Beetle Bailey

Dear Friends and Followers, A writer friend [Kay Strom, who I am indebted to for starting my writing career] has a posting on her blog (http://www.kaystrom.wordsmith.com/), titled "Beetle and Me" in which talks about the 60th anniversary of the comic strip Beetle Bailey and what this comic has met to her. Well, coincidentally, this strip is one-half on the genesis of my book, "Cooking the Books" (I will share the other half in my next blog.) It was May of 2009, that the creators, (Mort and Greg Walker of this wonderful comic strip (circ. 1950) had printed the following (paraphrased): Sergeant Snorkel asked a new recruit why he joined the army. "I was under investigation for corporate fraud, so I joined." "Do you have any military experienced?" asked Snorkel. "No, but if you need someone to 'cook your books,' I'm your man." When this idiom, "cooking the books," hit my ears for the first time, I immediately thought, what a wonderful book title this is, and furthermore, what is the history of this saying. Fast forward to September, 2010, after more that a year's research and writing, the book is currently at the the graphic artist, and after the printing process, I should have "book in hand" by early October. (I hope I do because I start a book tour of Rotary clubs in the state of Hawaii this month.) I would like to encourage you to follow my postings and get snippets of my book, and also some great quotes from well-known people such as Jay Leno who said: "It looks like more that 13,000 people were caught up in that Madoff Ponzi scheme. Do you know what a ponzi scheme is? That's were you throw good money after bad, or as the government calls it, a stimulus package." Mahalo, Patrick Edwards