A New Voice: Scott Pratt

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall


Scott Pratt was a reporter, columnist, and editor on Tennessee newspapers before he decided to go to law school in his late thirties. Eventually he was drawn back to writing, and after a more difficult struggle than he had anticipated (see below for the whole story), he sold his first legal thriller, An Innocent Client, which was published this week. Publishers Weekly gave An Innocent Client a starred review and called it a “brilliantly executed debut” with “richly developed characters.” The first chapter is posted on Scott's website.

Scott and his wife have two grown children and share their Tennessee home with a German shepherd named Rio, a Yorkshire terrier named Pedro, and a Bichon Friese named Nacho.

Q. Tell us about your first novel.

A. An Innocent Client is the story of Joe Dillard, a forty-year-old criminal defense attorney who is excellent at what he does, but has grown tired of the constant moral compromises he’s forced to make in the profession. On his fortieth birthday, he makes an off-hand wish for just one innocent client before he quits. Not long after that, he thinks he’s gotten his wish. A young girl is accused of stabbing a preacher to death in a motel. Dillard is hired to represent the girl, and he sincerely believes she’s innocent.

However, as the case unfolds, Dillard finds himself dealing with a dirty cop, a politically-astute district attorney, a drug-addled sister, a dying mother, a violent stalker, and a manipulative redhead who isn’t what she seems. Dillard is forced to make a series of gut-wrenching decisions along the way and ultimately is forced to confront his worst enemy – himself. I tried to keep the story suspenseful but fun, fast-moving but deeply evocative. There are several twists, a bunch of great characters, and what I think is a satisfying, plausible ending. Sounds like a bestseller, huh?

Q. I’ve heard that the legal thriller market isn’t easy to break into. What was your road to publication like? Easier than you expected or more difficult?

A. It was vastly more difficult than I expected. I knew going in that I could write, but I didn’t know how to structure a novel. I enlisted the help of The Editorial Department, an on-line company that not only helps writers develop manuscripts but also helps them secure literary agents. It wasn’t cheap, but without Renni and Ross Browne, the owners of the company, I don’t know whether I could have done it. I went through five drafts of the novel. After each draft, we’d send it out and get rejected.

After the fourth draft, I knew something fundamental was missing, so I bought a copy of “Plot and Structure” by James Scott Bell. That put me over the top. I did another draft and Renni called Philip Spitzer, whom she’d known from her days as an editor in New York. Philip got the manuscript on a Monday and called me Tuesday afternoon. The first words out of his mouth were, “This is the best first novel I’ve read in ten years.”

I started the novel in January of ’06, Philip picked it up in July of ’07, and he sold it to Penguin in October of ’07, so it took me a little over a year and a half, start to sale. Over the next few months, Philip and his co-agent, Lukas Ortiz, also sold it to major publishing companies in France, Germany, Japan, Holland and Bulgaria, and I firmly believe he’ll sell it to more publishers before all is said and done.

Probably the most interesting thing – and frustrating at some level – I discovered along the way is that publishers aren’t necessarily looking for good books. They’re looking for bestsellers. If they don’t think a book is going to be a big hit – especially a book from a first-timer – they’re not going to take a chance on it. Ditto for agents.

Q. How did you get the news about the sale? What was your first reaction? How have your family and friends reacted?

A. I got the news about the sale in an email from Philip. He called a little while later. My reaction was mixed – part of me said, “Finally,” and another part said, “I don’t believe this is really happening.” You have to understand that when I quit practicing law and made the decision to do this, I had some financial resources, but, as things turned out, not enough. About a year into the process, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. We wound up filing bankruptcy, losing our home and our vehicles… it was bad. But I kept telling myself that I’d eventually make it and that all the bad things that were happening would make me more appreciative of the success. And that’s what’s happened. I’m extremely humbled and thankful for what’s going on right now and for the opportunities I’ve been given. My only concern is to get the snowball effect going and keep it going.

As for my family and friends, I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive group. They were skeptical at first, but once they realized I was serious, they all believed that good things would happen, and they told me so. My mother is proud as punch.

Q. What was the inspiration for the story? Were you already familiar, as a lawyer, with the legal issues involved, or did you have to do some research?

A. The inspiration for the story was the moral dilemmas that I faced each and every day as a criminal defense lawyer. The criminal justice system is the perfect backdrop to explore the themes I wanted to explore -- things like the hypocrisy in the criminal justice system, the fine line between justice and injustice, man’s continued inhumanity to man, the dangers inherent in extremism and power, the havoc that childhood trauma, especially trauma that is buried and unresolved, can wreak on the life of an adult, just to mention a few -- and I used the opportunity to work out some of the dilemmas in my own mind.

As far as research, I have to admit I did very little. After practicing law for as long as I did, I was intimately familiar with both the legal and moral issues involved in the story.

Q. Why did you decide to go to law school after working as a journalist?

A. To be honest, I was tired of being poor. I had a couple of kids and a wife to support, and I thought law might be a good fit for me. I didn’t start law school until I was 38 years old and I had to commute over 200 miles a day, five days a week, for three years to get through. It was so difficult I barely remember it. The other reason I went is that as a journalist, one of the things I noticed was that lawyers could actually change things for the better once in awhile, and that appealed to me. I practiced criminal defense and I also took on some civil rights issues.

Q. Do you write full-time now? Do you outline and stick to a writing routine, or do you wing it?

A. I write full-time. I’ve already finished my second novel, In Good Faith. It’s in the production process and is scheduled for release in May. I’ve also written a couple of teleplays and a screenplay based on my novels. There’s some serious interest in Hollywood, but so far nobody has shelled out any money.

I outline loosely, but the stories, and especially the characters, sometimes seem to develop a mind of their own. I do have a routine – it’s called “get your butt in front of the computer and write every day.” I take a day off every now and then, but when I’m closing in on an idea, I tend to spend a lot of time on it. The other thing I do is talk with my wife every day. We walk four miles every morning at a park near our home and I bounce ideas off of her and listen to her suggestions. She’s been a great help.

Q. What do you believe are your greatest strengths as a writer? What aspects of craft are you still trying to master?

A. I don’t know what my strengths are, really. Maybe dialogue. I hear the characters speaking in my head when I’m writing. As far as the other aspects of the craft that I’m still trying to master, the answer would be all of them.

Q. What writers have inspired you and taught you by example? Whose books do you rush to read as soon as they’re published?

A. I have a wide range of tastes. I love James Lee Burke, Grisham’s early stuff, Paulo Cohelo, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, J.K. Rowling, and a bunch of others. Probably my favorite writer of all time is Mike Royko, a columnist in Chicago. I like straightforward prose, a subtle sense of humor, and writers who leave themselves out of the story.

Q. Are you planning a series, or do you want to write stand-alones? Can you give us a hint of what the next book is about?

A. The next book, In Good Faith, is the second in what I hope will be a long series. At least five, anyway. In the second book, Joe Dillard has taken a year off from the legal profession and is drawn back by what he perceives as gross injustice. The twist is that he’s a prosecutor in the second novel, a job he thinks he might feel good about. It doesn’t quite work out that way.

Q. Will you be doing any signings and conferences where readers can meet you?

A. Right now I have a couple of signings scheduled here in Johnson City, Tennessee. I’m still trying to figure out the marketing thing. I’ll be posting events on my website, www.ScottPrattfiction.com, as they come up.

Q. In parting, do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

A. I think the most important characteristic for an aspiring writer – besides talent - is persistence. You also have to have patience, you have to be willing to accept criticism, and you have to believe in yourself. To anyone who wants to do this for a living, I think you might be nuts, but I certainly wish you all the best.

Genre Identity Confusion

Sandra Parshall

You’d think writers, of all people, would be able to define what it is they’re writing. In the crime fiction world, though, we have so many subgenres and offshoots and blendings that even the authors are confused at times.

Is it “traditional” or is it “cozy” – or are the two terms interchangeable? Is it woo woo, with a psychic sleuth? Or chick lit, with a man-crazy heroine? Is it a pet cozy with talking and crime-solving cats and dogs? Is it a culinary mystery, with recipes and entertaining tips thrown in among the bodies? A knitting cozy, a bookseller cozy, a scrapbooking cozy? The variations are endless. The traditional/cozy label usually applies to an amateur sleuth story, but even mysteries featuring police detectives may be called cozies if the tone and content are mild enough. M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth series is a good example.

I was surprised when The Heat of the Moon was nominated for an Agatha Award, and even more startled when it won, because I had always thought the book was psychological suspense – and while it has plenty of domestic malice, there’s nothing “cozy” about it. I am told, though, that it meets the criteria for traditional mystery, so I tend to think traditional and cozy are different subgenres.

Procedural mysteries occupy their own category, and these days the label covers not only novels featuring police detectives and FBI agents but also investigative journalists and prosecuting attorneys. I was a little startled the first time I read a review that described a book as a “journalist procedural” but I’ve grown used to it.

The polar opposite of the cozy is noir mystery. As the name suggests, this kind of story is dark in every way and takes a bleak attitude toward humanity and the world. A happy ending should never be expected. But it’s still a mystery: a crime has been committed and a sleuth sets out to solve it.

If it’s not a straight mystery, is it “suspense” or is it a “thriller” – and once you’ve decided that, which sub-subgenre does it fall into? Romantic suspense? Psychological suspense? A psychic, political, international, medical, legal or eco thriller? The ever-popular gory-beyond-belief serial killer thriller? Or perhaps it’s a supernatural thriller, which until recently would have been labeled horror and given no space whatever under the crime fiction umbrella.

I’ve always believed that a mystery was a story driven by the effort to solve a crime, and a thriller was driven by danger and the effort to prevent something awful from happening. But the old definitions don’t hold up anymore. Many authors now borrow elements from two or three subgenres and combine them, sometimes successfully and sometimes not, in a single book.

Everyone seems to be clambering onto the suspense/thriller bandwagon. Look at the bestseller lists and you’ll see why: thrillers and suspense novels are the top sellers in crime fiction. Books that once would have been labeled police procedural mysteries now appear with “A Novel of Suspense” on the cover below the title – even if the stories are clearly mysteries, with detectives plodding through interviews and gathering clues and eventually catching the killer. That’s just false advertising and it probably irritates a lot of readers. What we see more often these days are traditional mysteries being amped up with additional murders (remember when one murder was enough to drive a whole book?), threats to the protagonists, crude language, and a dash of sex.

What’s happening here? Television and films are, undeniably, influencing the way novels are written. Some readers flee from the violent, fast-paced content of movies and TV shows and seek refuge in super-cozy books with cats that solve crimes and murders that rarely leave a bloodstain, much less a lingering nasty odor. But many more readers seem to want novels to keep up with filmed entertainment. More forensic evidence, please: we see it on CSI, and we’ve begun to believe no crime story is complete without a generous dose of it. More blood and agony: we’ve watched The Sopranos and we know people are seldom murdered gently.

I’m not complaining. I can enjoy a talking, crime-solving cat occasionally – although I am profoundly grateful that my own Emma and Gabriel can’t talk and have no interest in the activities of humans beyond our talent for opening cans -- but on the whole I think the trend toward realism is a good thing. The role of forensics in solving real killings is less important than TV would have us believe, but murder is a brutal, world-altering act and I appreciate writers who acknowledge that. Blood on the page serves as a reality check.

Cozies will probably always have a place on the bookshelf for readers seeking escape and relaxation, but people are so aware of crime these days, they see so much of it on the news and in entertainment, that non-cozy novelists will inevitably be forced to portray it realistically in fiction. At the same time, the fast pace of movies and TV pushes novelists to provide the same quick shocks and thrills to readers.

At some point we may have to drop most of the confusing labels on crime fiction and use only two: cozy mystery and... what? Suspense? Thriller? Some completely new term? What will we call our books when all the barriers between subgenres have come down?

POP QUIZ! Quickly – don’t stop to mull it over – how would you label these books?

What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman

In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson

The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz

Monkeewrench by P.J. Tracy

City of Bones by Michael Connelly

A New Voice: Ken Isaacson

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

In Ken Isaacson's first novel, Silent Counsel, a child is killed by a driver who invokes attorney-client privilege to prevent his lawyer from revealing his identity until a satisfactory plea agreement is reached. The prosecutor refuses to deal and the child’s mother turns her wrath on the defense lawyer as she tries to discover who killed her little boy. Kirkus Reviews called Silent Counsel, which was inspired by a real case, “a complex story [with a] heart-pounding climax.” Ken has practiced law for 25 years, first as a member of a major Wall Street firm and now as in-house general counsel to an international transportation company. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, dog, and four cats.

SP: Why did you decide to write about a mother who lost a child, rather than a father? Do you think the story would be very different with a male character?

KI: Wow…no one’s ever asked me that before. And now that I think about it, I can’t say that I ever made a decision to write about a mother rather than a father—it never occurred to me that the story would be anything other than from the mother’s point of view.

I think the story would have a different feel if it had been done otherwise. In Silent Counsel, Ben’s parents, Stacy and Marc, drift apart following their son’s death, mainly because they have different ways of coping with the terrible hit-and-run that tore their lives apart. Stacy becomes obsessed with finding the person responsible, while Marc is determined to grieve in his own way, but then try to move on. And Stacy wonders whether a father could ever understand the depth of the biological bond between mother and child that makes his solution impossible for her to accept. I think it’s that bond that drives the story, and if it were told from the father’s point of view, that element would be missing.

Of course, that’s not to diminish the loss suffered by a father in such a situation. I can tell you that when I first conceived the story, my oldest son was about six years old (the age of Ben Altman in Silent Counsel), and writing about losing a child was certainly an emotional experience.

SP: On the same subject, a perennial question on writers’ listservs is whether men and women can write convincingly from the POV of the opposite gender. Were you completely comfortable writing about a woman’s experiences, or did you ask your wife or other female readers for their opinions and insights?

KI: I’ve watched some of those threads online, most recently on DorothyL, and was amused by some of the perceived telltales that expose men writing women or vice versa.

For my part—and probably because I didn’t know any better—I did feel comfortable writing from Stacy’s POV. Again, I had small children of my own, and it was easy to find much of the emotion within myself. But my wife was my early reader, and I did rely on her to let me know if things rang true or not—not only with Stacy’s POV, but with the story in general. And there are a number of changes that I made as a result of her insight—the most significant of which was to re-write the whole dang story from the ground up. Initially, the focal character was the mother, Stacy, with the attorney, Scott Heller, playing a more or less supporting role. Without giving too much of the story away, Sylvia felt that Stacy didn’t make a terribly sympathetic character to be cast in the main spotlight. So I went back to page one, and re-wrote the entire story, shifting the focus to Scott, the lawyer. (Can you believe it? A lawyer as a sympathetic character! Go know.)

Of course, my wife enjoys pointing out that I seemed to accept her suggestions only after one or two other early readers made the same observations. “Oh, you were waiting for someone else to tell you that too?”

Ah, well. Isn’t that how men and women communicate?

SP: A lot of people don’t realize how specialized the practice of law is – they figure every lawyer knows everything about all aspects of law. Were you, as a civil attorney, well-versed in criminal law when you began writing this book, or did you have to brush up on some points?

KI: You’re right. The practice of law is extremely specialized. I’m not particularly well-versed in criminal law at all—I took the required introductory course in my first year of law school, which was quite some time ago, and really haven’t had any exposure to it during my career.

But so much of the law is always evolving and is ever-changing—even the narrow areas that individual lawyers carve out as their specialties. So even if I were to have written a story revolving around my own specialty (uh, if you give me a few minutes, I’ll be able to figure out what that specialty is…) I’d have had to do some legal research.

That’s the thing about the practice of law. You don’t really learn “everything there is to know” about a particular subject. You learn the questions to ask, and where to look for the answers. It’s a constant game of “what if,” which makes it a great background for novel writing.

Did I have to do some brushing up on the legal issues found in Silent Counsel? Yes, I did. For example, I didn’t have a clue about the distinction between manslaughter and aggravated manslaughter, or what the range of penalties for each was. I didn’t know how a county prosecutor’s office was structured, or how cases were assigned to individual assistant prosecutors. And I had to do quite a bit of research into the intricacies of the attorney-client privilege. The list of what I didn’t know is actually pretty long.

One of the things I’ve come to learn is that experts are quite willing to share their knowledge if you simply admit to them (1) you don’t know jack, and (2) you appreciate the opportunity to learn from them.

SP: More and more writers are being published for the first time in middle age (or older). Do you think you’re a better writer now than you would have been at 25 or 30? What do you bring to your writing now that you would have been lacking when you were younger?

KI: Middle age, huh? [sighs] I suppose you’re right.

I guess age has given me an advantage that I lacked in earlier years. For one thing, I’ve certainly read a lot more now than I had by the time I was in my 20s, so I feel I have a better sense of what works and what doesn’t, from a readers perspective. Things like pacing, rhythm, switching POV, and the like.

In addition, I’ve been a lawyer for almost thirty years. As a lawyer, I write for a living. Granted, it’s a different kind of writing—although a lot of cynics would say that lawyers write fiction for a living—but I have to believe that years of brief and memo writing have helped me to be able to formulate ideas and points of view and then convey them to a reader. That’s gotta count for something.

In fact, when I first sat down to begin writing Silent Counsel, I didn’t have a clue how to proceed, so I decided to approach the task as I did a legal case. I remembered an instructor in one of my continuing legal education classes advising of the importance of developing a theme for your case. “A case without a theme is just a bunch of testimony,” I’d been told. “A car crash doesn’t happen in a vacuum—it’s a tragedy that involves real people and real consequences.” Cloaking your case with a theme gives jurors a reason to stay interested and alert: “This case is not just about young Will being injured when the buckling mechanism on his infant seat came loose. It’s about the kind of corporate greed that places the cost of recalling a defective product and the benefit of saving a child’s life on opposite ends of a scale—and tips that scale against the child.” Now, with that theme in the jury’s mind, otherwise dry testimony about how this strap connects to that latch may be, if not interesting, at least a little more bearable. There’s a reason to care.

The difference I was faced with when setting out to write a novel was that in the context of a legal case, I start—necessarily—with the facts as they’re presented to me. I search for a theme that relates well to those facts and exerts the right amount of emotional pull to grab hold of the jury. Writing a novel, though, allows the reverse. When I started, the page was, of course, quite literally blank. There were no facts, only an idea: What if the attorney representing a hit-and-run driver couldn’t reveal his client’s name because the court held it was privileged information? With that premise in mind, I began constructing facts: I decided that the victim of the driver had to be a child, because readers (my jury) would care more about this arcane legal issue if the attorney-client privilege was being used to shield someone responsible for a youngster’s death.

I knew that the lawyer in my story would face a difficult ethical dilemma—needing to protect the confidences of a client while feeling that the “right” thing to do would be to help the grieving mother. Because I had never faced such a challenge, I decided my lawyer should (like me) be unaccustomed to criminal practice and protecting the rights of the guilty. I made him a corporate litigator handling a “quick referral” for a friend—just a matter of making a few phone calls to the prosecutor to see if a deal could be made. This way, in the process of writing, I could experience the doubts and misgivings of my protagonist as he did, for the first time. And, I decided that my lawyer should have a young child of his own, so the conflict he felt between duty and right would strike close to home.

From this germ of an idea, and these few basic facts, emerged competing themes: Silent Counsel would be about a lawyer’s struggle with his personal beliefs when confronted with the fundamental need for secrecy between client and attorney. It also would be about a mother’s frustration and rage at a system that places more value on a legal technicality than bringing the killer of her six-year-old boy to justice.

Once this theme was established in my mind, I began “filling in the facts.”

Like I said, when I decided to try my hand at a novel, I didn’t have a clue how to proceed, and I therefore drew on my experience as a lawyer constructing a case. I suppose that had I set out to write without having years of lawyering behind me, I would have really been lost!

SP: How has publication changed your life? Has anything about the process surprised or disappointed you?

KI: You mean like how, before Silent Counsel was published, I had no free time, and now, since publication, I really have no free time?

Seriously, the biggest—and perhaps most surprising—change for me seems to be the enormous amount of time that must go into promotion. It began in the months leading up to the release, establishing a presence on the web and planning a tour, and it continues virtually unabated three months after the launch. I’ve done about forty signings, about ten radio or TV interviews, and a number of conventions, books shows, and panel presentations, across the country.

Once the Christmas season passes, I expect that frenetic pace to slow some, but I’m learning that it sure is a lot of hard work. I always knew that things didn’t end when the book hit the shelves, but I really did not realize the amount of time and effort that would be required.

I’m certainly not complaining! I genuinely enjoy getting out there. The challenge is time management. What comes to mind is something that Stephen Covey wrote about in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People regarding the proper “P/PC” balance—that is, the balance between production and production capability. Too much writing, without promotion, doesn’t get you very far; by the same token, too much promotion, without writing anything to promote, isn’t very good either. Achieving the right balance is the key.

SP: Were you active in MWA before you were published? How do you believe mystery organizations benefit the unpublished and newly published members?

KI: I became active in MWA well before I was published—I joined a few months after I finished the first draft of Silent Counsel. And I believe it was one of the best moves I made.

I had completed the manuscript, and I looked at the pile of paper in front of me and said, “OK. Now what?” I had absolutely no idea what to do to get it into print. Always up for a challenge, I looked around in the bookstores for newly-published legal thrillers by first-time authors, and I reached out to a number of them for guidance. Everyone I contacted was willing to share their experiences with me, and one suggested I join MWA.

I did, and I’m glad. Those of the members who are published authors run the gamut from well-known, accomplished bestsellers to midlist authors to newly-published authors struggling for name recognition. One thing they all have in common is a passion for what they do, and a willingness to help those members not yet published. (OK, that’s two things.)

Now, the road to publication is a long and tortuous one, and can be discouraging at times. I found that becoming part of the MWA community—getting to know people who’ve made it, and people who were struggling to reach the same goals as I was—was invigorating. Every time I attended an MWA event, whether it was a monthly dinner meeting, a symposium, or the annual Edgars Banquet, I found that my determination to continue on was renewed—despite any recent rejection letters I might have gotten.

So, yes, I do feel that MWA (and no doubt for the same reasons, other mystery organizations) benefit the unpublished and newly-published members. And that’s without even getting into the substance of the various programs that the organization offers!

SP: Have you had a chance yet to learn which types of promotion work best and which are a waste of time and money? Do you find My Space useful – or is it impossible to tell whether something like that benefits a writer?

KI: Ahh, retailing pioneer John Wanamaker once said, “I know that half my advertising costs are wasted. But I can never figure out which half.” No doubt the same can be said about promotional efforts.

I don’t know that I’ve come across any types of promotion that I can specifically identify as a waste. As a newly-published author, starting with zero name recognition, as far as I’m concerned, anything that gets my name out there is worthwhile—whether or not the sale of a single book can be traced to it.

I’ve done my best to create a presence on the web. I have a website (www.KenIsaacson.com), a MySpace page (www.MySpace.com/KenIsaacson), and a Crimespace page (www.Crimespace.ning.profile/KJIsaacson). I participate in online discussion groups such as DorothyL. I’ve toured, and since the beginning of September I’ve had almost fifty events, including bookstore signings, panel appearances, library discussions, and radio and TV interviews. With the exception of the bookstore signings—where there are hard numbers about sales—it’s impossible to measure the event’s success in terms of books sold. And even with bookstore signings, there are intangible benefits that go beyond the simple number of books sold.

I can only assume that my use of MySpace has been successful for me. About six months before Silent Counsel was due to be released, I established a MySpace page, as well as my website. Now, the problem with the website is that people have to actually know about it to be able to find it. And apart from my wife, my three sons, and my mother, there weren’t a whole lot of people who knew to click their way over to my website in the months before publication.
MySpace is a different story. I’m assuming you know how MySpace is structured, so suffice it to say that it’s not too difficult to develop a list of friends that are a ready audience for what you have to offer. And unlike your traditional website, which must attract traffic, if you “work” MySpace right, you can deliver your message to your audience.

Has MySpace helped sell Silent Counsel? As your question implies, it’s hard to say. I do know that in the weeks leading up to publication, Silent Counsel climbed to the number 2 spot on Amazon’s list of Hot New Releases in legal thrillers, and it’s maintained a position in the top 5 since then. The only thing I can think of attributing that pre-publication success (before I went on the road) to is a web presence, and my MySpace page was the centerpiece.

SP: What are your career goals? Do you think you’ll ever write full-time?

KI: I have a great day job. I left the private practice of law almost six years ago to become in-house general counsel to a corporation. I don’t miss my law firm days at all. For more than twenty years, I had to account for all of my time, every day, in six-minute intervals, so the billing could be done. And I had to worry about client development, finding new ones, and maintaining the existing ones. As general counsel, I have a single client, and no need to worry about billing or client development. I can just do my job. And the bonus is that because I have an office all to myself, I get to bring my dog to work with me!

I’m also a technology nut, so my office is virtually paperless—everything’s scanned into my computer, and synchronized with my laptop. So I can work from almost anywhere, which I’m often forced to because of the nature of the business. In fact, I often joke with the president of the company, telling him, “I’m not going on vacation next week…but I’ll be working from Breckenridge.” Or Long Beach Island, or wherever.

I have no present plans to give up the law. I also intend to keep on writing. I suppose if I had to guess which one I’d end up doing longer, I’d say that I’ll probably end up retiring from the law before I’ll stop writing.

SP: What advice do you have for aspiring mystery writers?

KI: The best single piece of advice I can think of is one word: WRITE!
What I mean by this is that we too often get caught up in the planning. We think of good ideas, we research, we outline…we seem to do everything except put pen to paper. I’m not suggesting that anyone skip the necessary preliminary stages (though we could have a spirited discussion about outlining, and whether and to what extent it’s necessary), but don’t become paralyzed by the initial steps. Get yourself writing!

In addition, by all means join an organization like MWA. There are groups for nearly every genre and sub-genre you can think of: mysteries, thrillers, romances, you name it. Like I said in answer to one of your other questions, surrounding yourself with driven, like-minded people is invaluable—for inspiration, for support, and for knowledge.

Finally, persevere. Whether you aspire to have your work published, or you write because you just have to write, it’s a long and often discouraging road. But keep at it, and don’t give up.

Alex Kava's Life of Crime

Interviewed by Sandra Parshall

Bestselling thriller writer Alex Kava grew up in rural Nebraska, the daughter of hardworking parents who believed reading was frivolous unless required for school. She secretly nurtured her love of reading and writing throughout childhood. After college she held a number of jobs, mostly in marketing and advertising, and eventually became director of public relations at her alma mater, the College of Saint Mary in Omaha. When she decided in 1996 to write fiction and try to get published, she quit her PR job, resurrected her small graphic design firm to earn money, maxed out her credit cards, and took on a newspaper delivery route. Her first thriller, A Perfect Evil, was a quick success, and she’s been on bestseller lists ever since. She still lives in Omaha, with her dogs Molly and Scout.

Your new book is a departure from your Maggie O’Dell series. Will this become a second series?

Whitewash is not intended to be series, but I never say never. I do love the characters, especially two of the secondary ones: Miss Sadie, the eighty-one-year-old neighbor who keeps cash in the freezer and drives a 1948 Studebaker, and Leon, the hitman who has his own "standards." It'd be fun to bring them back in another novel down the road.

Was it difficult or energizing to work with a new lead character? What were you able to do with Sabrina that might not fit well with Maggie?

I actually find it very energizing. I did another stand alone, One False Move, several years ago. The novel was loosely based on a real life manhunt I found myself caught in the middle of. It was a story I needed and wanted to write but it wasn't necessarily a Maggie O'Dell novel. Same thing with Whitewash. I had a story to tell but I needed someone like Sabrina, not Maggie. Sabrina is a brilliant scientist and professor but a bit naive when it comes to street smarts. The story works because Sabrina hasn't ever had to deal with corporate corruption and political scandal let alone murder. It ratchets up the suspense.

You’ve said that you grew up in a home with few books and that your parents considered reading a waste of time unless it was done for school. Where do you think your love of books and the urge to write came from? Were you encouraged by any adult mentors?

Reading was always a wonderful escape whether I was following around Harriet the Spy or experiencing the high seas with Mutiny on the Bounty. Perhaps it was even more a treat because it was sort of forbidden.

As for adult mentors, I do fondly remember my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Powers, reading to us every day after lunch and how much we all looked forward to it. And I still get chills at the memory of my eighth grade teacher, Mr. Meyers, reading Poe's The Telltale Heart.

As a child, you wrote stories on the backs of calendars and hid them under your bed. What did you write about, and do you still have any of those stories?

I asked my mom for the old Co-op Grain calendars. They were weeklies, spiral bond and about six inches by nine inches in size, so I had fifty-two blank sheets that I could do whatever I wanted to and no one would miss them or be interested. I wrote stories. I can't remember if any of them were finished. I can't even remember what they were about. And no, unfortunately I don't have them. I think they got tossed for the same reason I thought they were so perfect to use -- no one cared what was written on an out-of-date calendar.

What drew you to writing thrillers? What can you accomplish in a thriller that you can’t in a traditional mystery?

I actually didn't choose to write thrillers. My first novel, A Perfect Evil, was loosely based on a couple of crimes that happened in Nebraska while I worked for a small town newspaper. I didn't know I had written a thriller or a mystery novel. I was concerned about the characters more than the plot. I wanted to focus on what happens to people when something horrific like the murder of two little boys happens in a community, especially a community that sometimes didn't lock its doors in the middle of the afternoon. It was the relationships and transformations of characters and the loss of innocence of a community that I was interested in capturing.

Shortly after A Perfect Evil was published a reviewer called me "the newest serial killer lady." Readers all over the world seemed to connect with Maggie O'Dell (who, by the way, doesn't enter the novel until chapter seven) and suddenly my publisher wanted a series of thrillers with Maggie O'Dell. At that time I couldn't even tell you what a thriller was and I certainly didn't know the first thing about writing a series. Even now I don't necessarily concern myself with whether the novel is a thriller or a mystery as much as how I want to tell the story and who -- which set of characters -- will tell their version.

How do people who have known you all your life react to your choice of subject matter? Has anyone ever tried to talk you into writing about more pleasant subjects?

My mom, who is a good Catholic mother, reads all my novels but we never discuss them. By now most of my friends are almost as fascinated by my research as I am. Although I'm not sure if that says more about their acceptance of me or their own dark interests.

What aspects of your writing have you consciously worked to improve? What aspects give you the most satisfaction?

I'm constantly working to improve every aspect -- to write tighter, to use more concise description, to make the dialogue sound real, to flesh out even the secondary characters and include research that enhances, not bores, the reader.

It seems to be the oddest of things that give me the most satisfaction. But mostly it's when something I've written really touches a reader. For At the Stroke of Madness I gave one of my characters Alzheimer's Disease as sort of a personality quirk until I started doing my research and realized what a horribly sad disease it is. Luc Racine became an important character in the plot and so did his loss of memory. Recently a reader, whose own father suffers from Alzheimer's Disease, wrote to me and thanked me for portraying the disease in such a realistic manner right down to Luc Racine finding his TV remote control in his refrigerator.

Does anyone read and comment on your work before you turn it in to your editor?

Yes, my friend and business manager, Deb Carlin, reads it. Oftentimes she takes my longhand and keys it in for me, too. She's also the only person I sit and brainstorm with to figure out the twists and turns.

How do you divide your time among research, promotion, and writing? Do you attend any mystery conferences?

It's tough because a writer could literally spend all year doing research, promotion and going to conferences and not writing. For example in 2006 I spent five weeks on the road doing an 18-city national tour for A Necessary Evil. Then because One False Move was chosen for One Book One Nebraska I decided to do a six-week, 35-city library tour across the state. For 17 days it was three women and five dogs in a rented RV. We jokingly called it "The Insanity Tour." Also in 2006 I attended three national conferences, BEA, and four book festivals.

I know some writers who can write anywhere, but I find it impossible to write in airports, hotels and RVs. Yet all of it is important, so you find a way to juggle it.

What do you read for pleasure? What thriller writers do you admire, and what newcomers to the field have caught your attention?

I just finished reading Daniel Silva's The Secret Servant. Now I'm reading Kathy Reichs. I love Carl Hiaasen and Thomas Perry. I've been a judge and the Awards Chair for International Thriller Writers so I've had the honor of meeting quite a few authors in the last two years, and now I'm enjoying reading many of their works: Joseph Finder, P.J. Parrish, Lee Child, Tess Gerritsen, Christopher Riech, Steve Berry, Jeffery Deaver, James Rollins . . . so many books and so little time.

There are too many thriller authors I admire to mention. For newcomers, I just finished George D. Shuman's second thriller, Last Breath, which was terrific.The character of Sherry Moore that he created in his debut, 18 Seconds is a fascinating character. And for me that's still what makes a good thriller -- just as in any great fiction -- it's the characters.

You’ve had an extraordinary degree of cooperation from the FBI, while some other writers have said they were rebuffed when they asked for help. Why do you think the Bureau has been willing to assist you?

All of my resource connections in law enforcement, including the FBI, have come about through friends and/or readers helping me make those connections. Several of my sources have come to me at national book signing events and offered their assistance with a private phone number and/or email address. I've never had to cold-call anyone. I've been very fortunate.

But once I make those connections I think the sources are willing to talk to me because they know how much I respect what they do and they can trust me. There have been several times that I've had sources sit down and talk to me about open cases, including evidence that hasn't been made public, and they know they can count on me to not divulge anything sensitive. People resources are the absolute best for any research and what they share gives my novels a level of credibility and authenticity that I couldn't get anywhere else.

What are you working on now?

I'm working on the next Maggie O'Dell, called Exposed.

Visit the author’s web site at www.alexkava.com.

Interview with Alafair Burke

Interviewer: Elizabeth Zelvin

When, how, and why did you decide to become a writer? And what made you decide to become a lawyer?

I came to writing as a reader. My early favorite books as a child were mysteries, and I remained a lifelong fan of the genre. And of course I’d always been interested in crime. That’s why I became a prosecutor. But it wasn’t until I was at the D.A.’s Office--surrounded by fascinating stories, hearing the stylized way of speaking, seeing how real policing and prosecuting worked–-that I started to think I had enough material to try my hand at writing.

You went to law school in California, worked as a deputy district attorney in Oregon, teach law on Long Island, and live in New York City. Where did you grow up? To what extent, if any, have childhood, family, and a sense of place affected your writing?

To add some more geography to my resume, I grew up as a little kid in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and then grew up some more in Wichita, Kansas. My whole family has always moved around a lot. I think you can tell when people have had nomadic lives. It makes you a good observer. It makes you sensitive to changes in dialect and perspectives. You don’t take for granted that any particular thing you’re used to is the way it is for everyone else. That helps in writing, especially in creating a sense of place, by helping you really identify what makes a specific region unique.

How do you write? Do you have any rituals? Do you need privacy, or can you write with other people around you? How much do you revise? What do you love about writing or the creative process? What, if anything, do you hate or fear about it?

I prefer to have an entire day completely open to write, in which case I tend to stay in my pajamas until 3 pm, go to the gym, then come home to a shower, more PJs, and more writing. I rarely have those kinds of days, though. I’ve learned to write on a lap top in airports, hotel rooms, and restaurants. I’ve learned to get in whatever time I can at the computer each night when I’m done at school.

As far as process, I try to get everything as good as I can get it as I go. The next day, I start by reading what I wrote the day before and tinker as appropriate. Then I’ll do another couple of rounds of big revisions once I’ve got a complete manuscript. What I love, and hate, about writing is the complete solitude of it. Not just physically, but intellectually. You start with a cursor blinking on a fake piece of paper depicted on a screen, and then you have to make choice after choice after choice until an entire book is complete. That’s fabulous freedom. But for someone who has a hard time deciding what to eat for dinner each night, it can be terrifying. I’m actually happiest during editing. I love tinkering. I love the big renovations you can make to the tone of a book with relatively small changes. But the actual creation of that first draft still scares me to death (although I of course love it when it’s over).

After reading your new book, Dead Connection, I’d like to know whether you outline. Surely you didn’t create that complex, tightly woven plot just writing into the mist—or did you?

I start with a synopsis that lays out the bare bones plot—who did it and why. It’s usually about 10 pages. For Dead Connection, that synopsis included all of the various layers of the story. I do not prepare a scene by scene outline. I usually have only the next two or three scenes in mind as I write.

You’ve been going great guns with your Samantha Kincaid series. Yet after three books, you’ve started a new series with Dead Connection: cop instead of prosecutor, New York instead of Portland. How come? Will you continue to write about Samantha as you develop your new protagonist, Ellie Hatcher?

I had an idea for a great plot that didn’t work as a Samantha book. After meeting my husband online, I wanted to talk about the darkest potential of meeting people on the internet. To pull it off, I needed to set the story in a city where people enjoyed real anonymity. Portland lacks that. Big time. New York doesn’t. And I wanted the pace to be fast. Police investigating cases move faster than lawyers prosecuting them. So NYPD Detective Ellie Hatcher was born. I originally intended Dead Connection to be a standalone, but Ellie has so much potential as a series character, I want to see that through. I’ll find a way to get back to Samantha, though. She’s my girl.

How do you coordinate your different worlds—the law, academia, the literary and mystery community? Is finding time a problem? You’ve certainly integrated your legal knowledge and experience into the novels and done it very well indeed, as an impressive roster of peers attest, including Linda Fairstein, Tess Gerritsen, Sue Grafton, and Lee Child. Are your law students at Hofstra aware of your reputation as a writer? Do they read your books? Have you ever thought of assigning them as required reading?

Ha! That would be a fast way to sell some books, but, no, I haven’t made them assigned reading. (A colleague, however, did, in his law and literature class.) I honestly have no idea what my students think. Only a few bold students have talked to me about my books. Apparently one study group would invoke the question “What would Samantha Kincaid do?” when studying criminal law. Quite a few former students show up at readings, but I suspect the vast majority of my current students are too busy trying to learn how to be lawyers to bother with my fiction.

You wear yet another hat, as a consultant for Court TV and other television and radio programs. How did you get that gig, and is it fun?

As a law professor and former prosecutor based in New York, I get phone calls from time to time asking for commentary. As long as I’m available, I agree to do it. Otherwise, I can’t complain about the wanna-be celebrity lawyers who use those gigs to make a name for themselves by being as outrageous and obnoxious as possible.

What do you do in your spare time? Do you have any spare time?

I run and do Pilates. I spend a ton of time doting on my French bulldog Duffer. My husband and I golf, go to way too many restaurants, and appreciate wine.

I’m sure every interviewer mentions your famous father, esteemed writer James Lee Burke. How do you feel about that?

I appreciate the strong feelings people have about his work, and it’s natural that those feelings would be the start of finding common ground when people first meet me. I’m more perplexed when people confuse me with the fictional Alafair Robicheaux. My mom put it best years ago when she said, “How do you think I feel when people are surprised I’m not Bootsie?”

Your dad is known for his extremely lyrical writing; he’s one of those writers about whom critics tend to say that he “transcends the genre.” To what extent, if any, has his writing influenced yours? Does he read your work in manuscript? Does he critique it? Do you read his?

I like to think that his dedication to writing rubbed off on me, but our books are completely different. We talk about books like family members, not workshop partners. No drafts. No edits.

How long have you been living in New York, and what made you decide to switch coasts? What do you like about New York? What do you hate about it?

I’ve been in Manhattan for four years now. I love that I can walk to anything I need and can have egg whites delivered at two in the morning. I hate the hassle of any car travel in or out of Manhattan.

How much touring do you do to promote your books? Do you enjoy it? Does any moment stand out? An encounter with a reader that was particularly moving or funny or embarrassing?

I’ve been going to 12-15 cities each summer. It’s a ton of fun, about as close to living like a rock star as I’m likely to get. It’s tangible proof that real people out there are actually reading my books, which is pretty darn cool. Stand out moment? This summer, a woman at a reading screamed out of fright when I read the opening scene of Dead Connection.

What’s next for Alafair Burke as a writer, professionally as an attorney and law professor, and personally? What goals and dreams are on your to-do list for the future?

I have an incredible husband, a wicked cool dog, and two jobs I actually like and am not horrible at. As long as I can keep all of that going, I’m good. If I had to be greedy and ask for more in the future, I want to play in the ladies’ senior LPGA.

Interview with Jeremiah Healy

Interviewer: Elizabeth Zelvin



Let’s start with the question you posed in the flier you handed out at the workshop on thrillers that you moderated at the recent MWA Symposium during Edgars Week 2007 in New York. Your question: “What does a guy who has been a sheriff’s officer, Military Police lieutenant, trial attorney, and law professor—affectionately known to his students as the Prince of (expletive-deleted) Darkness—do for excitement?"

For excitement: kayaking, distance swimming, scuba diving, fly-casting, sailing, tennis, jogging, and walking late at night through Boston Common (think NYC's Central Park) simulating a limp to see if any bad guys would jump a person with an obvious disability.

What prompted you to become a fiction writer?

As a trial attorney and law professor, I became frustrated by the (thankfully, relatively few) ways in which the formal judicial system, civil or criminal, does NOT handle certain types of cases well (the battered spouse in the otherwise financially secure family, a reporter’s privilege not to reveal confidential sources, etc.). By writing fiction, and especially crime fiction, I could explore those “fall through the cracks” kinds of cases.

At what point did you stop juggling your law and writing careers and become a full time writer?

In 1995. It was not so much that writing crime novels conflicted with teaching law students, as that the promotional obligations to the publisher(s) became difficult to balance with the administrative conferences I was (reasonably) expected to attend as a tenured professor.

You have written 18 novels and more than 60 short stories. What are your work habits? Do you have a routine or any rituals? Or are you just one of those guys who only needs three hours of sleep?

Actually, I prefer a LOT of sleep. I've found that, in terms of creative writing, I'm best off writing almost every day in the morning, having lunch alone, and then going out into the "real" world to play tennis, work-out, even just ride the subway: ANYthing that is NOT sitting alone in a little room creating a fantasy world via the keyboard.

You have two ongoing series, the John Francis Cuddy PI novels and the Mairead O’Clare legal thriller series that you write as Terry Devane. We can assume the pace at which you write those books is dictated by your contracts. But you’ve also written stand-alones and all those short stories. How do you decide what to write next?

When I first considered becoming a FULL time writer, I asked friends who had been one for years their thoughts, given the glory of hindsight, on what they might have done differently. Lawrence Block told me: "I wish I'd written next the next book I wanted to write, rather than play to the money." I think that's great advice.

Do you have a favorite protagonist (Cuddy or O’Clare), subgenre (PI or legal thriller), or format (novel or short story)? Or do you love all your literary children equally?

Well, I'd say I love them all, but if they WERE children, and the oxygen mask on the plane dropped down, which "child" would I help first? Cuddy, because he's been such a big part of my writing life.

You’ve been honored many times as a writer, including 16 wins or nominations for the Shamus Award. Does one of those awards or honors stand out as particularly meaningful to you?

Two. I won the Shamus Award for Best Hardcover Private Eye Novel of 1986, and that kind of launched me. Also, being honored as the American Guest of Honour [stet] at Al Navis's Bouchercon in Toronto during October, 2004, is the other.

You have written very frankly about your prostate cancer in a way that comes across as a deep commitment to helping other men get the information they need for diagnosis and effective treatment, not just on a medical level but in terms of practical advice and plain speaking about what it’s like to make this journey and how to get through it whole. What has it been like for you to make these experiences public?

I've always believed that if life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I couldn't pay back the men who'd counseled me through my prostate cancer experience, but I could pay it forward to others by doing that article and some speeches about it.

What’s up next for Jeremiah Healy—and Terry Devane?

Right now, I'm working on a thriller involving murders in a large but disintegrating (fictional) Boston law firm.

What are your goals or dreams for the future? What’s still out there that you’ve never done?

While I've had some of my fiction optioned for film, I'd love to see one of my novels actually adapted to the big or small screen, and I'd also love to have one of my original screenplays optioned for Hollywood.

What Do You Know?

Ken Isaacson (Guest Blogger)


They say you should write what you know. There’s no shortage of lawyers-turned-authors, and most of them do just that. I guess, in that regard, I’m no different—but only to a degree. My first novel, Silent Counsel, is a legal thriller (imagine that!), but I can’t say that it draws on real-life experiences taken from my twenty-five-plus years of legal practice. I’m just a simple corporate counsel, working in-house at a major transportation company. I haven’t defended murderers, rapists, thieves, or the like, and although I’ve handled matters that evoke a “jeez, you could write a book about it” feeling because of their quirks, I don’t know that they would be books that anyone would be particularly interested in reading. So, while I do write about what I know—the law—I don’t necessarily write about what I do.

Take Silent Counsel. It asks you to suppose the unimaginable: What if your child was killed in a hit-and-run, and the one person who knew the driver’s identity—his lawyer—didn’t have to tell you his name because the court held it was privileged information? A story about a mother who will go to any length to find out who’s responsible for the death of her six-year-old son, Silent Counsel shows the very real impact that the attorney-client privilege can have on the people it touches—both the lawyer who’s bound to remain silent, and the person who wants to know what the lawyer is keeping secret.

Now, I’ve never been in a situation that comes even close to what the characters in Silent Counsel encounter—my experience with the attorney-client privilege is limited to trying to avoid turning over an embarrassing document to opposing counsel in a contract dispute—you know, the memo from the president of the company that says “Damn it, I know it’s wrong. Do it anyway.” But as a lawyer, I write for a living, and I guess there are cynics who’d even say that lawyers write fiction for a living. So I can use my knowledge of the law and spin a damn good yarn about the kind of privileged information that’s worth reading about.

If I think hard enough, I can remember maybe a handful of actual cases I’ve handled that, if not interesting enough to actually write about, at least make good party talk. Like the fellow I represented back in the 80s who had bought a converted loft building in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, only to find out that one of the tenants was operating a sadomasochistic sex club in her rented “office.” Believe it or not, it wasn’t easy finding a legal basis for booting this fine establishment out. I had to rely on a statute that dated back to the 1800s, which forbade the use of rented premises as “a bawdy house, or place of assignation for lewd persons.” After checking the dictionary for “bawdy” and “assignation” (I had a pretty good idea what “lewd” meant), I decided that was the way to go. Preparing for the trial of that eviction proceeding was interesting—just reading the investigator’s report on his, uh, undercover visit to the club was an eye-opener. And the trial itself? The usually deserted courtroom (landlord-tenant court isn’t too high on the professional court-watcher’s “must see” list) quickly filled up minutes after the investigator took the stand, as word of his testimony—and a description of what he’d observed—filtered through the courthouse. We prevailed, and I attended the eviction with the city marshal. I still have a souvenir on my desk: a pair of shackles and chains left behind by the club owners. When I was practicing in a law firm, I told visitors that that was how the partners ensured that billable hours were maximized.

Then there was the time I had to repossess a fleet of jumbo jets from an international airline because of missed lease payments. I’d had plenty of experience repossessing bulldozers, backhoes, and other assorted construction equipment, and that had been relatively easy: Start a lawsuit, obtain a Writ of Replevin, tell the Sheriff where he could find the piece, and send him to haul it away. What could be difficult about taking back a couple of airplanes? Same concept, bigger prize. But it’s all in the execution. A bulldozer, you can hide in big garage. You’d think it would be a mite difficult to hide a bunch of jumbo jets, huh? Can you say “risk of flight”? Luckily, I was able to negotiate a settlement before I had to rent hangar space (once you nab ‘em, you gotta store ‘em somewhere), hire a team of qualified pilots (someone’s gotta at least taxi ‘em from where they’re seized over to the hangar), and dispatch a posse of U.S. Marshals to oversee the operation (someone’s gotta lay down the law). Sometimes, the best cases get settled before the good stuff starts.

Now that I think about it, maybe there is the germ of an idea or two lurking in the workaday stuff that a boring corporate attorney deals with. I guess whoever said you should write what you know knew what she was talking about. To that, I’d just add: “Write even what you didn’t realize you know!”

© 2007 by Ken Isaacson

Ken's legal thriller, Silent Counsel, will be out in September 2007.