 the esteemed Howard Norman, to give an introduction. I've got this book for quite some time. And one thing I did say to him, I can't, one thing I did say to Bernie, I said, look, if you're going to call this thing a novel, you have to make some stuff up. Some of you might recall a novel by Susan Fromberg Schaefer called The Madness of the Seduced Woman. It was a turn of the century, that is 19th to 20th century atmospheric thriller. The woman of the title is on her way to Montpelier when she witnesses an incident that forever changes her life. But that novel was about the hazards of even approaching Montpelier. If there are other novels before Bernie Lambak's Uncivil Liberties, which are set in Montpelier proper, let alone so inventively reveal uncivilities, or certainly the unpastoral aspects of just everyday life in our capital, I'm not aware of. On the book, I refer to Uncivil Liberties as the B side of moonlight in Vermont. Those of us old enough to remember 45s will recall that the B sides often were the more shadowy, erotically or socially charged, and all around less easily comforting sides than the A side. The B sides, as Booker T. Washington put it, quote, tells us things we don't always care to know, but they sure jazz things up. There's much bandied about these days about the formal or informal differences between autobiographical fiction and every other sort. And yet in the end, it seems to me that any kind of writing strives for just one basic thing, really, and that's verisimilitude. To describe life with vivid immediacy, to make the streets we walk on, the town we live in, the people we know, the situational ethics we share, or which divide us, to make the familiar, somehow even more familiar. Or given some of the tensions of a novel like Bernie's, we find ourselves experiencing the familiar in perhaps unfamiliar ways. So if you take a chapter in Bernie's novel like arguing prayer, which is such a finely wrought and transitional chapter, remember, nobody who doesn't know Bernie doesn't know of his indispensable work with the First Amendment rights and so much else that so deeply informs our lives. No, a reader just experiences a writer of fiction having chosen a certain subject matter and chosen to write about lives in a particular time and place. But really, what I want most to do is to thank Bernie Lambak for allowing me to follow this first fictional journey of his, to read the manuscript in progress as his thinking changed, as the story evolved, all the while holding to its original inspirations. To see close up a person sponsored by his own perseverance disciplined curiosities. And coming to knowledge of himself as a writer has really been a gift. Even those of you who know Bernie very well, I imagine we'll have to say yes, but I didn't quite know this Bernie. Because a novel organizes and presents a person's emotions, opinions, philosophies of life, and everything else in a way, nothing else can really. This may sound a little offbeat, a connection, but Bernie is Canadian, born and raised in St. Lambert, a kind of suburb of Montreal. And as we know from Ovid, when a person lands on foreign shores, that person has afforded the opportunity to look at his new world at what Ovid called the artistic distance. Well, Bernie, of course, has long been of this place, Montpelier, but in the artistry of his novel, there is exhibited also a necessary distance, whether far or near, to tell us things about our lives and the place we live through a lens we might not otherwise have. Somerset mom wrote, I strive for lawyerly sentences. By that I mean sentences which construct an orderly view of our humanity and haplessness and foibles. So Bernie, what I wanna say is you've written a very fine story, and on every page, a reader wants to know what happens next. And that's a most difficult thing to accomplish. Good start. Thank you so much. So this is a little overwhelming for me. Obama never had crowds like this. I'm sorry. I mean, if you can't hear me, please let me know. Is this good? Can you hear me back there? Okay, I'll keep it close to your mouth. So, I mean, Howard Norman, who just spoke, is an incredible novelist, and I just have the good fortune that he's an old friend of my brother's who lives in Toronto, but Howard lives here part of the year, so I got to know him here, and he took interest in my book because I pressured him to do so. And, you know, read some really, you know, kind of a pretty early version of it. And at times I was discouraged, but Howard said to me, he said, look, you have a novel here, and it really allowed me to keep going, and I mean, it's really one of the reasons why I was able to keep writing, so I'm enormously grateful for that. Thank you so much. I've got to say, my publisher, Stephen MacArthur, is sitting right here, and right next to him is Ricky Garde Diamond, who is the editor of this book, and they are the midwives, and just tremendous to work with. Ricky is just a brilliant editor. He's also the author of Screwnomics, which is, well, it's tucked right here, and it was just published really a few weeks ago, and for those of you who like economic theory and feminist theory, which, you know, usually economic theory and feminist theory is inscrutable and impossible to read, both of them, but Ricky's book is incredibly lucid and irreverent, and it's a wonderful book, so I encourage people to read Screwnomics. It's really something. I've got about 20 pages left in it, but that's not much of it. I want, Susan Bull-Reilly is over here, and Susan is the painter who painted the painting that's on the cover of the book. She's really an incredible painter and has a lot of work. She lives in Eastmont failure now, but you gotta check out more of her work when you see. A lot of galleries have been hosting her work at various times, so check it out. Susan Bull-Reilly. And I think Donnie Hoffman is here. She's the design, she's sitting back here. She's the designer of this, so the reason it looks good, in addition to the painting on the cover, but the inside and the outside was all designed by Donnie, and I'm really grateful for that. I know there's more people to thank. My greatest critic is my son, Willie, sitting here, and he read early graphs and was very helpful, and my wife, Linda, here, also very helpful. Thanks for coming, everybody. I guess I'd kind of like to sit down now. I will read. I will read. So I'm gonna start really almost at the very beginning and read an early chapter, and then I'll skip a little bit and read another one. On a hill to the north of Montpelier-Sitz-Mahedy Park, a thousand acres of tall pines and mixed deciduous woods. Sheer granite outcrops overlook the town. Trails meander through the park. A couple of open shelters, one near the park entrance, off Smiley Street. The other higher up near the fire tower are used for picnics and barbecues, even in winter, vermonters. Snow had fallen a few days earlier and lay in scattered patches over the dark ground on this cold morning in November. Before dawn, a man walking his dog along the trail that skirts the bottom of one of the steep outcrops came upon a body. He didn't notice her at first in the dim light below the ledge. Steamer, am I loud enough? He was picking his way carefully along the trail stepping over roots and rocks, a mournful fiddle tune running through his head, his old dog snuffling along beside him. He smelled the familiar dampness of the woods and the earth. The dog stopped to inspect a lumpy shape at the side of the trail among the rocks and maple leaf detritus. Water dripped down the granite ledge, audible in the stillness. The man stepped closer and he then saw the shape was a girl twisted awkwardly in her down jacket, her eyes open and clouded. A denim cloth handbag was near the body. He spun around. No one else was there. He muttered an oath to the dog and they hurried home. In 15 minutes he was on the phone with the Montpelier police. Soon the cops were at the spot below the cliff. They found identification in a pocket of the handbag but Sergeant Laporte already knew who the girl was. They all knew her mother, deputy state's attorney Francine Laughlin. Barry Laporte held his breath as he looked down at young Kerry Pearson, innocent and dead. All he said was shit and then he looked up at the wet granite cliff. 30 feet he guessed. There was a trail near the top, not so close to the edge. This had never happened before. No one had ever fallen over the ledge and no one had jumped. This chapter is about 20 pages into the book so there's a few things that have happened but not too much. That wasn't a joke. Gray and dark outside the start of the long season leaning back in his chair with his legs propped on his desk, Sam Jacobson looked out at the snowflakes whirling by his window and the leaves skittering across the street. His office was on the second floor overlooking Chamber Street. The shop below the office, Ripvo's antiques, sold vintage clothing and sundries and doubled as the office for a documentary filmmaker. Merchants came and went in Montpelier before the vintage clothing it had been a store that catered to Wiccans. Sam amused himself with the fantasy of a Wiccan delivering the invocation prayer at the town meeting up in Jefferson where Lucy Cross made her home and before the Wiccans he remembered the space it hosted upscale kitchenware, the front window displaying bright-hued colanders and crockery. On the other hand, Colton's hardware around the corner on Sprol Street was nearing its 80th anniversary, having bravely resisted the box store boom that sought to coat Vermont with the New Jersey pallor with hardware stores the size of city blocks springing up all over the Champlain Valley. Everybody loved Colton's where your bill was cranked out of an antique adding machine and the staff had the facility to advise you precisely what length and girth of bolt you needed for your current home project. Sam watched the wretched November snow and held both hands around the mug of coffee he had brought back from Sacred Grounds Cafe. Yeah, this really is a local audience, yeah. It's not going to happen in Chicago. He thought about Colton's hardware and then about his wife, Donna, who had a similar kind of stamina sticking with him through his periods of self-doubt and regret. They met when he was a law student and she was an undergrad psych major. They had eyed each other on several days over the cheeses at Orange Street Market in New Haven, Connecticut. She spoke the first words, asking him whether he liked Manchego. He didn't know what Manchego was. She explained about Manchego and the Manchego sheep in Spain, although she didn't know when he asked, just toying with the really why an Italian market would carry a Spanish sheep cheese. Sheep and cheese seemed to interest her. It was the way she spoke about sheep and cheese and the way her calm eyes appraised him as she did so that interested Sam. They fell in love. They were married three years later, still living in New Haven and her pregnancy with the child who became Sarah shocked them into moving north to cold St. Vermont. He had been ready anyway to leave his job as an associate at New Haven's largest law firm where the leading partner who assigned Sam most of his projects periodically jaunted to Africa for safari hunts. He killed lions for crying out loud. Sam stroked the cleft in his chin. The coffee mug set precariously on a stack of files at the edge of the desk. In his mind now, he pictured Donna over the cheese board on their kitchen table with her calm blue-gray eyes fixed on him and her mouth even and kind. Suddenly he felt awful. He had left the house that morning saying hardly more than two words to Donna. What's on your agenda for today, she had asked. The usual stuff at the office, you and he was out the door heading to sacred grounds. Her words, see you tonight at dinner time, drifted out to the street after him. He was taking her for granted. He vowed to stop doing that. He tried her cell phone but got no answer. He would be in the car by now, heading to her office in Riverbury. He didn't leave a message. He'd have to ask Donna about Ricky still well, he thought. Maybe Donna had heard something from Clara. Ricky was acting pretty strange that morning at the cafe rushing out in his loping stride much as Sam had left his house barely saying a word. He liked the kid immensely and worried about him. He worried about a lot of things, his prostate, his marriage, Israeli settlements, video games and Ricky still well. He didn't worry about the boy's soul which was surely well protected by virtue of membership in the fellowship church of the crucified savior but about his happiness. He looked at the files piled on the table next to his desk and turned his eyes back to his reading. He was reading a court opinion on the question of whether a bank's security interest in a farmer's cattle also covered the milk and if so, whether it had priority over the dairy co-ops interest in the milk. Like Colton's hardware, the subjects of Vermont case law resisted change. This was one of the things Sam, born and bred in New York City, liked about his adopted state and its legal culture. He read another paragraph using his yellow highlighter to underline one or another passage. This was performed by habit and served little real function. The radiator in his office began to clank and he was startled glancing its way to see that Alicia stood at his office door staring at him. Alicia Santana had started work as an associate at Sam's office some 15 years earlier when there were five lawyers at the firm. Later there was a difficult split and Sam left with Alicia who then became his partner. The split had been over personality and money. Sam had come to recognize that it was mostly his personality that was the problem. That was the way Sam approached the past. He was the villain featured in his autobiographical documentary and every new year rolled another year into the dreaded past. The list of regrets accumulated like worn out furniture in an attic. But he didn't shortchange the future. He worried about that too. In spite of it all to his good fortune and partly by his deft maneuvering, Alicia high strong and brilliant had come with him. He was delighted with the arrangement and he told himself his delight had nothing to do with her dark sinuous beauty. The two of them did not always agree. A year or two earlier Sam had represented one of Montpelier city counselors who had been the subject of a nasty article in the local paper, The Central Vermont Argus. The article asserted that the city counselor had underpaid her federal income tax. But that wasn't true. Her taxes had only been filed late and she had duly requested an extension of time from the IRS. Claiming the newspaper had damaged her reputation by publishing false information, Sam filed a defamation suit. The case didn't settle and was tried before a jury. The jury found for the Argus on the ground that the newspaper didn't know the information was false. At the time it ran the article, nor did it act with reckless disregard for the truth of the information. The minimum quantum of fault needed in a case like this as the judge had instructed and emphasized to the jury. The Argus might have been negligent in publishing the article, but negligence was not enough for a public figure like the city counselor to establish liability under the law of defamation. Sam was angry about the result. You shouldn't be suing the press, Sam, Alicia said. They've got a First Amendment right to publish news stories. Fine, said Sam, but they should take care to get their facts right. This was sloppy reporting. You got to live with some slop if you want a free press, she retorted. They need room to make mistakes, otherwise we end up in a police state. You're not perhaps overstating things, Sam suggested. No, she said, I don't want us suing the press. This sort of disagreement did not trouble Sam. Alicia was at liberty to question his judgment. He knew her objection was a sign of respect. Respect flowed freely between them. Now she stood in the doorway and stared at Sam with her dark eyes wide. You haven't heard. Heard, the snow was coming harder outside, moving faster sideways. I just got a call from Barb at the high school, she finally said. Oh, Sam, this is difficult. Alicia's eyes were glistening and she paused again. The school's in shock. There was another moment of quiet. Carrie Pearson is a student there. She's Fran Loughlin's daughter. Sam knew of Francine Loughlin, one of the prosecutors at the county state's attorney's office and an old friend of Alicia's. Francine and Alicia had been in the same class at Vermont Law School, two women who had bonded together in the tiny community of the law school, laughing and crying about sex and politics and studying through the night for their exams. Francine's daughter, Carrie, now a senior at Montpelier High School, the same grade as Ricky Stillwell, was still a toddler when her mother and Alicia were in law school, as Sam remembered it. And he knew Alicia had a soft spot for the girl. Sam nodded. What happened? Alicia looked down for a moment, embarrassed by her tears. She's dead. Carrie, she committed suicide. Last night, I guess, she was found this morning. Sam took his feet off his desk, his stomach was cramping and the radiator was banging louder. He got up and wrapped his arms around Alicia's small shoulders. She was shaking and could not speak. That's probably a good place to stop. I believe not as tight as I thought. Yeah. You know, I had another chapter in mind, but I think that's a good place to stop. I think it's enough for reading. Fair enough? Yeah. So what do we do now? Questions? Like, is that Sam? Samantha? You know, and I didn't really think Samantha Colbert and Bairpond Books and Amanda Menard. Samantha's the one that put this event on, as far as I can tell, and Amanda's the one who's sort of in charge of getting all the books here and making sure they're sold, so. She's... But I mean, I really appreciate Bairpond Books and the folks here for doing that. I mean, they do a lot of book events. It's really something. Thank you so much. Okay, I guess I'll take questions, right? We'll do that. Yes, Steamer. Why Mahadee Park, Spool Street, Skate River? We're in Montpelier, right? Yeah, we're in Montpelier, and I kept the name Montpelier, although I didn't start that way. It actually started with a different name, and then some readers later in the game said, no, call it Montpelier. And they were right, so I called it Montpelier. And I just decided to use fictional names. I mean, some of them are... I'm paying homage to people like Mahadee is named after Judge Skip Mahadee, who, you know, was sort of a hero of mine, in some respects. And so I'm kind of... I do that a bit here and there. Sproul. I mean, it's Linda's last name. So I just named the street after my wife. But otherwise, it's a bit random. I mentioned a Smiley Street early on, and I think I read a thing with Smiley Street, and that's a bit of an homage to Jean Le Carré, who's an author I admire, is one of his protagonists of Smiley. Yes, sir? I'll just make it up to you a big question, and if you don't have to answer it, but I was just curious, how many books need to be sold to break even? How many books need to be sold to break even is the question, and my publisher would know more than I do. I mean, a lot. A lot. So if everybody buys 10 books, we'll break even. 20? Peter? So is Burning Land back a pen name? You've been holding out on us the whole time. Now, what was the inspiration for writing this? So the real question is, what was the inspiration for writing? And it's hard to answer that. Although you didn't get it from what I read, there's a chunk of the book that's really about legal issues and discussion of legal questions. There's First Amendment issues about free speech in schools and hate speech and cyber bullying. There's questions about religion at town meeting and whether towns should be sponsoring religious activities. There's an employment discrimination suit, and so there's a lot of discussion about legal issues that I try to make interesting, but, you know, I had... So I've been a practicing lawyer for those who don't know me for 30 years or so, and I've had some experience with some of the issues that the book deals with, really with most of the issues. I've had legal experience in helping clients deal with those issues. And I thought some of these issues are really interesting, especially the constitutional questions, and I wanted to kind of try to create a fiction that was built around some legal arguments and that showed the complexity of the arguments and, you know, tried to then build a story around that. So that's kind of how it started for me. David? Are there any people in the world, teachers or other people who are either alive or not? We'd really like to see your book. Well, I mean, yeah, my parents, for sure, who are not alive. My mother died a long time ago, but my father did read an early draft of this book. He died going on four years ago now, and, you know, I started the book seven years ago. And so, yeah, he was very interested. He used to read a ton of mysteries. So, you know, he was very supportive of this kind of chapter in my life, and I'm really sorry he didn't get to see it come to fruition. Toby? A mystery. What made me write a mystery? Yeah, like, why wasn't it a novel? Well, I guess it's, you know, it's a genre that I've always liked, and I do read a lot of mysteries, and I like legal mysteries in particular, but it's just a genre that I'm sort of familiar with. I think this is a little bit different than most. It's a little heavier on the law than most mysteries, but, yeah, I mean, I just wanted to capture people's interest, and I know a mystery is one way to do that, so I hope it works to that effect. Yeah, so the question is, the similarities and differences of the process of lawyering versus the process of writing? I have no clue. I don't know. I wish I had a good answer for that. I'll think about that, and I'll write you. Thank you for that comment. I appreciate that. Yes? Well, I'm promoting it through bookstores. I'm doing a cup of some other readings at Vermont Bookstores, and I did a reading last week at a Hanover bookstore, and, you know, we've sent it out to libraries, and, you know, Stephen MacArthur, of Rootstock Publishing here, has a better answer for that, and I mean, if you want to stand up and speak to answering that, you're welcome to or not, as you wish. Very briefly, we're sending out to the viewers, both in-state and out-of-state, the places like Booklist and the Library Journal, places that we view books and count in terms of bookstore owners and bookstore buyers and librarians, and these kinds of books that we do that matters in those publications. The next reviews, for instance, will have a review fairly soon, and we'll be posting it up on... Of course, we can't guarantee how they review it. That's just not something we can do, but given the nature of the quality of this book, I can't see that they're not going to be great reviews, so we're hoping. Thank you. Yeah, the Vermont Bar Journal kindly did a nice review early on before the publication, and so that goes out to all the Vermont lawyers. Question down here. Yeah. Uh-oh. Do you see you playing yourself in the movie? Oh, I don't see that at all. You're obviously the protagonist, so why don't you play yourself? No, I'm not the protagonist. Oh, yes you are. Okay, that's going to be a debate. Yeah, I mean, there is sort of a protagonist in the book. It's kind of an ensemble of characters, but there is this, and I read a chapter sort of focused on him, on Sam Jacobson, and he has some commonalities with me. Yes, he does. But he's not me. He's not me. Keep that in mind, please. Andrew? Is this the beginning of a series? Not yet. No, I mean, I really don't have another novel in mind at the moment. I would like to do more, because I like writing it. I had fun, and I could imagine that there are characters in this book that could have second lives, so that's, you know, possible, but it's really just a pure imagination at this moment. Terry? I just know you, and I know how much you love to write and how you taught your boys you had them journal every summer and write, so just wondering if it's been a long, in your blood for a long time? So the question is whether I always wanted to write for a long, long time, and no, not really. I hadn't thought about writing a novel until, basically until I started, seven years ago, I just said, okay, I want to write a novel, and I sort of started doing it, but I hadn't thought about, I mean, I write, every lawyer writes a lot, so I'm always writing, but it's fiction is, Howard, fiction is really different. Really hard. I mean, it's truly different, and I've never written short stories or anything, so that's all new to me, and I hadn't planned to do that earlier, no. Yeah, Paul? Was there a moment of resistance or challenges that you faced in going into this unknown task? So were there challenges going into this, and yes, and resistance going into, yeah, I mean, at various points, certainly I got this, when I say I worked on it for seven years, but it wasn't, you know, every day, it would sit idle for six months at a time, and then I would pick it up again, work for a few months, so there were times where I thought, well, this really isn't working out, this isn't going anywhere, or it's just not good enough, you know, I'd get discouraged. And, you know, there was enough in there for me to kind of keep going back to it, especially with some helpful readers who were encouraging. That really did help me. If I didn't have readers, I don't think I could have kept going. Mary Alice, Mary Alice who runs and owns a down-home kitchen, and she's responsible for the cookies here, and her sapphire, and down-home bits in the cross-street cake corner, and people should go there. It's a really good place. I couldn't put it down. Bernie, I wanted to ask you as a keen observer of this particular community's life and people, and that definitely comes through in your book, that you're very watchful, you're very insightful, and you're studying the people that live in this particular small community. What advice would you give to us all as a community in terms of, you know, you're obviously studying and thinking about a lot of legal issues and a lot of ethical issues. That was the thing that came through for me in reading the book. What advice would you give us as a community in thinking about the ethical challenges that we currently have as a community in just your study of us as a community? Yeah, that's a real puff ball right there. That's a long conversation. I don't, you know, I don't have any particular insight. I mean, I don't know if you all heard the question, I think you did, but I don't have particular insight about that. I thank you for the comment, and I mean, I wish I could answer that intelligently. Was there any one of the questions? Yeah, I mean, so, you know, there's a chunk of the book that deals with what's protected speech in schools, and of course that's really relevant. I mean, right now, you know, with the Black Lives Matter flags flying, I mean, some people are questioning how that sort of fits within the First Amendment, which is an interesting question. And I've, you know, been consulted by school districts about that question. So that's happening. I mean, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, that's a good question. So that's happening. And of course cyberbullying is happening. Can I leave it at that? She read it in one night, so you must not have really read it or cared about it. Thank you very much. Yeah. Hi Peter. Has writing this book might have been moving you more towards writing? I'll join in with you. Has it deepened my commitment to the practice or moved me more towards writing? Well, I don't think it's deepened or lessened to my commitment to the practice of law. I mean, I'm keeping my day job, clearly, unless everybody buys... What's it? Did I say 50 books? Yeah, I mean, I'm not about to make a living as a fiction writer, but I do want to write more, and I'm not going to be practicing law full-time for that long, and I'm not really full-time at this point anyway, because I kind of don't work that hard. I play a lot of ping-pong, as some people know. Steven? One of the things when I first read it that I found really fascinating about it, knowing you and knowing a lot of your own philosophical foundational beliefs about the law and issues, was that you could write in this protagonist, Sam, contrary opinions and contrary conflicting kinds of situations. And it didn't come across as, you know, one big hurrah for me, and this is what I believe, and I'm going to put it into my character. It just was so much more subtle than that. And that was, for me, that was one of the first things that attracted me to the book. So how did you find that task of taking an opposite position or having an opposite kind of decision made? Difficult. But the need of thinking was significant when you were writing this. Yeah, I don't know if everybody heard it, but I can't really repeat the question, but it has to do with the different points of view, opposing points of view, reflected even in the same character at times. And I mean, the legal issues that I deal with in the book to me are complex and nuanced, and there aren't simple yes or no answers to most of these things. The degree to which students have the right to express freely their views in school, even when it's really hurtful. The case in the book is about homophobic speech that's very, very hurtful. And these questions aren't simple, and there's, you know, lawyers know and judges know that there are competing values at stake and competing arguments that can be made. So my point in addressing these things is not to say one view is right or wrong, but it's to really address the ambiguity in the law and the difficulty of resolving many of these questions. So that's an approach I take throughout the book, that these are difficult questions. So did that address your question? Yeah, I mean, making him not heroic. Yeah, nobody's heroic, and nobody's too... I mean, there is sort of a person in the book who's rather a villain, but I wanted to make that character also somebody that one could empathize with. And that was important to me that I dealt with. The characters are ambiguous as well as the issues. Yes, Stephen? You mentioned a few minutes ago your reference about ping-pong. Perhaps if you were to write another book, you could bring in the topic of like an illegal surfer followed by a perfect kill-shot or something. Yeah, that'll get a lot of readers. Excuse me, I have to go get a cup of tea and go read now. Thank you, Cindy. Thanks, Jeff, for coming. Thanks. I hope that arm heals. Thank you. If there's a movie, will you be the approach I get ahead of me? No? Yeah, Lori. Is there any one real takeaway? Is there one takeaway I want readers to have? I guess I wouldn't say that. I mean, I think the answer to the previous question about the complexity of these issues, that there's, you know, you can have really strong views, but there are strong competing views that have validity as well in many cases and we shouldn't be too sure of ourselves. Joseph? How did the book change from the time you started writing it to what we see today and did your views of the issues change as you wrote the book? How did the book change and did my views change? The book changed largely by, you know, trying to make the characters come alive because I'd written, you know, a basic story, but then I really needed to have the characters breathe and come alive. And that was the challenge for me, not having written fiction. I mean, I've written about legal arguments always so that that wasn't so hard, but so the big change was making it breathe and wanting the readers to really empathize with the characters and believe them. So that, I mean, that's the difficult part for me. Does that, did you have another part to the question? Did your view of the issues that you write about change over the course of the book? Inevitably to some extent, but I, you know, again, so increasing the ambiguity, making it less of an advocacy piece and richer that way, so yeah. Yeah? Yeah, Shannon? I'm wondering what you learned about yourself as a writer. She asked what I learned about myself by writing the book. I mean, it's a huge accomplishment over seven years. Yeah, I don't know how to answer that. Well, you have grit, right? Grit, I have grit. Yeah. Yeah, okay. How much did you write at Williwans? I write at Williwans, a restaurant we both frequent. I didn't do any writing at Williwans. All of the writing was done on my computer and I don't carry around a laptop that I write on. So I mean, it was just done on the screen, all of it, not on a yellow legal pad. Aaron? So I'm wondering when you thought of the title, because for me, it's actually resonating with a lot of things that I'm reading in the media today. So is that a coincidence? Has the title been the title all along? No, I mean, it wasn't the title all along. I went through a series of titles. So, I mean, I just, I had different names for it as I was writing it and I think, I mean, it was really during the editing stage with Ricky as the editor that the title then became this title on Civil Liberties. And there are other books called On Civil Liberties, it turns out. But not by Bernie Lamp. Not by me. I don't think any of them are fiction, but I may be wrong about that. There's a couple of non-fiction books. Calvin Trillum, he used to write for the nation, writes for the New Yorker, as a book called On Civil Liberties from, you know, maybe 25 years ago. I'm sorry. One more comment. Sure. I read anything during Christian mode. He's a lawyer terminated. And this is an equal plot about better than Christian. My book is better than Christian. I knew that all along. I just want to say a word because I got you all captured here. Use the microphone. I'm a sax player, so I usually come across pretty loud. But if you have an opportunity, after you read this book, to go to Amazon, and I'm sorry to have said the word in the Bear Pond books, but it's true. I hear this from every independent publisher around the country. If you get 50 or more reviews and ratings on Amazon, Jeff Bezos bumps you up to a different level of exposure. 50. So everybody here who reads this book, if you have an opportunity to go on to Amazon and review the book, tons of people will go there, look at the book, see all of the reviews. Many of them will go to their local independent bookstore, like Bear Pond. At least we hope they do. It's by here, review it there. Stamer? Are there going to be electronic versions of your book on Amazon? That's the intent. I don't think they're there yet. Yeah, it'll be up in a week. In a week or so. I mean, the book is available on Amazon, although that's not something we should say too loud here, but yeah, there'll be an e-version coming up. Kim? Bernie, how did your experience at Yale Law School influence you to write this book? How did my experience at Yale Law School influence me? Kim Cheney is also a graduate of Yale Law School. I mean, I stuck in some references to Yale Law School, and there's actually a character in the latter part of the book who was the dean of the law school, and I used his real name, Guido Calabresi, he's the judge on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and I actually used his name, and then I realized, before publishing the thing, I better contact him. Say, is this okay? So I sent him a copy of the manuscript, and he did give me his blessing to use it. But other than that, I mean, I don't think it matters. It could have been any law school. I mean, except that, you know, Yale Law School is a place where people talk about ideas, and, you know, deeper constitutional questions. It's not so much what lawyers call black-letter law there. Yes? Great, and I think it might build on Kim's question of thinking about you writing professionally as an attorney, and that's a certain kind of a school to reference kind of a writing. And then I'm looking for the bridge to writing a novel, and I'm just thinking of numerous authors have heard interviewed and talked about developing characters, and then as writing progresses, the characters take on a life of their own, speak for themselves, so to speak. Two very, very different kinds of writing. I'm curious about how you've approached that, too. Yeah. So how did I bridge the chasm between legal writing and fiction? I mean, it was new for me. You mentioned characters taking on a life of their own. That kind of happened for me a little bit. I did experience that. I did, you know, I did sort of have a bit of a feeling that the characters were telling me what should happen next. I mean, that's, you know, a bit of a fantasy, but it felt that way. And so they did kind of take on personalities. And I found that really interesting. How are we doing with time? I mean... We're fine. There was another question down that way. Oh, yes. I'm interested in the character you found most difficult to round out and the one you found most fun. Which character was most difficult to round out and which character was most fun? Well, you know, there's a character who's, as I said, is kind of villainous and that character was perhaps the most difficult to round out. I don't want to say more about that. So, yeah, a number of them were fun to write about. I don't think I have one that was most, you know, most enjoyable to create. Well, then, who would you want to meet? Who do I want to meet? Which one would you want to meet? Who. Give any. Well, so this judge, you know, who I wrote about, Guido Calabres, I met him. And so he was fun to meet, except there was one time where I did an argument at the Second Circuit and he was the presiding judge on that panel. And that was not fun. It really wasn't fun. It turned out. Can you say it again? You used some family member's personalities. I used family. Well, I mean, I sometimes used bits and pieces of people's lives, including family member lives that creep into the book, but I don't know so much about their personalities. I tried. I mean, as I continued to write, I tried to have the characters be themselves and not just be reflections of people. Even sometimes I sprinkle family members' names in here and there in the book, as you know. But, you know, I don't know if the, you know, the personalities are. They're just situations. Yeah. Yeah. Situations. Yeah. I'll do that. Thank you so much.