ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jay Brandon is an attorney and author. He was born in Texas in 1953. Brandon received a master’s degree in writing from Johns Hopkins University. Brandon has served with the Court of Criminal Appeals, the Baxter County District Attorney’s Office, and the San Antonio Court of Appeals during his legal career. He practices law in San Antonio, Texas.

Brandon’s novel Loose Among the Lambs was a main selection of the Literary Guild. Another novel, Fade the Heat, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel of the Year. Booklist magazine gave his novel, Deadbolt, an Editor’s Choice award. An article he wrote about the judicial races in San Antonio won a Gavel Award from the State Bar Association in 1994.

www.jaybrandon.com

8.19.2018   Jay Brandon on courthouses as great settings for fiction, the company of San Antonio’s literary community, and stretching your writing muscles

Jay Brandon is the award-winning author of many novels and short stories acclaimed both critically and by readers. His first novel, Deadbolt, was awarded Booklist magazine’s Editor’s Choice Award, after a starred review. His first legal thriller, Fade the Heat, was short-listed for the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award for Best Novel, was optioned by Amblin Entertainment, and has been published around the world. Local Rules was a selection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.

In all, Brandon’s novels have been published by more than a dozen foreign publishers with worldwide distribution. He is a practicing attorney and many of his novels are legal thrillers. As an attorney, Brandon has practiced at the Court of Criminal Appeals, which is the highest criminal court in Texas, as well as at the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office and the San Antonio Court of Appeals.

Brandon has recently departed from the legal genre. The Jetty, co-written with Joe Labatt, is a ghost story and romance set at the Texas coast. Milagro Lane, a family saga, mystery, and love story, is a novel of Brandon’s home town of San Antonio. His most recent short story, “A Jury of His Peers,” was chosen by Lee Child for inclusion in The Best American Mystery Stories. Brandon lives in San Antonio, Texas.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Mr. Brandon, How did you begin writing? Is writing something you always knew you wanted to do?

JAY BRANDON: I started writing when I was very young, in elementary school. The only consistent ambition I’ve ever had was to be a writer. I was a constant reader as soon as I learned how, and as I read I tried to guess how the stories would turn out. Sometimes I liked my guesses better than the author’s, which is why I started writing myself. I loved creating stories. Still do.

You attended law school in Houston. You were writing before you decided to go to law school. Why law school and how has the practice of law contributed to your writing?

I went to graduate school in writing, graduated, got an agent, and wrote two suspense novels to try to break into publishing. My agent could never sell either of them. So, in the meantime, looking for an alternative way to make a living, I moved to Houston and after a brief stint in a bookstore started working in a law office. I soon realized everyone in the building was making a lot more money than I was, which was why I decided to go to law school. Late in my second year I changed agents, gave my new agent the two suspense novels; she sold them both to the first publisher she tried, after the first agent had tried for three years without success. So, my first novel was published the year I graduated from law school.

It was still a good decision, though. Practicing law gave me a lot of material. People find the courthouse world mysterious, but within that world it’s just a lot of people who work together, some with more authority than others, but with romances, feuds, rivalries. It’s a great setting for fiction.

Your first novel was Deadbolt, which earned a starred review and an Editor’s Choice Award from Booklist. What can you tell us about the inspiration for that first book and the process of shepherding it through to publication?

Oddly enough, Deadbolt, which I wrote two or three years before deciding to go to law school, features a lawyer as the main character. He and his wife and young daughter are threatened by a former client. That was the inspiration for it, placing ordinary people in danger and seeing how far an average, nonviolent man will go to protect his family.

[Deadbolt] was actually the second suspense novel I wrote. Tripwire, which I wrote first, had a more original premise (woman who witnessed a murder goes into a witness protection program, then someone claiming to be her long-missing son appears), but by the time I wrote Deadbolt I had more experience, so it was better written and Bantam chose to publish it first. I had a very young editor who wanted quite a few changes, so I got a lot of experience in rewriting all at once.

You make your home in San Antonio and participated in the Gemini Ink Writers’ Conference this summer. How does the vibrant literary community in San Antonio contribute to your writing life?

About twenty years ago I started a writers’ group that meets once a month at different people’s homes. It’s just a social group. No reading other people’s manuscripts. More important, it has no rules. No officers, no by-laws, no reading of the minutes from the last meeting. No membership. At the time I was writing full-time and wanted the company. In my experience writers love to talk, and it’s great fun to meet that often. When I was growing up and starting to write, I didn’t know of any writers in San Antonio. Then I went to college and met Bob Flynn, who’s still a friend of mine. You’re right, the literary community in San Antonio has grown tremendously. It no longer feels lonely to be a writer here.

There’s also the San Antonio Book Festival, which gets bigger and better every year. Whether it’s a year when I’m participating or not, I always see friends there. And yes, I did participate in Gemini Ink’s summer writing conference. Nan Cuba is a longtime friend of mine, so I’ve been involved with Gemini for a long time, but it had been a few years. This fall I’m going to be teaching a class for them again, though. Teaching is a good experience. It’s nice to see a student absorb something I’ve learned, and I nearly always learn something myself while explaining how to write fiction. I put it into words and then think, Oh yeah, that is how that works.

You took some time off from legal thrillers to write in other genres and forms. Why did you decide to take that vacation from the law? What can you tell us about your work during this period?

I did get tired of writing legal thrillers for a while, although I had realized while I was doing it I could write about any topic as long as I fit it into that framework. But I always had other things I wanted to write, and I took that opportunity. I love ghost stories and had the idea of setting one at the Texas coast. Ghosts and sunshine don’t seem to mix, so I thought that would be an interesting juxtaposition

I co-wrote the novel The Jetty with my friend Joe Labatt. I also had an idea for a novel about a society so secret no one knows how much they’ve influenced American history. They never take public positions, they always work behind the scenes. Their superpowers are social powers. They know how to influence people in positions of power. This became Shadow Knight’s Mate, which was great fun to write. I put Tom Hanks into it in a very minor mention as a member of this group, which was called The Circle. And since the novel was published Tom Hanks has made a movie called The Circle, about a secret society. Coincidence? In that world there are no coincidences.

I’d also always wanted to write a Christmas story and I finally did, except in the writing it turned instead into a Thanksgiving story, called “Thanksgiving Eve.” I very much enjoyed writing it, but now I’ve got the holiday bug out of my system, at least for now.

Your newest novel, released in May of this year, is Against the Law, which is set in Houston, where you went to law school. It’s been more than ten years since you penned a legal thriller. Why did you choose to return to the genre? Did attending law school in Houston influence the setting, and how has the city changed since your days in law school?

I just happened to get an idea for another legal thriller. A lawyer who’s been disbarred and disgraced returns to the courthouse world to defend his sister, who’s been arrested for murder. When the idea came to me it came with a setting, Houston. I did go to law school there, but I never practiced there. But I have a good friend who’s a Houston lawyer, I have been to the courthouses there multiple times. Setting the story in Houston made writing another legal thriller fresh for me. Also, Edward’s sister Amy is a doctor. and their father is a very prominent diagnostician, so it made sense to me he’d practice in the Houston medical center, which is one of the best in the world. I loved writing Against the Law. Luckily, the publisher has asked for a sequel, which I’ve just started.

Of course, Houston and its legal world has changed a lot since I went to law school there. It’s much bigger, like everything in Houston. They’ve built a Criminal Justice Center, but ironically, as I was revising Against the Law the Justice Center was struck by Hurricane Harvey and rendered almost nonfunctional. So that’s going to be part of the next Edward Hall novel.

What is the most helpful writing advice you can give to other writers just beginning their journeys?

You can tell this from my personal history. Sometimes I teach writing and I tell students, Get another job. Knowing a field provides much richer settings and characters for fiction. The same could be said for knowing a city or a region. Don’t do all your research on the Internet, go to the place. There will always be someone there who wants to tell you their best story from having worked in that location for years, and they’re delighted if you steal it from them.

But the main advice is, if you want to write, write. It’s like any other exercise, the more you do it the better you get at it. I’ve known a lot of people who say they want to write. The main distinction between would-be writers and published writers isn’t talent, it’s persistence. People who write and write and write will eventually get there.

What can you tell us about your next project?

As I’ve mentioned above, I’ve just started another Edward Hall novel. Since the premise of the first one was he’s been disbarred but still managed to try a case, I’ve got to come up with another way around that little problem. (But I have.)

I’ve also written a standalone novel of psychological suspense set in the Austin music world. I love that book, so I’m eagerly awaiting my agent’s reaction to it.

What books are on your nightstand?

Literally on my nightstand is a Travis McGee novel. I often reread one of those in the summer. I’m also reading Travels with My Aunt, which I’d never gotten around to reading. Graham Greene isn’t a particular favorite of mine, although I loved The End of the Affair.

I know some writers don’t read fiction while they’re writing some, but I find it very helpful to be reading great prose in the evening while trying to write my best in the mornings. Makes me want to step up my game. I’m making my way through all the Tana French mystery novels, about the Dublin Murder Squad. Incredibly rich in character. And I recently read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. What a great novel. It shows what a good writer can do with characters even in a confined setting.

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