I must be asked the above question every other day.

I spent decades as a criminal defense attorney, also defended people facing deportation.

“Why don’t you write about your cases?”  I am constantly asked.  “Why don’t you write about the law since you know it so well?”

Actually I have woven law and lawyers into much of my work.

In  “The Queens Lady”, a dark humorous  tale, the protagonist is a young and miserable bankruptcy lawyer. In “Survivors”, a dystopian science fiction story, the central character is a small town criminal lawyer and the other main characters are a judge, a prosecutor and a bailiff. . In “The Nose Jones”, the first story I ever wrote, the protagonist is a heroin dealer trying to stay one step ahead of the law. In “A Borrower Be”, currently undergoing rehabilitation, two supporting characters are lawyers. In the novel I am working on, which should be completed in the next few few months, the protagonist is a criminal a lawyer from San Francisco who engineers an early retirement to Thailand. A shady American lawyer and a prominent Thai lawyer play important roles.

In all of these works, lawyers are characters and the law plays some role, but they are not governed by those features. Nome could be termed legal thrillers, courtroom dramas, or  legal procedure mysteries. When I retired from the practice of law, I wanted to place some distance between my former profession and my new life as an author.(One reason I came to Bangkok.)  I felt that if I were too close to that former life, it would impair my ability  to write effectively and objectively. Nevertheless, reality always creeps into fiction, so lawyers and law were unavoidable in my work, even if  not the dominant themes. I do promise that within the next twelve months I will be writing and releasing stories drawn from my life as a criminal defense lawyer, and they will be set in New York and the Bay Area. The time is now right for me to tell these tales.