Thanks for the praise - maybe leave out the advice?!

 With my thirteenth novel about to be published, and you know I'll be posting about that soon enough, I still enjoy hearing from readers of my other books. And, 95% of the time, when people email me it's either to say nice things or to ask when the next Hugo Marston book will be out. Or written. 

You'll notice that if 95% of the emails are lovely, that leaves 5% that are... less so. And I'm endlessly fascinated by the psychology of the 5 percenters.

Let me start by reassuring you - I'm no snowflake and I'm well aware that not all books are for all people. I've put down books that others rave about, and so I know not everyone will enjoy all of mine.

But the person who does like them, yet wants me to know their very specific criticisms... what's that about? Let us break down the email I got this morning:

Here it is in full:

I am an avid reader. Non-fiction, fiction and preferably mysteries. I am so pleased to have found your Hugo Marston series. All the elements I like—location specifics, “bloodless” murders, reasonably short chapters, interesting protagonists. Very enjoyable. But, here comes the but. With the thousands of names available to you, why, in The Book Artist for example, have detectives or characters named Marston and Marchand? Why two women named Camille and Claudia? Just to irritate readers who may get confused as to who is who? Please stop it. Everything else is great. Thanks

Right, now let's analyze this, shall we?

I am an avid reader. Non-fiction, fiction and preferably mysteries. I am so pleased to have found your Hugo Marston series. 

Lovely! Wonderful! I'm so pleased too!

All the elements I like—location specifics, “bloodless” murders, reasonably short chapters, interesting protagonists. Very enjoyable. 

Great - specific reasons he likes them, very rewarding!

But, here comes the but. 

😬

With the thousands of names available to you, why, in The Book Artist for example, have detectives or characters named Marston and Marchand? Why two women named Camille and Claudia? Just to irritate readers who may get confused as to who is who? 

Now, I will conceded that the names "Marston" and "Marchand" are quite similar in sound and appearance. I would, however, point out that "Marston" is the name of the protagonist, which means if you're confusing him with other characters after reading seven of the novels he stars in, well, the problem might not be the appearance of a character named "Marchand."

Similarly, if you are confusing Hugo's leading love interest (Claudia), with a black transgender detective (Camille), your bar for confusion might be unduly low.

And look at this line again: Just to irritate readers who may get confused as to who is who? 

What? Obviously, no writer would intentionally irritate their readers. Even me, and I've been known to intentionally irritate pretty much anyone and everyone. So this line is asking me... what? It's not really a serious question at all, is it? It's pure snark. Snark, I might wonder, included... just to irritate me!

So what's next? This line: 

Please stop it.

Stop what? I mean, do you want me to go back in time and change characters' names? Or just not do the subjectively annoying thing (to you, not one of my other thousands, nay trillions, of readers has complained about) in the future? Maybe I can email you and run my name choices past you...?

Look, I know I'm the one being snarky now but to presume to tell an author to stop doing something that only you in the entire world don't like is... well, presumptuous at best. One might even venture to use the word "rude."

And so we end with:

Everything else is great. Thanks

First, please know that he did not end with a "." I feel like I deserve a "." at the end of an email, just saying.

So here's what I'm wondering - how much of this would he say to my face at a book event? I would be chill if he did but I can imagine others cringing. I might politely dress him down, very politely, but I suspect he'd not say this to me directly. Maybe I'm wrong.

And here's the takeaway: this email will change nothing about my books, and it makes me want to not meet a human being who actually likes them. What did he achieve by taking the time to write to me? Irritation on my part? Indeed. A sense of disappointment that a nice start to an email was a disguise for his complaints? Definitely. It certainly won't result in a reply because I don't want to encourage this type of approach to an author. Anything else?

Well, this blog post I suppose. 💅

Thoughts?

**Edited to add: he's now sent me the exact same email three times in 24 hours.

Think you could never be arrested? Oh, so wrong.

One thing that has really surprised me as a defense lawyer is the number of "normal" people who get arrested.

Let me back up a moment - yes, there are many people in the criminal justice system who are dropped into it (often by their own actions) and never get out. Their criminal histories are pages long, and any damage to their reputations or job opportunities has long since happened.

In fact, in some ways these cases are (I imagine) easier to handle, because another misdemeanor plea doesn't change the trajectory of that person's life much. 

At Cofer & Connelly, where I work, we see very few of these folks indeed because we are lucky enough to be in a position where we don't need to take cases appointed to us by the courts (a whole other issue: how terrible the pay is for lawyers taking appointed cases).

So what does that mean? It means the vast majority of our clients have never been in trouble before.

I recently took a call from a prospective client who'd been arrested for a misdemeanor crime. He freely admitted to me that, before his arrest, he'd not cared much for the movement to improve jails and prisons. "You do bad," he said, "then you go to a bad place."

And then it happened to him. He spent two nights in the Travis County jail, where he said the guards treated the inmates like animals, where there was feces on the floor and walls, and where he saw literal rats running around. He was horrified, traumatized even, by that experience.

For his case, his main concern was that he never go back there, no matter the outcome, he could not go back. Fortunately, his alleged offense was such that I was able to give him a large degree of comfort that he would remain in the free.

The thing is, it doesn't take much to land a formerly law-abiding citizen behind bars. I had this conversation with my teenage son recently, because I wanted him to understand that actual innocence was no barrier to jail.

"But if I do nothing wrong, how can that be?" he insisted.

I sighed, because he's right. That's how it should be. And as a prosecutor the truth mattered more to me than almost anything. But as a defense lawyer, the truth doesn't enter the equation until long after you've been handcuff, stuffed into a police car, stripped naked at the jail, and sat in a cold, lonely (if you're lucky) cell in jail scrubs, fed undercooked fake chicken and baloney sandwiches.

"If someone tells a cop you hit them, or touched them without consent," I said. "You will go to jail."

"Even if I didn't?"

"Yes."

And that's the truth, as I'm seeing it. The fact is, and people will not like to hear this, but people call the police too often because they can't handle the situation they are in. They can't control it. And the way they reestablish control is to have the person they are in conflict with, they are angry with, arrested.

I realize that as a felony prosecutor I didn't get to witness this phenomenon, because it does mostly happen with allegations of assault, which is a misdemeanor. Or, in one case we got dismissed for a client, an allegation that she stole a dog. What she'd done was rescue a dog abandoned and abused by her ex, and when he saw how happy they were together he filed a theft complaint.

Yes, it's that easy.

So what's my point here? Maybe it's just to bring awareness where I can, to let people know that the criminal justice system is closer than they imagine. And, relatedly, to consider showing more empathy to those caught up in it. 

Because not all of them are guilty. 

Not by a long shot.

Jail v. Prison - writers, producers, and anyone else who uses words, please take note.

Here's a short post to address an issue (pet peeve?!) that I feel like I've discussed before. Somehow, shockingly, the entire world hasn't read and absorbed. 

I constantly see the terms "jail" and "prison" used interchangeably. In books, TV shows, and in general conversation.

But they are different.

You don't want to be in jail, but you definitely don't want to be in prison.

JAIL : this is where you go for short periods of time, either after being arrested or as punishment for a misdemeanor crime. Jails are usually run by the county, operated by the sheriff's department. 

There are exceptions, sure, some people spend years in jail waiting for trial or other case resolution, but generally speaking jail is for short-term incarceration.

PRISON : this is where you go after you've been convicted of a crime. These are state-run facilities and generally less pleasant places than your county jail.

Try to avoid prison, if you can.

Why I changed hats: prosecutor to defense lawyer

I could never remember which side supposedly had the black hat or the white hat. 

I suspect, whichever side you are on you purport to be white-hatted. I'm good with that, except it means I swapped a white hat for a... white hat?!

Enough about hats.

Just over a year ago, two mates took me out for dinner. Rick Cofer and Geoffrey Puryear, former prosecutors with me. Good people who I knew and who I liked, and who asked me to join their criminal defense firm and have a little fun trying cases and helping people.

Could I say no to all that?!

This is Rick, he puts the Cofer in Cofer & Connelly. Some have said he looks like a giant man-baby, or an inflated infant, or a super-sized toddler, or a... anyway, I'd never say those things, I just report stuff.

And this is Geoffrey - we tried a case together many years ago and stacked the jury with women, on the theory that with his looks and my accent we couldn't lose. We didn't lose.

On a hot day you could fry an egg on that chin, after he shaved it, of course. Magnificent. 

Here I am now:

Anyway, the why of it.

As you may or may not know about me, I have always been somewhat defense-oriented. In those moments when ADAs are high-fiving each other after getting a 70-year prison sentence I used to cringe. I'm sure I've written before about how I hated sending people to prison, almost regardless of what they did, because.... well, it's prison. I got satisfaction for getting a verdict yes, but not so much from a prison sentence.

Anyway, over martinis and a delicious steak these lads made me an attractive offer. At the time I was in the juvenile division at the DA's office, my second stint there and was feeling like I might be there a while. And guess what never happens in juvie? Jury trials. It felt like an endless loop of unchallenging hearings, low-level crime (mostly, although I did have five... yes FIVE murder cases on my plate). 

Bottom line: I needed a change. A challenge. And these boys were offering me one.

I started May 1, 2022, and now I handle cases in Travis County and a fair few in Williamson County, everything from low-level drugs cases to murder. We take a team approach at C&C, especially on the bigger cases, and I think we have five or six clients charged with homicide, and several more with manslaughter. 

One of those cases is quite famous, actually, but I can't talk about it here... 

I plan to write a whole post about how jurisdictions, and prosecutors, are different depending on where they are. It's kind of crazy, to be honest, what's considered an easy dismissal one place is prosecuted to the max somewhere else. Anyway, more on that later.

For now, I'll tell you that I'm working harder than ever before, getting to know some very interesting people, and loving the folks I work with.

I've even become an occasional guest legal analyst on CourtTV!

And hey, if you need a lawyer from the best criminal defense firm in Austin (facts, see below), let me know. We got you.

Making a comeback!

I've been thinking about resurrecting the blog for a while now, I used to enjoy sharing my thoughts and experiences as a prosecutor and getting feedback from folks. So I'm back.

For those who don't know me outside of the blog, well, I'm now a criminal defense attorney - a partner with the fabulous law firm of Cofer & Connelly. I'll write a post about why I made the change in a week or two, but I wanted this first one to be a brief catch-up.

So, what else is new with me? After all it's been almost seven years since I last posted here!

• Big job change, obvs.

• I'm seven years older, which means a new author photo was needed. Obvs.

• I now have 12 published novels!
• most excitingly, I have a new series and the first one is:

• The second in the series is out in August but pre-orderable now:

• I have a son who's now stronger and faster than me. We've gone from this:

• To this:

• I have a writing companion:

 

OK, those are the highlights. I don't think anything else important happened in the world between 2016 and now, or did I miss something?!

Didn't think so.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts, to include:

• Why I Made the Change
• speaks for itself
• Who My Most Famous Client Is, And Why I Can't Tell You
• Google it, maybe?
• When It's Just A Slap
• about how differing jurisdictions... differ
• When Good People Do Bad Things
• speaks for itself

... and many many more to come!

The secrets of THE PARIS LIBRARIAN

This post was first published on the fantastic Jungle Red Writers blog, yesterday August 24, 2016.

I wanted to post it here, too, since I think it's a good look behind the creation of THE PARIS LIBRARIAN, my latest novel in the Hugo Marston series.

Enjoy!

There are two stories that lie between the pages of THE PARIS LIBRARIAN. One makes me cry, the other makes me laugh.

Shall we start with the tears? Good, so let me present a nice photo of a gentleman called Michael Harmuth. He’s with his daughter Sarah, who happens to be a book seller in Wisconsin, and her daughter, Scout. 

Well, early last year Sarah wrote to me and said that her dad, Michael, was a fan of the Hugo series. But she said Michael had cancer and was unlikely to live until the next book in the series was released (THE RELUCTANT MATADOR) in June.

Was there any way I could get an advanced copy to him? she wondered.

Now, my own father was taken by the pestilence that is cancer so, obviously, my answer was heck yes. I asked my publisher to send me an ARC, and I wrote a wee note in it, signed it, and sent it to Michael.

That started a wee conversation between the two of us, and he kept me informed as to his progress with the book. He said he was reading it slowly, so as not to get to the end too fast. As you might imagine, that email had me reaching for the tissues.

Turns out Michael enjoyed the book, which I’d been hoping for desperately. And I didn’t want the last page to be the end of Michael’s association with Hugo so I wrote to him and asked, “How would you like to be a character in the next book?”

He loved the idea and, even though I’ve put the names of other people I know in books, he’s the only one I’ve let choose his role. Good guy, bad, guy, red herring, eye-witness… whatever he so desired.

And now, of course, I must remain tight-lipped for fear of giving anything away. Suffice to say, even though Michael is no longer with us, he lives on in Hugo’s world, and in Paris no less!

Now for the laugh, which comes in the form of a “truth is stranger than fiction” guffaw. As you might be able to tell from the title, Hugo’s latest adventure takes place in and around the American Library in Paris.

 Now, back in 2015, once I formulate the idea for the story, I email the good people there and ask rather boldly: “Hello, do you mind if I kill someone in your library?”

Not even hours later I receive a resounding “Yes!!” and an invitation to tour the place. Now, I’m not one to turn down a visit to Paris, so my wife and I hop on a plane to spend a week in our favorite city. And this is where the story gets somewhat amusing.

When we show up to the library, librarians Audrey and Abigail are there to show us around. They start with the front, the circulation area, then lead us through the stacks. At the back of the building, they both stop and when I look past them I see a set of stairs leading down, roped off.

“What’s down there?” I ask.

“Err, the basement. We store books down there.”

“Can I see?”

Nervous glances between them, and a hesitant response. “Well, I guess that’d be OK.”

“Oh, is there a problem?”

“Umm, no real problem. It’s just... a little creepy down there.”

Which, as you know, is precisely what a mystery author wants to hear.

So we head down and it is creepy, slightly dim and musty. I tell them about the book in progress, and explain that I’ll have a character who dies early in a locked room. Audrey says, “Oh, that’s funny, we have a small room down here. We call it the atelier, you can see it.”

Sure enough, there’s the tiny little room for my poor, unsuspecting victim to die in. 

We poke around downstairs a little more and I disappear down a short hallway near the foot of the stairs. To my right is a small boiler room, but to my left is a door. In the wall. It blends in and you could walk right by it.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“Oh.” That hesitation again. “It’s our secret door.”

Are you kidding me?? I thought that, didn’t say it. Not like that, anyway. Instead I ask mildly, “Oh, do tell.”

Turns out it’s their door into the American University, which takes up the majority of that block. A door they’re not allowed to use because, well, it’s kind of their secret.

“Do you happen to have a key?” I ask.

They side-eye each other. “We do but we’re not allowed to....”

My raised eyebrow stops them, and one of the women heads upstairs for the key.

Now, you know what I’m thinking. It’s a possible escape avenue for my killer, right? But that requires lots of people to have access to the key, and what are the odds of that given that it’s to a secret door? But I ask anyway.

“Only the library staff and volunteers can access the key,” they assure me.

“And how many...?”

“Maybe ten staff and, in the course of a year,” Abigail thinks for a second, “maybe a hundred volunteers.”

I grin like a chimpanzee. “Perfect.”

Later, as I wrapped the book up, it struck me that these coincidences might appear too good to be true, too contrived. So I actually put an author’s note in the front of the book pointing out that the library does have a secret door!

And this made me wonder if my fellow writers ever came across situations like this, when their research came up with something almost too perfect... or if readers ever stumbled over something in a novel, not believing it at first but then finding out it was true?

Oh, and you’re probably wondering if I went through the secret door that afternoon. I will tell you that had I done so and admitted it in writing, my librarian friends might have got in trouble.

So here I am, admitting nothing in writing...

Now out: THE PARIS LIBRARIAN (the book and the trailer!)

Just a short note to welcome into the my latest novel, the seventh in the Hugo Marston series: The Paris Librarian.

And also the book trailer, for more immediate gratification:

Enjoy!