1. What inspired you to write your book?
It
was a story that had to be told, of lawlessness and corruption in one of our
major cities, and of the fate of an idealistic woman who challenged it.
2. What is it about?
A
young, idealistic woman lawyer joins a large law firm in a major city, where
she finds corruption, disillusionment and murder. The narrator has fallen in
love with her, but she disappears one November. The police suspect that the
narrator has abducted and killed her. The narrator thinks she has been abducted
and murdered by the Mob because of her involvement with City politics. The
narrator finds himself trying to decode what happened to her by tracking her
young life through the corrupt and murderous city, as it is related by her
letters and journals.
3. What do you hope will be the
everlasting thoughts for readers who finish your book?
I
hope that they will remember what lawlessness and corruption can look like at
first hand, and that we are never too frail that we can't do something about
it. They will also know something more about happiness, depression, and the
human heart.
4. What advice do you have for
writers?
If
your aim is to make money, study the popular writers and learn to spin plots
like them. Most of the Public (and most publishers) just want something which
would amuse readers over a week-end at the beach. Of course, these are
imminently forgettable - the literary equivalent of junk food. If you aspire to
write something more lasting, take experiences and slices of life and put them
together into narratives that explore the human condition. My models were
novels such as An American Tragedy, Babbitt, Arrowsmith, Main
Street, The Jungle, and Grapes of Wrath.
5. Where do you think that the
book publishing industry is heading?
I
think it is going to go the same way as television. If you are old enough to
remember, TV was dominated by the Big Three, and almost no other outlets were
available. In effect, the big three networks decided what you watched or what
ideas you got to explore. Now with cable and direct TV, there is an indefinite
number of channels, and there is room for every interest and every point of
view. The same multiversity will come about in publishing, because of the ease
of e-publishing. No more will there be three or four gate-keepers who will
decide what they should invest in, and consequently what you can read. New,
unexplored authors now have a chance to get the public's attention
6. What challenges did you have
in writing your book?
When
you base your novel upon reflections about real events and real persons, the
publishers are paranoid about getting sued over a copyright or a an alleged
libel. As a result of several Supreme Court decisions and Congressional
inaction, legal copyrights can now arise without anyone going through the
traditional legal process of perfecting a copyright. Thus anyone can come
out of the woodwork, file a suit, and say that they thought of this or wrote it
before, even though it was not copyrighted (in the traditional sense), and even
if it was never public. As a result, I spent several months of arm-wrestling
with my publisher about whether court decisions or proceedings can be
copyrighted (they can't, since the eighteenth century) or whether
sculptures situated in public squares can photographed and be replicated on my
cover. The list goes on. For instance, I had to find an obituary for each of
the twenty some mobsters I mentioned in my narrative, even though they were
written about hundreds of times in newspapers and magazines while they were
still alive.
7. If people can only buy one book
this month, why should it be yours?
I
have read much of the world's great literature and, in comparison, I find that
the average contemporary best seller is so much junk. Thus I'm unable to invest
the time and money in finding the pearl in one of these oysters - though there
are some. I have to wait for a title which has won some serious literary
award such as the Booker Prize, the National Book Award, or the Nobel
Prize before I will read it.* All I can tell you is that I tried (whether I
succeeded or not) to write something which a reader like myself would be glad
to have bought and read.
Oliver Harris, author of the legal thriller “JoJo” (
www.readjojo.com.),
has spent 45 years as a trial lawyer, prosecutor and criminal defense attorney.
He has worked in both Chicago and in Palm Beach County, Florida. His
undergraduate degree is from the University of Chicago and his law degree is
from the Indiana University School of Law.
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Brian Feinblum’s views,
opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his
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at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the
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