L.M. Weeks interview

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

A little introduction:

Like Torn, the main character in Bottled Lightning, I was born in Alaska and for many years have practiced law in Tokyo, representing technology companies in connection with their fundraising, intellectual property matters, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, and related disputes. For more than 10 years, I was the managing partner of the Tokyo office of the global law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.

I speak, read, and write fluent Japanese, was an International Rotary Club scholar to Japan during high school, and graduated from International Christian University, a Japanese liberal arts college. I attended Fordham University School of Law in New York City, where I practiced law for almost sixteen years before relocating to Orrick’s Tokyo office in 2004. During my formative years in Japan, I earned a black belt in Aikido.

Also, like Torn, I love motorcycles and my adult son is biracial and bilingual and lives in Tokyo. In addition to riding motorcycles and writing, my other passion is saltwater fly fishing.

When did your love of books begin?

My mom read to me from the time I was two or three and I had a grade school friend who was a complete bookworm. They inspired me to read more. Eventually, I entered creative writing contests in third and fourth grade, winning two of them. The best thing about winning was getting out of school to go to a writing workshop!

When did you start to have the wish to become an author?

I had been thinking of writing a novel for many years, and several years ago I decided that if I didn’t write it now, I was never going to do it. So I started setting time and word goals for myself to get it done. One of the tricks I learned along the way was to tell myself that, no matter how tired or uninspired I felt, I could focus all of my attention on writing for at least 10 minutes. Setting that small goal (just 10 minutes!) got me over the initial inertia and inevitably resulted in writing for at least an hour and often several hours.

How have you found the process for becoming an author?

Long. (Laughing) Five and a half years from beginning to publication. And painful, particularly the editing part of it…but very rewarding. I felt such a sense of satisfaction and relief when I finished the first manuscript. And then the real work began when I started working with a developmental editor. As a best-selling author told me, the first draft is for the author and the editing and rewriting are for the readers. Writing is about rewriting. The best writers aren’t afraid to work with editors and do the rewriting necessary to make their work product as good as it can be.

There were many challenges when writing a first novel and every novel after that, including the basics of what tense to write in, whether to write in first or third person, and learning about and avoiding the perceived horrors of head hopping.

But perhaps the biggest challenge for me was unlearning everything I, an attorney by trade, had learned to become good at legal writing. The goals of good legal writing are just the opposite of writing good fiction. In legal writing, you want to give the conclusions upfront. A good legal memorandum contains the conclusion or conclusions at the top, followed by a recitation of the facts, and then the analysis applying the law to the facts. Many clients read only the conclusion without reading the rest of the memo.

Fiction is just the reverse; you want to hide the ball until the end to keep the reader turning the page. Having said that, in fiction, you do need something up front—a hook in the first sentence, paragraph, and/or chapter—to grab the reader and keep them from putting the book down.

Another difference is that in legal writing you want to be crystal clear when describing the relevant facts, the law, and how the law applies to the facts. You don’t want to be vague or leave anything to the client’s imagination. Again, writing fiction is just the opposite. You want to incite the reader’s imagination to conjure up the world you’re writing about. You want to give the reader just enough information for them to understand what is relevant to the story and fill in the blank spaces, somewhat automatically or at least effortlessly, with their imaginations.

A third difference is that in legal writing you don’t want to trigger an emotional response. “Just the facts, Ma’am,” like in the old Dragnet shows. (The exception to this is when advocating. For example, when writing a legal brief the lawyer is using to convince a judge to rule in his or her client’s favor.) When writing fiction, however, you want to be triggering emotional responses all the way through the book! If you’re not, what’s the point! It’s fiction. The reader typically isn’t reading your novel to obtain valuable information. They’re reading it to relax and escape to a far away and perhaps dangerous and/or confusing and thought-provoking place to experience all of the emotions actually being there would cause but without the danger, hard work, sweat, noise, smelliness, dirtiness, ennui, etc. of actually living it.

What would you say to those wanting to become an author?

1. Don’t give up your day job unless you can afford to live without it AND without any book royalties.

2. Write, work with editors, rewrite, repeat.

3. Each element of your story should be caused by some other element. In Techniques of the Selling Writer, Dwight Swain recommends writing chapters with the following structure: Goal; Conflict; Disaster. Followed by a chapter with: Reaction; Dilemma; Decision. Swain’s idea is that you should alternate back and forth between these two structures. By doing so you can maintain the tension readers crave, thereby causing them to keep turning the page.

Tell us about your book/books:

Top global technology lawyer Tornait “Torn” Sagara knows he shouldn’t get involved with his beautiful client, Saya Brooks, whose revolutionary lightning-on-demand invention will solve climate change and render all other energy sources obsolete. But their shared connection as hafu (half Japanese, half Caucasian American) draws them irresistibly together.

Saya’s technology could save the world, but what’s good for the planet is bad news for those who profit from the status quo. Now, someone wants to stop Saya from commercializing her invention and will go to any lengths—even murder—to do so. When Torn takes Saya for a spin on his motorcycle, they are viciously attacked. That death-defying battle on a crowded Tokyo expressway is only the start of Torn’s wild ride.

As the violence escalates, Torn discovers that everything he values—his reputation, his family, and even his life—is on the line. Racing from the boardrooms of Tokyo to the wilds of Russia in a desperate search for the truth, Torn is forced to face his own flaws and discover what really matters most.

What do you love about the writing/reading community?

Other authors have been extremely supportive. They have been very generous with their advice and time. Several read the penultimate draft and provided both a blurb and comments that helped make the book even better despite my thinking that it couldn’t possibly be improved upon after so much editing. (But I was wrong. There’s always room for improvement.)

Because others have been so kind and helpful, I feel the need to pay it back by assisting other writers and authors get their works out into the world.

If you could say anything to your readers what would it be?

An Amazon reviewer wrote, “When ordinary people are thrust into extraordinary circumstances some rise to heroism.” I would add that, as humans, we are all flawed. Despite that, even flawed people can do great things.

Also, please don’t hesitate to leave a review or ask questions on Amazon, Goodreads, BookBub, social media, etc. I will be more than happy to respond to questions!

Where can people connect with you?

More information about Bottled Lightning and me can be found below:

Amazon: https://geni.us/Bottled_Lightning

Book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=977MBwR59pg 

Author website: https://lmweeks.com

Social media:

http://www.twitter.com/@lmarkweeks

https://www.facebook.com/L-Mark-Weeks-101721425807377

http://www.instagram.com/l_mark_weeks

https://www.linkedin.com/in/l-mark-weeks-0334697/

https://www.youtube.com/c/LMarkWeeks

https://www.tiktok.com/@l_mark_weeks?lang=en