There are so many books, TV shows, and movies about lawyers, and I find most of them unwatchable. (My Cousin Vinny is a notable exception – I *love* that movie.) They seem to be written by people who have no idea what the reality is for lawyers.

Lori B. Duff – 14 November 2024

The Back Flap

A gripping courtroom drama that explores the struggle between morality vs. professional obligation, Devil’s Defense will appeal to fans of female-lead courtroom dramas like The Good Wife.

Jessica Fischer wants nothing more than to build her law practice in small-town Ashton, Georgia. She’s well on her way when the local town hero, football coach Frank “Tripp” Wishingham III, hires her to represent him in a paternity suit. Coach is everything Jessica despises—arrogant, sexist, entitled—but it’s her job to make him look good in public. This is made doubly difficult when her burgeoning relationship with a local reporter gets in the way of telling the truth.

Are things as black and white as Jessica thinks? And can she find a way to succeed without compromising her own personal values—or her personal life?

About the book

What is the book about?

The book is about what it’s really like to be a lawyer—how more often than not you disagree with your client but, in public, you have to champion what they want to say.  How you have to argue with your friends for a living, which makes having friends tough.  And how people are complicated—not one thing or another.  There are a lot of shades of gray.  There’s also a good bit of work/life balance.  Not the time aspect, but emotional energy.  When there’s a conflict between your professional obligations and your personal ones, how does that shake out?

When did you start writing the book?

A hundred years ago.  Seriously, 2018, which I mainly know because it is set in 2018 and I would have set it in the present.  It didn’t occur to me it would take this long to launch it into the world.

How long did it take you to write it?

I finished the first draft in 2020.  COVID kind of sped things along.

Where did you get the idea from?

I was watching the confirmation hearings of a politician who shall not be named.  He was not performing well, and was clearly off-script.  I got to thinking about how no doubt he’d been prepped and prepped well for this line of questioning, and I pictured the people who had prepped him watching what I was watching and wondering why they bothered to help.  Which led to me thinking, “Well, isn’t that the life of a lawyer.”

There are so many books, TV shows, and movies about lawyers, and I find most of them unwatchable.  (My Cousin Vinny is a notable exception – I *love* that movie.)  They seem to be written by people who have no idea what the reality is for lawyers.  I’ve practiced law for over thirty years now, and it’s hard to watch your job done wrong recreationally. We’re not all rich and impossibly beautiful, and most of our clients are guilty.  We have dozens of cases at a time, and they take months if not years to resolve.  We also tend to have a sense of humor, something lacking in most lawyer-media.  So I’d been kicking around the idea of writing a more realistic lawyer book for a while.  Then, when I saw the aforemotioned (told you I was a lawyer!) confirmation hearings, the character of Coach just popped into my head and I got to work.

Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?

A lot of the scenes where Jessica and Diane bicker were hard to write.  I wanted them both to be arguably right, and that’s a hard line to toe.

What came easily?

Coach’s dialogue.  He is so much fun to write.  So much fun that I couldn’t let him go when I started writing the sequel (The Devil’s Children, set to be released in October 2025) and he has a part in the action there.  Getting into his head and understanding what made him tick was really enjoyable, and once I got it, I could hear his voice in my head and all I had to do was transcribe what I heard.

Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?

Well, I’ve already talked about the inspiration for Coach. They’re all fictitious, more or less, but for the most part, I have a real-life counterpart in my head. For example, my real paralegal/keeper/friend is named Diane, and she is tiny and super southern, though other than that they don’t much resemble each other.   Usually, what happens is I start with a basic image in my head of someone I know, but as soon as they start acting in the story, they become themselves.

I do NOT in any way shape or form base anyone on my clients.  I take attorney-client privilege very seriously (as does Jessica – who is not me, by the way) and I don’t want anyone I represent to think that they may end up in a book.

We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?

Holy moly it is so important.  I go to writers’ conferences and I hear other writers say, “I don’t have time to read” and I’m like, “Then how can you call yourself a serious writer?”  It’s such an important part of learning the craft of writing and storytelling.

As far as influences are concerned, I’m not sure how to answer that.  I read anything.  I’m not genre-specific, I just like anything that is written well.  I read a lot, too.  I average about 10 books a month, and that doesn’t count the ones I write or how many times I have to re-read the books I’ve written to make changes.

That said, I lot of the writers I admire haven’t really influenced the way I write.  My books are never going to win Pulitzers or National Book Awards.  That said, I really do like Emily Henry’s voice, how she makes things funny without being flip, and how her characters are intelligent.  When I was pitching my book, I pitched it as “A John Grisham book written by Emily Henry.”  Now that I’m working on the sequels, I’m re-reading the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris.  That series was my favorite mind candy for a long time, and she did a good job of making each book stand on its own while still carrying the over-arching narrative forward.  So now I’m reading them for craft to see how she did it—what do you have to repeat, what can you sum up, what can you leave out.  That sort of thing.

Do you have a target reader?

Anyone willing to read my book.  Ha ha.  Seriously, I think lawyers will like it, since it accurately depicts what we do all day and they/we will relate to the frustrations Jessica feels.  Or anyone who is fascinated by the law – the CourtTV watching audience.  I also think that it will appeal to women who are looking for a protagonist who isn’t driven by lust and is intelligent.

About Writing

Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?

I still have a day job, but it is important for me to have this creative outlet so I don’t go crazy.  No matter how hairy things get with life and my day job, I am very strict about the first productive thirty minutes of every day (yes, I set a timer, and yes, weekends, too) being writing time.  It’s helpful that I type about a hundred words a minute, so in a half hour if things are cranking I can get about 3,000 words on the page.  Of course, things don’t crank every day.

Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences?

Not even a little.  I am 100% a pantser.  I usually start with characters and some vague idea about how I want them to end up, but how they get there is as much a mystery to me as anyone else.

Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?

I’ve learned that if I edit as I write I will never finish a draft, because I can stare at the screen and debate with myself over a single word or a comma for hours.  I take my inspiration there from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird – the “shitty first draft” is an important stage of the writing process.  The first draft is supposed to be word vomit.

Did you hire a professional editor?

I did.  I hired Rachel Stout with New York Book Editors.  She was fantastic.  I learned so much about my own writing and about the writing process from her.  I read so many indie books where it’s obvious that a professional editor was not hired, and I didn’t want to fall in that trap.  If I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it right.  It seems arrogant to me to say that I’m such a fantastic writer and able to look objectively at my own work that it can’t be improved by having a professional get in it and help shape it.  Besides, even if I hadn’t, She Writes Press would have made me.  I’m working on the sequel now, and I have an editor who works with She Writes, Jodi Fodor, currently tearing it apart.  It’s hard—you basically bleed on the page and then you have this relative stranger tear apart every sentence.  But if you can get your ego out of it (and if you hire the right editor), the end product is always so much better.

Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?

Oh, absolutely not.  I’m so drawn to music – I’m a musician at heart.  In an alternate life I went to a conservatory and became a classical flutist.  My son is an oboe player getting his masters in performance, and my daughter is in a punk band that tours around the northeastern US.  Music is so important to me and my family.  I need absolute silence when I write, otherwise the music grabs all of my brain’s attention.  As for what gets my fingers tapping, I listen to music much in the way that I read books.  My taste is very eclectic.  I’ll listen to anything I think is written and performed well.  For what it’s worth, I generally listen to Sirius/XM channel 25—classic rewind—because that was the soundtrack to my teenage years and there’s something comforting about music that familiar.  Plus I know all the lyrics so I can scream-sing while I drive my Yellow Camaro.

About Publishing

Did you submit your work to Agents?

I did.  Absolutely unsuccessfully.  I am terrible at selling myself and at boiling a 350 page book down to two paragraphs.  If you want to know how to write a query letter, do NOT ask me.

What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?

I got so frustrated with the querying process.  I also talked to a number of writers who had Big Five book deals, and it didn’t seem like it was all it was cracked up to be.  One friend actually cried she hated her cover so much and the publisher wouldn’t budge on it.  I’m a bit of a control freak, and the idea of giving control over something I’d worked so hard on for years was scary to me.

What I liked (and still like) about She Writes is how collaborative it is.  I get a say in everything, which is the advantage of self-publishing, while still getting a lot of the advantages of traditional publishing, like distribution.  There seems to be this idea that cream rises to the top naturally, but I don’t think that’s true.  If you’re not a good marketer (like I’m not) and good at self-promotion (like I’m not) then you’re never going to get traction.  A lot of doors are closed to you without either mass sales or traditional distribution.

Did you get your book cover professionally done or did you do it yourself?

Nobody wants to see my graphic arts skills.  I’m not at all good at visual creation.  The talented team at She Writes did my cover.

Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?

Like I said, I’m terrible at marketing.  I think it’s important to recognize what your skill set is, but also to recognize what your skill set isn’t.  That way you can delegate the things you suck at.  So my marketing plan is/was to hire Jennifer Vance from Books Forward and let her take the lead.

Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?

This is such an unregulated industry.  Which is part of its charm – you can do what you want because there are no restrictions.  But at the same time, anyone can just declare themselves a professional.  I have friends who have had their books “edited” and yet there were dozens of glaring typos.  Even though I’m a crap graphic designer, I know what’s good when I see it, and amateurish covers with pixelated images and/or type that doesn’t blend into the images is a hallmark of DIY.  Yet people will let you pay them to create a DIY-ish image for you.  Beta readers are great and very helpful, but they’re not the same as a trained editor who is well versed in the Chicago Manual of Style and syntax and the structure of novels, etc.  Yet a lot of beta readers call themselves editors.

I believe that a thing worth doing is a thing worth doing right.  If you’re not willing to go all in, you shouldn’t expect people to take you seriously.

About You

Where did you grow up?

When I was little, my dad got transferred all over the place, so for the first nine years I lived in three different states.  When I was nine, I moved back to my parents’ hometown, Long Beach, NY, which is where all my grandparents lived and what I consider my hometown.

Where do you live now?

I live in Loganville, Georgia, which is about an hour outside of Atlanta, and not too terribly far from Athens, Georgia, the home of UGA.

What would you like readers to know about you?

Reviews are my love language.  Please leave them on your review site of choice!

What are you working on now?

I’m working on the sequel to Devil’s Defense, which is currently called The Devil’s Children.  I’m in the process of editing it.  It picks up where Devil’s Defense left off and has many of the same characters.  In this one, Jessica represents the victim of domestic violence.  Of course, nothing is as black and white as it seems.  She also tries to bridge the gap in her relationship with her father, and there’s the generalized issues in her personal life….trying hard not to give spoilers!

End of Interview:

Get your copy of Devil’s Defense from Amazon US.