Woke up today with David Bowie’s catchy song, “Changes,” looping in my head.
Now it could just be a subconscious reaction to my having spent some time yesterday removing the last tentacles of my legal practice from my soul.
In retrospect, I really do not know how I managed to spend four decades swimming with the Great White Sharks in the NY legal profession. The problem with swimming with sharks is that, if there is nothing else to eat, they’ll turn on each other.
Let me take a moment to express my opinion that the law, and the legal bar that sustains it, is a laudable, useful and respectable profession. And its members collectively rise to an Ivory Snow level of purity when it comes to honesty and honorability.
Ivory soap is 99 and 44/100% pure what? – The Straight Dope
But it’s a profession that can steel/steal your heart and kill your soul.
My recent FB postings of an audio recording of one of my readings with the renown Lily Dale medium, Reverend John White, clearly reflects that I had been wanting to leave legal practice as far back as 1990, but as JW explained back then, I hadn’t yet learned what I needed to succeed outside of law. I hadn’t found my mystical side.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1DjDXbsivg/
Dancing As Fast As I Can – The Wise Novelist
Those that know me, know of my martial arts background. Metaphorically, I’m treating the professional experience in the legal world like Kwai Chang Caine’s time in the Shaolin Temple. Over those four decades, I learned some very useful skills and often lethal that I’ve carried with me into my new life as a writer.
Indeed, I’ve snatched the pebble:
I’ve woven a lot of my legal skillset into the character Jimmy Moran in The Claire Saga. But I’ve now provided a no-holds-barred look behind that legal curtain in the next novel of mine to drop in January 2027 – Free R.A.D.I.C.A.L.
Like Caine’s slaying of the Chinese emperor’s son, which propelled him out of the temple forever and into the Wild, Wild West, I could not have written that novel in 52 days if I wasn’t emotionally driven by the tumultuous conclusion of my legal practice.
Happy writers don’t write. Sometimes, you need that angst, that simmering anger, to push you to sit down, alone, before a blank screen, and create.
The funny thing about writing FR, was that the process was cathartic.
And given its primarily NYC setting, it also allowed me to keep a promise to a friend of mine to make him a lead character in my next novel. Promises kept.
Writer’s Angst – The Wise Novelist
That novel should be coming online any day for pre-sales ordering. It will be physically available to the public in early January 2027.
I will of course, let my fine, five readers know exactly when BRW has listed it for pre-sale. It will then show up on Amazon, B&N and the other major literary sites a few days later.
It will be my first release as a pure professional writer, without the hyphenated financial safety net of a legal practice. So, I really need it to fire on all cylinders and hit best-seller status right out of the gate.
In the meantime, this fall provides a wonderful opportunity for a reader to bring themselves up to speed on what established me as an Amazon bestselling writer in the first place – where I found my mystical side:
The Claire Saga (5 book series) Kindle Edition
And here’s an easter egg – Claire the mystical mule makes an uncredited appearance in FR. But you won’t realize that if you have not first read the entire five novels of TCS.
So, that’s it for my Humpday spiel. All change is good – nothing in life goes to waste.
To quote Bruce Lee – “Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is specifically your own”
And with that line, let my fine, five readers exit from this blog into their respective lives with this thought – no matter what lands on your plate, let’s make today a great one.
