It's really funny how things take a turn. Seventeen years ago, I visited Stratford, Oklahoma, to look at a horse my daughter wanted to buy. We were abiding by the law, minding our own business, when a very corrupt cop decided to stop me and lie about my insurance not being up to date. He wanted me to pay him $100 to forget the matter, and I wouldn't do it. He wanted my home phone number, but I wouldn't give it to him. He threatened me, and he forced me to let Laura drive us home because he claimed my insurance was out of compliance. If my insurance was out of compliance, then so was hers!! She didn't even have a driver's license!
Long story short, I drove the 90 miles home and called the courts the next day to complain about the man and his inappropriate behavior. I was told I didn't have to show up for court; it would be dropped; no worries. I wish I had known what I know now! I didn't get the court clerk's name, and she has left the county offices, and so has the judge. The old coot that stopped me has been retired or fired, but he's not with the force anymore.
I received a call about the citation and a bench warrant that was apparently out on me and stemmed from this event. It had been 16 years since the event, but they decided to drag it out of the dusty storage room and try and collect on it. I'm not the only one this happened to. Stratford and other courts have been backdating citations for decades. If someone really wanted to make a noise about it, they could count me in on a class-action case. I'll wait for the judgment. I'm a very patient person. I have over 1M viewers who may be interested in my next novel -- it's #5 in the Posh series.
After about another solid year of being asked to pay the fines or face possible license suspension, I asked the courts to dismiss the charges. They won't. They turned it over to a law firm, which informed me they were not a collection agency as the money owed was not a debt. It doesn't fall under the Fair Credit Act either; these are fines and court costs that I owed, and they have no statute of limitation. They don't, however, show up on any national or even state records for warrants; they are only municipal, and they are only in Stratford. As if I would ever step foot in that town again.
Well, after finding out today that the city will not reduce or dismiss the blatantly illegal and erroneous charges, I have decided to pay the $718 fine and court costs, but I will NOT go quietly into the shadows with this one. NO, I WILL NOT. I've put my next two books on hold, and I'm writing an insert book titled "Stratford." It will be the 5th installment of the Nick Posh Thriller Series, and let's just say names will be spelled correctly or the most part -- it will be fun to change someone's name to PIGLEY, and people will die!! Oh, people are going to die very openly, very slowly, quite tumultuously, and there will be no mystery as to who, in fact, did the deeds.
I spoke with the two law attendants at the firm working out the fee payments, and they agreed. They read my notes and listened to me tell my side of what happened. Both Richard and Kim from Aberdeen Enterprises II were good to me. They were sympathetic and understood that I was not given the citation rightfully, but they were, unfortunately, not in a position to reduce or dismiss the fines or costs. They think the book is a great way to vent and release my steam about how I feel - and both said I could use their names as "heroes" when I write the thing - - and that started already. I am making all the notes I need, and by Saturday, I'll have the thing fleshed out on my computer with an outline.
"Stratford" will be very descriptive, it will be very direct, and I will take the time to find any and every bit of illegal activity I can about that little town because I don't want good, law-abiding folks like myself going into it to buy anything or to think about buying anything -- they do not treat guests with respect, and in our neck of the woods that makes you a skank! If you can't show people their due respect, you deserve to end up with your scalped head on a pike in the middle of the Chickasaw Nation and that is exactly what will happen to the sleazy bag piece of trash that stopped me 17 years ago and lied about me - causing me not only to pay 3x the amount of court costs that were originally assessed, but he put me through undue stress and anxiety - - for which he will pay!
The keyboard - or the pen - is so much more mightier than the sword - - and he and the court clerk Amy Pigley will find this to be true. (Oh, I changed her name...it's not Pigley; I don't need her coming back on me and saying I singled her out.) She's been really nasty and unnecessarily rude to me. She wasn't here 17 years ago, so she has NO IDEA what happened, but she's taken it upon herself to deny me the fair track - so she will live the dream in the new novel! She'll be described as slightly obese, with thinning hair and a specific body odor that keeps her single. She'll have an incestuous relationship with her father and likely end up throwing herself off the newly built bridge that her brothers and other kinfolk fish off of.
I won't pull any punches with "Stratford". They've had 17 years to do the right thing. I can honestly say that I've never stepped foot in their little town since that day, and I have no intention of doing so now. If it flooded and everyone left it to be used for pig farming, they'd be better off. I'm sure, 100% sure, there are good folks in the town, but there are enough trashy asshats who run their courts to warrant the book -- it'll be fiction. No sense in beating around that bush -- the entire book will be made up, but I will not spare them my opinions, and I will not show leniency when it comes to their fictional murders - - nope, it will be ugly...and a lot of fun to write.
Eoghan MacRae comes to Oklahoma for this one. He'll end up staying for a year, getting his private investigator's license, and divorcing his wife -- but not because he doesn't love her. No, quite the opposite. You'll have to read it to find out, but it will be Eoghan who discovers the body of the cop, and he's the one who has to sit through an interview with Miss Pigley -- God help him.
Photo Credit: OklahomaHistory.net
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