My Pickle Lady

A couple years ago I wrote a novel about a 70 year old widowed pickle entrepreneur who mistakenly puts marijuana into her pickle recipe thinking it is marjoram that one of her tenant city farmers is growing. Of course she gets into all sorts of hilarious trouble and eventually gets saved by a "knight in shiny armor" that she met on--drum roll--a cruise ship! (Surprised?) Title: In a Pickle.

I could never find a market for it in the CBA (Christian Booksellers Association which is now the ICR) mainly because of the mention of marijuana even though the story did not support the use of such substance. Then there was the editor who rejected it because it was unbelievable that someone in this day and age would still think that they could plant marijuana in a corn field and get away with it. Three weeks after the rejection came, an article appeared in our newspaper detailing the confiscation of marijuana plants growing in a cornfield in the middle of Ohio not far from where my fictional town was depicted (honest, I did not plant them!).

All of that leads me to a line from the movie, The International. It's the new film out with Clive Owen about a bank that is capitalizing on world unrest and debt. There's a line from the movie that goes, "The difference between fiction and truth is that fiction has to make sense." I couldn't help it. I snorted my soda.

Someday maybe my Pickle Lady will find a home in a publishing house. For now, she just remains my fondest character.