Rebecca Forster's Blog, page 10

Lawyers Are So Appealing: Part Deux.

February is the month of candy, flowers and cards in colored envelopes. It's the month we publicly declare our love.

So, it seemed appropriate to shout out once again to those lawyers who inspire me as I write and who people my real life by virtue of the fact I am married to a man whose calling is the law. Yep, it's time to add to my list of why I find lawyers so appealing. 

1)    You love to be loved. If you are reading this you may have been one of the 2,000 who checked out this blog a few weeks ago to read the first edition of Why Lawyers are so Appealing (July). That is so sweet.  Kind of like Sally Field in her famous 'You Really Like Me' speech at the Academy Awards. Yes, yes we do!

2)    You are cute as buttons. Fluttering my lashes particularly at the cowboy lawyers who know how to pair a ten-gallon hat with black tie and look marvelous. (This is not gender exclusive, by the way.)

3)    You appreciate staff. That is tantamount to admitting that you know that they know at least as much as you do and that they are capable of pulling your rears out of any fire you may spark. Who said layers aren't honest?

4)    You giveth. I know who you are, you lawyers who balance incredible workloads and still manage to sit on boards, volunteer, raise money for good causes, and offer your services pro bono.

5)    You taketh away. A fine lawyer takes away the worry of a client bewildered to find themselves needing one in the first place. I am thinking especially of a dear friend who handles divorces with great compassion. I know there are a whole lot of you out there who fit the bill, and that ability to soothe, calm and give hope is downright miraculous.

6)    You speak with a golden tongue. You are so confident, commanding, and consumed with your arguments it is awesome. The word flow, the pacing, the seriousness of your monologues, negotiations and cross examinations all but make me faint with awe.  Court watching one day, I was thoroughly swayed by the opening arguments of the prosecutor. "Guilty!" I was sure.  The defense attorney was equally eloquent. "Innocent!" I wanted to cry. You do not want me on your jury, but I will always be an admiring spectator.

7) You are generous. I have yet to be turned away when I ask for your help. Even if  I am writing about an evil lawyer. Sometimes you want me to name the character in a book after you. Just not the evil lawyer. How cute is that?

8)  You are married to, or partner with, beautiful, intelligent people. Why this seems to be true of the profession as a whole is a mystery. I must conclude that your significant others simply find you as lovable as I do.

9)    Your offices are marvelous. Government offices: in need of repair, boxes stacked in corners, dartboards, tiny basketball hoops – incredible personality. Private offices: slick, silent, sensational – fabulous taste.  It's like having to choose between two smart bad boys (or girls) with style.

10) You like each other. Okay, you may fight in the courtroom, you may write briefs that put my literary efforts to shame for all their drama, you may practice a bit of legal deceit, some slight of hand, some fanciful interpretation of the English language, some strategic trickery in the pursuit of justice and in your effort to best your opponent, but in the end you put out your hand, give your colleague a smile and a pat on the back, and your client the best that you have.

Happy Valentine's day to all you lawyers whom I love.

Mal, Mertiz, My Kid & Me

My youngest son is a Peace Corps volunteer in Albania.  If you don't know where Albania is, no worries.  I didn't either. Once he was assigned, though, our family became experts on this Eastern European country half a world away. He's been gone a year now and still has a year and a half left to serve. Our Skype talks, IMs and emails are filled with interesting information. These conversations go something like this:

Me: Are you warm?

Eric: It's below freezing. There's a hole in the wall of my apartment where the chimney for a heating stove is supposed to go, but birds are living there.  The landlord doesn't want to disturb the birds.

Me: He'd rather you freeze to death?

Eric: I put a piece of cardboard over the hole and turn on my cooking stove to keep warm. I moved the couch to the kitchen, and I sleep on it. With my clothes on.  And my hat. It's only a little below freezing.

Me: But are you warm?

At that point the conversation veers away from the topic of how a California boy will survive a brutal Albanian winter.  He's 24, this is his adventure, and he doesn't need mom to remind him to put on his galoshes. He also doesn't want to waste precious time discussing the temperature. When the intermittent electricity and Internet connection allow our conversations are peppered with pictures of the scorpions he finds in his boots and bed, the gunfire he hears that no one pays attention to, and the cows he chases down the street simply because they are there and he is young and hungry for all experiences. I hear about the 'grandmothers' in his town who have adopted him, the students who want to learn English, and the kindness of people who share what they have.

Then there are those personal conversations between my playwright son and me. We cross the miles with talk of family, futures, writing, disappointments, happy times and revelations. Sometimes words fail us, and that is not unusual for those who make their living writing them.  The enormity of a thought is hard to express in pixels or through jerky images on a screen; it needs hands and facial expressions and the intensity of real proximity to make a thought understood.  Often words escape us because what we are thinking seems insignificant, too small to waste precious time on. English, for all its energy, can be limiting; Albanian, for all its convolution is not. 

Which brings me to the new words I learned: mal andMal translates to both nostalgia and mountain. That seemed so right to me. We all have a mountain of nostalgia that has pushed through the ground of our lives and built upon itself.  There are crevices where regret is caught and great bold faces slick with the memories of life-changing events; there are crags and fissures of reminiscences covered with clouds of wistfulness and longing. One day that mountain of memories can be comforting and the next overwhelming – it all depends on the light in which we view it and the place on which we stand at any given moment. 

Mertiz is the Albanian word for upset, lonely and bored. That, too, seems just right.  If we are at odds-and-ends, uncomfortable in our own skin with boredom or loneliness, are we not upset and anxious? One word ties turmoil together.  Mertiz is not to be confused with anger or frustration; it is much more subtle than that and infinitely more dramatic.  

I am grateful to know that this feeling I have been harboring for the last year is simply mertiz, a loneliness for my far-away son, a restlessness that he is not here to talk to me about our shared passion for writing, a twinge of disappointment that he is not sitting at my table eating food I made for him. But I see that mertiz leads to mal for the boy who once needed me to keep him warm and now simply needs me to talk to him in a new vocabulary that really just says we miss one another.

REMEMBERING XMAS 'BOOTY'

I've been thinking about Christmas gifts. Not what I want. Not even what my family wants. I haven't had an altruistic thought about what I can give back to the world. I've been remembering my favorite Christmas gift ever.

I was eleven years old when I opened a package from Santa.  Inside were the most beautiful white boots. In 1963 they were called go-go boots.  Just above the ankle, they were plain and had a short heel. I wouldn't be caught dead in them today, but those boots were the first thing I remember wanting so much  I could taste it. At that age, I was too old for toys and too young to know that I was asking for something outrageous.   I can still feel the tissue paper between my fingers,  still remember my first glimpse of those small, white boots, and I still remember thinking that wishes can come true.

So, belated though it is, I would like to thank Santa for the following:

·         Thank you for recognizing that I was growing up.

·         Thank you for paying attention to my wish.

·         Thank you for being impractical.

·         Thank you for sacrificing to get those boots

·         Thank you for writing Santa on the tag.

·         Thank you for not laughing as I strutted around  all day wearing my boots under my homemade bathrobe, with my hand-me-down clothes and in my pajamas.

·         Thank you for including white shoe polish.

Thank you for the memory, Santa. There has not been a gift before or since to match it. Now that I am much older - and hopefully a little wiser - I have another wish: I wish  that everyone will get their 'boots' this holiday season. 

A REALLY AND TRULY THANKFUL THANKSGIVING

  I tried to write this post ten times over. I think I was trying too hard to be insightful or witty. It never sound right,  so I decided to say it plainly:  This year I am truly thankful to be alive.

In October I had a brush with cancer. Within ten days I was diagnosed, operated on twice and a month later was pronounced 'cured'.  Basically, I had cancer for a day compared to others who struggle against the disease for years. My father-in-law was one of those brave souls, and I will never forget how valiant he was.

Now I am well just in time for Thanksgiving, and I want to say thank you to:

·      My doctors who were straightforward and caring

·      My dad, a doctor himself, who I'm sure reached down from heaven to give 
        me the nudge that made me pay attention to my symptoms

·      The time I now have because they caught it early

·      My husband who didn't miss an appointment

·      My kids who watched daytime TV with me while I was recovering even though they had better things to do
       
·      My mom who only let me see her worry for an instant 
before she took me out for a Margarita 

  ·      My local sister who came with us for a Margarita

·      My far away brothers and sisters who called with good wishes and worry and jokes

·      My friends who sent a tsunami of affection my way. 
These included:

Ø  Old friends

Ø  Acquaintances who were more friends than I knew

Ø  Email friends who couldn't do anything, but offered help anyway

Ø  Everyone who put me in their prayer chains 
(Baptists, Catholics, Buddhists and Born Agains)

Ø  My mother-in-law who was town crier to our extensive family

Ø  My sisters-in-law who made sure their brother didn't go off the deep end

Ø  My brother –in-law who made his famous Croatian chicken soup
(he's sure that's what cured me)

Ø  Everyone who sent flowers, a card or a good wish


Ø  Our neighbors

Ø  The dry cleaning lady

There must be a more eloquent way to say how thankful I am to be celebrating this holiday, but I don't have the words. I am just so grateful to so many for so much.  So, thank you and I promise to pay your goodness forward.

SISTER CARMELITA, THE FEAR OF GOD & ME

The day I stood in the choir loft surrounded by my fourth grade peers, I had no idea that I was about to learn a lesson in suspense, terror, fear, retribution and resolution that would lead me to a career as a thriller author. 

The day was hot, air-conditioning was unheard of, and we wore our itchy, ugly, brown wool Catholic school uniforms year 'round to save our parents money.  I was a very good girl.  I never drew attention to myself, folded my hands with fingers pointing  heavenward when I prayed,  picked up trash on the playground and helped pass out papers in class. But that day, I made a blunder that put me in Sister Carmelita's crosshairs.  As she raised her arms and positioned her baton in anticipation of another rousing chorus of a hymn I have long forgotten, I rolled my eyes. Yep, I rolled them to the back of my little ten-year-old head in frustration and exhaustion.

Sister Carmelita cut her own my way. I realize now that she had mastered the art of eye cutting because she couldn't move her head given her the box-like wimple.  Everyone stopped breathing. No one knew what I had done, only that I had done something very, very bad.

"Miss Forster." Sister Carmelita's voice was modulated appropriately for God's house. "Wait after choir."

My stomach lurched. I felt light headed. I was doomed.

Sister Carmelita is long gone. During her time on earth she faced changes in her church and her life, but I doubt she ever knew how that day changed me. So, if you're listening, Sister, I want you to know that, 30 years later, that moment sealed my fate. I spend my days writing thrillers, trying to recapture the exquiste sense of suspense I experienced that day. Here is what you taught me:

1)      Less is More: Your understated notice of me, the glitter in your eye, the sound of your voice was more intriguing, more compelling, more enthralling than screaming, railing or ranting.

2)      Timing is Everything : All 29 of my classmates knew I was in trouble. I knew I was in trouble. I even knew why I was in trouble (disrespecting you, God, choir practice, country, family and all living creatures with a roll of my eyes), yet you didn't nip things in the bud with a mere instantaneous admonition.  My comeuppance was exquisitely timed. You threw in an extra hymn to extend practice, studiously ignored me, meticulously folded your sheet music as my classmates silently went down the stairs.  You waited until the door of the church closed, clicked and locked us together in that big, shadowy church before you turned.

3)      The Devil's in the Details : You were taller than me (back then almost everyone was taller than me), but that wasn't why I was afraid. It was your whole package, the details of your awesome being that were so formidable. Covered head to toe in black, your face framed by your wimple (which, by the way, looked like the vice used during the Spanish Inquisition), your hands buried beneath the scapular that fell in a perfect column to the tips of your shoes, made for quite a package. But there was more: The scent of nun-perfume (I think it was soap, but it smelled like nun-perfume to me), the clack of those huge rosary beads attached to your wide belt, the squish of your rubber soled shoes. I saw all this, I heard all this, I smelled all this and each sense was heightened because of the hush surrounding us. 

I remember your methodical advance into my personal space. I remember you lowering your eyes as I raised mine. The suspense was heart-stopping, the anticipation of my penance almost unbearable. Quite frankly, you were terrifying.
 
But here's the funny thing: I don't remember how it ended. Did you scold me? Did you show mercy and forgivness? I only remember being terrified. Like the brain of the seven year old Stephen King swears gives him inspiration for his horror books, you, Sister Carmelita, inspire every sentence I write in every thriller novel I pen.  For that, I can't thank you enough.
 
I also want you to know, I have never rolled my eyes at anything since that day in the choir loft.

STORIES MY MOTHER TOLD ME

    My parents made a pact to stand on every continent in the world. When my dad passed away, my mother went to the Antarctic for both of them. That's when I figured there was a lot I didn't know about mom. 
    When she returned with a bright orange jacket that she got 'for free' (don't count the cost of the cruise), she had lots of stories to tell. Yet, when the excitement of the trip wore off, we both had the sense that we were still standing on a pitching deck with no way to sail to calm seas. A big piece of the puzzle – my dad – was missing. 
    "Write your memoir," I said. 
    "My life wasn't interesting," she answered. 
    But the idea must have taken hold. Not long after this conversation, she called. She was done with her memoir. 
    "Impressive," I mused.
     It takes me months to write one novel and she finished hers in a week. When I saw her manuscript, I understood why.  It was five pages long and she was eighty-five years old. There had to be more.
    So began a year of weekend sleep-overs as we poured over photographs for inspiration. She had twenty beautifully documented photo albums, a box filled with pictures taken when cameras were still new fangled things. 
    There was mom in waist-length braids and Mary Jane shoes standing in the German village she called home.
    She was a teenager in the U.S. while war raged in Europe, threatening the grandmother she had lived with, cousins and friends. 
    Here was mom, posing in a swimsuit she bought with the dollar she found on the street. 
    Mom in her twenty-five dollar bridal gown perched in the back of a hay wagon beside my father, a skinny, wide-eyed farm boy who would become a doctor. 
    Mom with one child. Two. Three. Five. Six of us all together. Dark haired and big eyed, we were her clones dressed in beautiful, homemade clothes. I remember going to sleep to the sound of her sewing machine.
    And there were words!  I bribed my mother with promises of Taco Bell feasts if she gave me details. Funny, what came to her mind.
     To keep body and soul together when my father was in med school, he was a professional mourner and bussed tables for a wealthy fraternity. My mom worked in a medical lab where the unchecked radiation caused her to lose her first baby. They ate lab rabbits that had given their all for pregnancy tests.  They were in love and happy and didn't know they were poor. But St. Louis was cold, she remembered, and they couldn't afford winter coats. Still, she insisted, they weren't poor. 
     She typed, I edited; I typed, she talked. My youngest brother almost died when he was 10. She didn't cry for a long while; not until she knew he would live.  The captain of the ship that took her back to Germany was kind.  She dreamed of becoming a missionary doctor. In 1954, she had two toddlers (me and my brother) and another baby on the way when she and dad drove to Fairbanks, Alaska where he would serve his residency at the pleasure of the U.S. Air Force. Her favorite outfit was a suit with a white collar. She loved her long hair rolled at her neck in the forties.  In the fifties she made a black dress with rhinestone straps and her hair was bobbed. In the sixties she made palazzo pants and sported a short bouffant.  She looked like a movie star in her homemade clothes. I wanted to grow up to be as glamorous as she was. She still thought she wasn't interesting.    
    Mom wrote the forward to her memoir herself. It began:
 
    A great sense of loneliness fills the house as twilight approaches. In the silence, I can almost hear the voices of my grown children as they recall their childhood years, the laughter of grandchildren and the quiet conversations of friends who have gathered here in years past, echoing through the empty rooms.  

    You see, she really had no need of my help as a writer.
    We had seven copies printed. On the cover was a beautiful picture of a sunset. She called her book In The Twilight of My Life and would not be swayed to change it. Mom thought it perfect and not the least depressing. It was, she laughed, the truth. It was her laugh that made it right. She gave my brothers and sisters a copy for Christmas. My older brother had tears in his eyes. Everyone exclaimed: "I never knew that".
    Now I have a book more treasured than any I have written. I learned a lot about my mom and I realized why I create fictional women of courage and conviction, strength and curiosity, intelligence and, most of all, spirit. It's because, all this time, I've been writing about my mother. 

HECK YEAH! E-publishing is E-xhausting & E-xhilerating

For 26 years I was a crazed, angst-filled, traditionally published author. Deadlines loomed. Editors lay in wait to knock me down a peg.  Agents doled out favor based on the size of advances.  If my books were all over the bookstore I worried; if they weren't I worried. Still, I had no idea what tired and cranky really was until now. Which brings me to the topic of the day: E-publishing, E-xhileration and 24/7 E-xhaustion.
      I decided to digitally publish my first book because I had hit a bump in the publishing road. New York was tightening up, I had parted ways with my agent and the project I was working on wasn't getting a warm welcome in the Big Apple (more on that later). So, I published one of my 23 books out of curiosity and a niggling sense that if I didn't, I would be missing out on something. Little did I know, I was dipping my toe into a roiling sea and would soon be drowning in challenges and opportunities of indie publishing.
            After eighteen months, four of my books are still on the Kindle legal thriller bestseller list (they were on the Barnes & Noble Nook top seller list for four months). Before Her Eyes, a novel I believed in but one which had received conflicting and cool rejections from New York has been graced with multiple five star reviews. My creative gut, it seemed, was working just fine. Readers were willing to take a chance on the book I loved, but without digital publishing it never would have seen the light of day.*
    It took a year and a half of non-stop work to properly post 18 of my 23 books. And, as happens in any new venture, the more I learned the more overwhelming the task of taming E-publishing seemed.
    Amazon is not alone in offering indie publishing opportunities. There is Pubit! (indie authors outlet on Barnes & Noble) and e-publishers like Smashwords.com.  There is the Apple bookstore and don't forget Google books. There are backlist purveyors and indie author sites that allow click through to your sales sites. An author must have a manuscript and a cover (to the correct format), reversion letters if you are posting your backlist, an understanding of DRM, a sense of what price the market will bear. Add to that, the fact that you and you alone are responsible for all marketing worldwide, that readers are extraordinarily vocal and you must still write.  Suddenly you are working 24/7, first to get noticed and then to grow your fan base.
    So, to keep you authors from going bonkers, here are a few tips; for readers, we have a couple of favors to ask. Together, we can make E-publishing an
 E-xquisite, E-xceptional E-xperience. 

AUTHOR TIPS:.           Pace yourself.  Publish on one site at a time until it is done correctly.
·         Spend more time editing than writing. 
·         Follow Smashwords.com formatting guidelines.
·         Have fun designing covers.
·         Become a part of discussion groups, not just an advertiser.
·         Choose the most efficient marketing opportunities.
·         Make friends with bloggers who want to interview authors.
·         Return the favor on your own blog.
·         If you market more than you write or talk to your family, stop.
·         Check your sales figures once a week not every hour.
·         If you make a top seller list, let people know.
·         If you get a great review let people know.
·         If you get a bad review don't argue or lose sleep.
·         Twitter and Facebook but don't spam.
·         Don't be discouraged. Readers will find you.

READERS, THANKS FOR THE HELP Let us know about typos privately. We'll love you for being kind and probably send you another book for free. If you like our work, we appreciate reviews. If you don't like our work, we'll take your constructive criticism to heart. Know that we appreciate you even when we're E-xhuasted     Now, everybody get some rest. Tomorrow authors will write and publish, and readers will give us all a chance to entertain them. We'll intersect at some point, make new friends, discuss books, writing and reading. Heck yeah, it is going to be a busy day.

*If any editor would like to take a look at Before Her Eyes, I'm happy to gift them an E-copy or send the manuscript! Feel free to check out the 5 star Amazon reviews!

HECK YEAH! Tips From Teacher's Pet

author Richard Bard I've been an instructor with the UCLA Writers Program* for a really long time and, for the most part, it has been an incredible experience. I share lessons-learned during a 26 year publishing career and my students give me back a sense of renewed excitement about my craft. That's the way it's supposed to work anyway.  I'll admit, there were a few moments that gave me pause. Like the time one guy stood up and announced he couldn't learn anything from someone who started out writing romances. Before he walked out of class, I hope he heard me suggest that editors don't really care for submissions printed on purple paper and bound.  I wanted to tell him that 237,000 words might be a tad long for commercial fiction, but then what did I know?  There was also the gorgeous young thing who thought my sense of humor lacked – well – humor.  Telling me not to joke around was kind of like asking me to talk without making any noise.  But those students were the exceptions; the rule is students who are dedicated, creative and wonderful.
    Then a student walks through the door who has an idea, a guy who has been writing and, most importantly is prepared to learn. In my case, that student was Richard Bard. His first book, Brainrush, (I think I can take credit for the first line in chapter 3) was an Authonomy finalist. He received a call from a producer before he got a book agent and now Brainrush is climbing the Amazon Kindle lists. To say he is talented and tenacious is an understatement, but thinking about his accomplishment brings me to the question of the day: how did writing classes figure into his professional equation? 
    Thankfully, Richard isn't shy and answered that question with a wonderful email. I won't bore you with the details about how grateful he was for my help and how he acknowledged that he would probably never have gotten as far as he had without the intensive 16 hours of instruction I gave him (that's a joke), but I will share his insights on how to get the most out of writing classes.
    1.      Know your genre. Write what you read – it's in your blood.**
    2.      Read one or two books on writing before you attend a class in order 
             to   quickly understand the language of writing.***
    3.      Research your instructor – she'll notice and it's a lot more subtle than an 
            apple on her desk.****
    4.      Know what you want to get out of the class before you show up.
    5.      Ask a lot of questions the first day. If it's not a good fit – move on.
    6.      When asked to critique in class, don't criticize.
    7.      Make friends with both the instructor***** and your classmates. You're all in
             the same boat looking for a publisher or needing to create buzz for your book. 
            If everyone rows in the same direction, you'll get there quicker.
    I doubt I'll be seeing Richard in class again but I can't wait to see his books on the bestseller list!

*Get Your Novel Noticed: Preparing and Polishing Your Pitch  is offered November 5/6, https://www.uclaextension.edu/UnexDocuments/Pdf/Catalog_PDFs/Writers_Program.pdf
**He's right. Thrillers were my reading passion and became my most successful books.  Keeping Counsel was a USA Today Bestseller and the three Witness series books have been on the Kindle top 100 for 2 years.
***Richard recommends Sol Stein, Stein on Writing
****I like apples, too.
****Richard now writes at my haunt, Coffee Cartel. Talk about taking your work home       
     with you!

Don't miss Richard's fabulous 3-books-for-one offer:   http://richardbard.com/promo/

HECK YEAH! Tips from Teacher's Pet

author Richard Bard I've been an instructor with the UCLA Writers Program* for a really long time and, for the most part, it has been an incredible experience. I share lessons-learned during a 26 year publishing career and my students give me back a sense of renewed excitement about my craft. That's the way it's supposed to work anyway.  I'll admit, there were a few moments that gave me pause. Like the time one guy stood up and announced he couldn't learn anything from someone who started out writing romances. Before he walked out of class, I hope he heard me suggest that editors don't really care for submissions printed on purple paper and bound.  I wanted to tell him that 237,000 words might be a tad long for commercial fiction. IThese were only suggestions, but then what did I know?  There was also the gorgeous young thing who thought my sense of humor lacked – well – humor.  Telling me not to joke around was kind of like asking me to talk without making any noise.  But those students were the exceptions; the rule is students who are dedicated, creative and wonderful.
    Then a student walks through the door who has an idea, has been writing and, most importantly is prepared. In my case, that student was Richard Bard. His first book, Brainrush, (I think I can take credit for the first line in chapter 3) was an Authonomy finalist. He received a call from a producer before he got a book agent and now Brainrush is climbing the Amazon Kindle lists. To say he is talented and tenacious is an understatement, but thinking about his accomplishment brings me to the question of the day: how did writing classes figure into his professional equation? 
    Thankfully, Richard isn't shy and answered that question with a wonderful email. I won't bore you with the details about how grateful he was for my help and how he acknowledged that he would probably never have gotten as far as he had without the intensive 16 hours of instruction I gave him (that's a joke), but I will share his insights on how to get the most out of writing classes.
    1.      Know your genre. Write what you read – it's in your blood.**
    2.      Read one or two books on writing before you attend a class in order 
             to   quickly understand the language of writing.***
    3.      Research your instructor – she'll notice and it's a lot more subtle than an 
            apple on her desk.****
    4.      Know what you want to get out of the class before you show up.
    5.      Ask a lot of questions the first day. If it's not a good fit – move on.
    6.      When asked to critique in class, don't criticize.
    7.      Make friends with both the instructor***** and your classmates. You're all in
             the same boat looking for a publisher or needing to create buzz for your book. 
            If everyone rows in the same direction, you'll get there quicker.
    I doubt I'll be seeing Richard in class again but I can't wait to see his books on the bestseller list!

*Get Your Novel Noticed: Preparing and Polishing Your Pitch  is offered November 5/6, https://www.uclaextension.edu/UnexDocuments/Pdf/Catalog_PDFs/Writers_Program.pdf
**He's right. Thrillers were my reading passion and became my most successful books.  Keeping Counsel was a USA Today Bestseller and the three Witness series books have been on the Kindle top 100 for 2 years.
***Richard recommends Sol Stein, Stein on Writing
****I like apples, too.
****Richard now writes at my haunt, Coffee Cartel. Talk about taking your work home       
     with you!

Don't miss Richard's fabulous 3-books-for-one offer:  http://richardbard.com/promo/

HECK YEAH! LAWYERS ARE SO APPEALING!

If you are a lawyer, I love you. Really, I do. In my book* you are exciting, intelligent, mysterious, courageous, resourceful, thoughtful, witty, well-spoken and you are heroic.  

I am married to a judge but he was once a lawyer and that is how my fascination with you all began. Yet, years of trial watching, staff chatting and transcript reading has created a bizarre obsessive/compulsive need to figure you all out.  Since I haven't been able to, I can at least explain why you are irresistibly inspiring to this novelist and those who love to read about you.

1)      You speak legalese. It is like French: exotic, irresistible, intimidating.  Throw in a little Latin – a quid pro quo or prima facia - and you can melt a woman's resolve and strike fear into the hearts of mortal men.
2)      You are confident. Is there a super- secret-double-indemnity-swear-on-your-mother's-grave-and-never-tell class that teaches you how to argue any and every point of view with grace and conviction?**
3)      You  are authoritative. Bad guys pay you to tell them what to do. That makes you a little edgy by association and who doesn't like a bad boy – or girl?
4)      You are altruistic, defending people (even bad people) because you believe everyone deserves a defense.
5)      You are altruistic, prosecuting people (even good people) because you believe in justice.**
6)      You are eye-candy. From the couture clad divorce-attorney-to-the stars, to the public defender sporting a plaid jacket and pony tail and the plaintiff's lawyer in that Italian suit you turn courthouse hallways into runway.
7)      You are funny. Sometimes you even mean to be funny. Either way, a funny attorney is charming and a witty one is irresistable.
8)      You are excellent secret keepers, which is not to be confused with being trustworthy. Though I believe you are trustworthy, that is often a point of debate.
9)      You are curious and tenacious.***
10)    You are heroes and not just in the literary sense. In real life you (and your expertise) are often the only things standing between a person keeping or losing something important to them: their children, their fortune, their reputation, their freedom and, yes, their life.****

*Actually, in all my books since I write legal thrillers.
**This also means that your significant other can never win an argument. Experience tells me the only recourse a normal person has when arguing with a lawyer is to cry and proclaim: "You are right, you are always right." Works for me.
***Characteristics that make you the perfect inspiration for novels and films.
****You have my permission to show this list to anyone who questions your lovability, capability or worth. You may also use the aforementioned in advertising, closing arguments, opening statements and speed dating.