The reality of a life absent of any real struggle is that you can get good at many things with little effort. The critically dangerous side effect of an easy, privileged life is that you might presume, based on your stellar track record, that you’ll be naturally good at everything because life has always shined its happy little face in your direction to light your effortless path.
Ten years ago—forty-some-odd years into my charmed life—a devastating storm arrived, blotted out the sun, and stripped me bare.
GINNED UP is my attempt to make sense of it all.
GINNED UP is a memoir, a genre of writing that relies on my memories alone, about the events that took place over the course of a year in my life, from March 2013 to March 2014. GINNED UP contains scenes that I lived through, thoughts that I had, and feelings that I experienced. GINNED UP is filled with the text of actual communications, specifically emails, between myself and people prominent in local town government at the time.
In the immediate aftermath of the events that led to my resignation from our town’s Board of Selectmen, I wrote down what I had just lived through. Over the course of 57 consecutive days, starting in April and ending in June of 2014, I wrote a book, initially titled TRIX, which was a fictionalized version of this period of time in my life. In TRIX, I was not Jenna Brownson, I was “Lara Jenson;” Chief John M. Kelly was “Chief Sean T. Ryan.”
After I’d finished writing it, I put it on a shelf, and then—circumstances being what they were—I wrote six more novels. Each of those novels is set in the fictional town of Ledbury, Massachusetts, where, much like Littleton, Massachusetts, people care about each other and betray each other just like everywhere else.
Seven years go by and in the spring of 2021, the events from this period of time in my life were used as political campaign material in a town-wide election. Events from my past were being discussed in public.
Again.
So, in the spring of 2021, I decided to share what I’d written in 2014. I hoped that those who’d heard “something about why she resigned” might be curious about my thoughts on the matter.
Un-fictionalizing TRIX into GINNED UP required that I change all the names back: “Lara” to me, “Sean” to “Chief,” as well as all the rest. It also required me to write in my husband and my four kids and all the complications that come along with those relationships that had been written out of TRIX when Lara (a childless young widow) was the main character.
From July 2021 to April 2022—over the course of 40 “episodes,” I told the story of my time on my hometown’s Board of Selectmen.
On July 19, 2021, before even one word of GINNED UP was out in the world, I received this from Attorney Howard M. Cooper of Todd & Weld, LLP:
Please be informed that this office represents former Littleton Police Chief, John Kelly (“Mr. Kelly”). As you know, Mr. Kelly served with honor and distinction as the Littleton Chief of Police and is a respected member of his community.
Mr. Kelly is aware that you are in the process of publishing via the Internet your so-called “memoirs.” He is also aware from your prior postings that you intend to include him in your publication. Please be informed that we will be monitoring what you publish about Mr. Kelly. If you publish or in any way promote false and defamatory statements or information of and concerning Mr. Kelly, portray him in a false light in your publication, or otherwise invade his privacy, he will take legal action against you. To the extent you are unclear at all as to the meaning of this communication, I suggest you have your legal counsel call me.
I received two more similarly themed letters from Attorney Cooper in the fall of 2021.
I kept publishing, one episode a week, knowing that my words were being “monitored” for anything that might count as a false or defamatory statement, for anything portraying the former Littleton Police Chief in a false light, or for any invasion of his privacy.
I was not sued.
You can’t sue people for telling the truth. I would suggest that had I made even one actionable statement, I would have been sued because that’s what I was told would happen.
Today, a year and a half have passed since I finished publishing GINNED UP, and again, my involvement with these events from this time period has come up. Again in the public forum. Again for political reasons.
So, for those of you who missed GINNED UP the first time around, I am re-releasing it and will do so as I did previously: over the course of forty weeks, one episode at a time.
Starting tomorrow.
To read GINNED UP for free, sign up by going to https://jennabrownson.substack.com/
Jenna Brownson 