that's because she loves my books or because she's scared of what I might come up with unsupervised. I protested that no, I couldn’t come. And Jude refused to let me not go. That’s not awkward phrasing. That’s the literal truth. She refused to let me not go. It wasn’t just a vacation, it was a writer’s retreat. An opportunity to brainstorm on our then in-process project, Sisters of Prophecy – Ursula. Then my husband chimed in. “You might not ever get the chance again!” So I went. Jude’s a steam rollin' jauggernaut, an immutable force of nature. Don’t believe me? I can prove it.
Let me tell you an Hawaii story. She'd booked us a
tour, "The Road to Hana", which is a scenic highway along the coast
of Maui, 30 miles or so, that takes three hours to drive. That's us over there in the picture, waiting for our tour bus to pick us up at the condo. There's a
reason it takes three hours to drive the Hana Road. It has about 300 hairpin turns and 50+
single lane bridges where one side of traffic has to wait for the other side of
traffic to come over. Beautiful beyond belief with such stops as
waterfalls, the legendary “Painted Forest”, pounding surf, black sand beaches
and occasionally, absolutely hair-raising.
Check out the pictures scattered about this blog. Anyway, she booked the
three of us for a tour on a 12 passenger van, the deluxe tour. And the 12
passenger van picked us up at our condo. The problem arose when the
passenger van connected at a Mall where they were feeding us breakfast
with a big bus, Greyhound size, with 25 people taking the tour. And indicated
that we were to get on it. 
Now, the guy driving the mini-van that picked us up was
great, the guy driving the big bus wasn’t.
Let’s just say his people skills were challenged. He wasn’t native Hawaiian, or even native
American, and please note I didn’t capitalize the ‘n’ in native. I don’t mean he wasn’t American Indian, I
mean he wasn’t American. Imagine, if you
will, taking a tour of Maui with a running commentary delivered in the accents
made famous by the movie “Fargo”. This
driver proceeded to "assign" seats because "we can't separate
the newlyweds, now can we?" In other words, he was splitting me,
Jude and Roxanne up. How did this play with our Jude? Not. At. All.
She refused to get on the thing. "If I'd wanted a Greyhound
bus, I'd have booked a Greyhound bus. And I frankly don't give a damn about the
newlyweds as I paid considerably extra for the deluxe tour." 
Needless to say, we exited the bus and Jude called the tour company. The conversation proceeded as follows: "I paid for the deluxe tour on the 12
passenger van with captain's seats, which is what picked us up. I am NOT
getting on a bus the size of a Greyhound with 25 passengers and assigned seating."
They put her through to the home office. The original driver of the
twelve-passenger van who picked us up waited, as did the other bus.
Roxanne and I just sat down on a planter curb in the parking lot to watch
the show. Like I said, we were with an immutable force of nature. Jude went through the whole process again with
the home office. This time she added that if they couldn’t accommodate us, she
expected to be taken back to the condo and did not expect to be left in a Mall parking lot. She further advised there
was no need to hold the other bus up because she was NOT getting on it and if
they couldn't get it resolved, they needed to have someone take us back to our
condo and she'd take it up through her law office when she got back home. The
home office said they'd call us back. 
Through all this, our original mini-van driver enjoyed himself
hugely. It was very obvious. He
loved it. The tour company called back and said there’d been a mix-up due
to the on-line booking. (Though I have a
private suspicion the fact that neither the deluxe van nor the Greyhound size
were quite full as things were and the Greyhound would be completely full if
the tours were consolidated, thus obviating the need to run the smaller bus at
all, might have had more to do with it.) But to their credit, they rectified
the situation quickly. The big bus
pulled off without us, and our charming driver of the mini-van pulled off with
the nine people he'd picked up. Thus we enjoyed our own tour in the deluxe van.
With Captain's seats. Jude sat down beside me and said "And
that's why Books We Love has survived when so many other small presses
haven't."
Indeed. And that’s
Jude Pittman for you. It was a fabulous
day, my personal favorite day of our entire Hawaiian vacation. Our bus driver Ben was a native Hawaiian, very
handsome, very charming. He treated us
like queens and thought Jude was the bomb.
At one of the stops I told him I was sorry he didn't get his day off but was
really glad he was our driver. He laughed and said he wasn't sorry at all, he got paid more for driving
this van anyway. He further assured me Jude was one of the greatest characters
he'd ever met. And I do believe my southern accent made a big hit with
him, too. I’ve often found that most
folks are fascinated with a southern accent and believe me, nobody I met in Hawaii had the least
trouble peggin’ the approximate site of my birth. All in all, it was a memorable day with
memorable people, and Jude made certain to give the tour company and driver Ben
a stellar review on their website. They deserved it. They gave us a day of stories and memories
the three of us will never forget. But
my favorite story of the whole day? You
read it here first, folks!
Oh, and as to how much actual writing we got done--well, let's just say we brainstormed a lot. Jude and I can be found at http://bookswelove.net/authors/gail-roughton/ and http://bookswelove.net/authors/jude-pittman/
