When JoAnn contacted me to call in to her Peninsula, OH book club, she said it had picked QUEEN OF THE ROAD based on the "clever" title.

Oh my.

Although everything inside the book is entirely my creation (except for Tim's rebuttal chapter, of course - see the previous blog post. He thinks what he's saying in Chinese on the cover is, "I am not an idiot!"), the cover itself... not so much.

As is true for most books, the publisher changes the title in a (what else), "title meeting." And, a good thing, too: I suck at titles. My working title had been, "Leave the Driving to Him." You know, after that old Greyhound slogan. Believe it or not, it took me an entire year to come up with that one.

Told ya: Suck at titles.

I suck so bad, in fact,that I didn't even like QUEEN OF THE ROAD, at first. What an idiot. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed.

Anyway.

JoAnn's book club originally saw my no-thanks-to-me spiffy title on Bookmovement, a fabulous site free to book clubs. Why fabulous? Isn't free good enough for you? Fine. I'll give you even more fabulousness: QUEEN OF THE ROAD has been in the top five (and recently even number one) on their Book Club Bestseller List.

I keep bringing this thing back to me, don't I? Whatever. It's my blog.

But, since this truly is fabulous book club, allow me to ramble on a bit more, this time (thankfully, I know) about the club itself:

Back row L to R Tina (congrats again on the engagement!), Linda, Laura, Brenda, Marsha
Front row L to R Diane, Terri, Sue, Terri, JoAnn

The club has been meeting for two years and know each other because their kids go to the same school. They also double as a recipe club, so pick a theme for each meeting. The food theme for QUEEN? Shish kabobs. Sheesh. I am truly honored to be a kabob! (From the picture, looks like they had kabobs and martinis - a more perfect combination plate has never been invented.)

Ladies, thanks again so much for picking my book. (And, if any of you want to post your kabob recipe in the comments, I'll get Tim right on it!) Here is a picture of Lake Eerie, Ohio we took at East Harbor State Park, in Lakeside-Marblehead on our QUEEN OF THE ROAD trip. Enjoy!