What was your inspiration for writing Lifer?

The idea came to me in a flash, late one night. I had been struggling with another novel, set in New York City in the early ‘80s when I lived there after college. That book was quickly coming apart amidships and I was very frustrated. And that’s when the idea for Lifer came to me out of the blue. Before I went to bed that night, I quickly wrote down a few notes on the back cover of a New Yorker magazine I was reading. 

All I had was: The narrator would be a lawyer in prison whose nickname was Counselor, and he would confide in a kind, elderly Hispanic priest. Years before, I had seen a gentleman fitting this description entering a prison, but I had no idea who he was or why he was there. I think this story was lodged in my subconscious, clamoring to get out. After all, I had been a criminal defense lawyer for two decades, dealing with some of the most stressful situations imaginable. Of course this is what I should be writing about! 

It sounds like the simplest thing, but sometimes the artistic impulse is anything but. Anyway, I slept on it, woke up early the next morning and wrote the first chapter. The arc of the novel suddenly materialized: the two cousins who are as close as brothers, the murder, the love story. Everything just fell into place as I began to write that first day. It was very strange because I’d always considered myself the kind of writer who needs a detailed outline. Yet, I just trusted my instincts and allowed the narrative to happen organically, as the musicians say. It goes to show that, for me, the creative process is not a mathematical formula to be followed but rather a puzzle to be solved.

Still, it took me two years of hard, steady work to write Lifer, filled with many emotional highs and lows. It ended up being like an exorcism of my previous life as a lawyer. And that’s probably why, subconsciously, I had avoided such a project. I knew it would take a lot out of me. In order to make the protagonist’s plight realistic and true-to-life, I would have to confront all of those demons from my past, the sad memories of the unspeakably tragic cases that I handled. I had to willingly revisit the pain of loss, and that’s never easy to do.

What led you to pursue law?

Love and poverty. 

After college I chose to lead a very bohemian existence, living first in New York and then New Orleans, trying to write the Great American Novel. I was immature, idealistic, and brimming with self-confidence. (Thankfully, that manuscript has been destroyed.) Somehow I believed that I could produce an important novel that would capture the zeitgeist—granted, I was in my early twenties and had just recently learned the word zeitgeist. It was not my time as a fiction writer. 

But, of course, no book ever gets written unless the author truly thinks he can do it. When I met with an agent in New York, who tactfully pointed out that my novel was not very good, I knew that my days of living hand-to-mouth, trying to be an artist, were over. During the course of writing that book, I had fallen in love with May and we were ready to get married. To me that meant responsibility, a career, financial security, none of which I could offer as an unpublished author. I would also have to get a haircut and a suit that fit. So I decided to go to law school, which had been a dream of mine when I was fifteen years old, a career path that was summarily sidelined by my obsession with becoming a novelist. 

During all those years as an attorney, I desperately wanted to write another book, but there was simply no time because of all the long hours I had to put in with trial preparation. People’s lives were in my hands. There was no thought that I might work too hard; it could never be enough. It is impossible to be over-prepared for a murder trial. Still, buried deep inside me, there remained the dim pilot light of an aspiring author. With that hope in mind, I always kept a journal of memorable dialogue that I heard in local jails, courtrooms, judge’s chambers, and state prisons. Many of these notes would eventually prove useful during the writing of Lifer.

What would you say, if anything, makes South Carolina special–both as a place to live/work and a setting for your novel?

When you’re born and raised in the same place for eighteen years, it will always be home. The fictional town of Warrington in my novel is only loosely based on my hometown of Rock Hill. It was easy to write about South Carolina because I know the legal system there, whereas I never practiced law in the state of North Carolina. (The two are different regarding certain aspects of criminal law.) In retirement, I moved to Asheville for the same reasons that most people do: the beautiful mountains and rivers, the vibrant music and arts scene, the farm-to-table ethos, fantastic restaurants, progressive attitude. But I didn't feel I knew Asheville well enough yet to write about it in the same way I could South Carolina, after having lived there for so long. 

It was fairly easy to write the love story in Charleston because I lived there one summer while clerking for a law firm. The natural beauty of the city is something I wanted to try to capture. (Many have done it far better than me—Pat Conroy and Josephine Humphreys come immediately to mind). It was important to emphasize this attractive locale in order to juxtapose it with the hellscape of a state prison: Imagine how painful it would be for the narrator to think about being in Charleston with the woman he loves while he’s currently caged in Congaree Correctional Institution. I doubt the novel would be successful without such stark contrasts. Sense of place is obviously important in a book like this.

How much of the novel and its characters were inspired by actual prisons and people you knew during your life as a lawyer?

The story is completely fictional. It is not a roman à clef. I never handled a case like this and I don’t know anyone who has. All of the fictitious characters are what I call “composites.” They may have one or more characteristics of a person, but they are not based on any one actual person. For example, the two main characters, Jack and Gil, each share certain characteristics with their creator, but I am fundamentally different from Jack Merritt and I am certainly not like his self-involved and reckless cousin Gil Hampton, although I am occasionally self-involved and reckless. 

An enjoyable part of writing the novel was coming up with a character like Panic, who is one of the inmates Jack befriends. I didn’t realize it at the time I was creating him, but Panic is actually a distillation of multiple wisecracking clients I’ve represented over the years. No one would recognize themselves as Panic because he’s not any one person, and yet he represents a “type” that could stand in for hundreds of people in my life. He is one of those characters who materialized out of the ether, the only instance where I felt like the book was actually “writing itself.” I’ve read interviews with writers who talk about this happening, but I was too cynical to believe it, until it happened to me. Panic became the perfect vessel to deliver many of the memorable lines of dialogue that I’d been saving in my journal for so long. Getting close to a character like that allowed me to fully explore his humanity, as well as that of the other inmates who interact with him. 

The prison setting is totally fictional. As of this writing, there are no prisons in South Carolina that fit this description. However, some of the specific descriptions are based on actual incarcerative facilities that I have visited. For example, when Jack describes walking down the corridor on the way back to his cell block, noting the surveillance video and the sound of the locking mechanism on the doors and the eerie, claustrophobic feeling he gets as the hallway narrows, that is all based on my experience entering the jail in York, South Carolina, which I normally visited multiple times a week. I wanted to give the reader an impressionistic sense of what this experience is like. It helps when it’s based on actual experience. But just because a painter visits the seaside, it doesn’t mean he can accurately capture the immense power of an ocean on canvas. Same logic here: In order to get this important scene just right, I needed to be very specific about every single thing that contributed to an overwhelming sense of dread.

What’s your writing process?

I’m committed to writing several hours a day, unless I’m on vacation or there are extenuating circumstances (out-of-town commitments, etc.). I don’t set any daily goals regarding word count (the Hemingway method). For me, that would be a recipe for misery. It’s actually possible to get a lot of work done and not have many words to show for it. By thinking carefully about what you don’t want to do with a scene, you are avoiding several potential false starts. At the end of the day, you may not have written very much, but you’ve saved yourself a lot of valuable time in the long run. The important thing is showing up for work every day, prepared to do what needs to be done, just like postmen and doctors (to steal a line from Larkin).

Who are your favorite writers and literary inspirations?

There are so many. This could take a while! First, I must give credit to some marvelous teachers (from middle school and high school) who inspired a love of reading— Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Gulledge, and Mrs. Fern all possessed a special passion for literature that was infectious. I vividly remember seventh grade when Mrs. Moore did a deep dive into Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities and how incredibly moved I was by the sacrifice at the end. It was like I had time-traveled back to the French Revolution. I was hooked on fiction. And I can still see the yellow chalk dust on Mrs. Moore’s hands as she enthusiastically waved them in the air.. Now that was teaching.

When I was growing up, schools emphasized the “Big 3”—Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway. Much of their writing has stayed with me, and I’ve gone through different stages in my life where I preferred one to the other. As a Southerner, I also read Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, James Agee, Robert Penn Warren, William Styron, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, Walker Percy, James Dickey (both poetry and prose), Pat Conroy, and Barry Hannah. My older sister was always an avid reader, and when she went back to college I would raid her room for books. Consequently, at a young age, I was exposed to the likes of Sartre, Albert Camus, Joan Didion, and Renata Adler. 

The two novels that have completely entered my soul (and inspired me the most) are The Stranger by Camus and The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. Both are first-person with very distinct voices and deep philosophical underpinnings. But what I enjoy most is the feeling of total immersion in the texts—my mind and sensibility seem to meld with those of the protagonists. I am there with these narrators, living their story with them, in a way that is more transporting than anything else I’ve ever encountered. I fully expect them to address me directly, breaking through the fourth wall. This phenomenon can only be explained by one thing: great writing. Such is the effect of sublime art. To this day, if I pick up either book and simply glance at it, then I am compelled to read until the end, unable to stop myself. It’s like a drug. Finally, let me just say that The Stranger’s unique power is only enhanced when viewed through the lens of a trial attorney. And The Moviegoer gets better with age as well; I’m forever finding new subtleties with each subsequent reading.

My taste in authors is diverse, although I seem to prefer realists most of the time. I love Isaac Babel and Chekhov, Nabokov and Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth and Roberto Bolano; I revere Ron Rash and Thomas McGuane (a master of dialogue); and I’m crazy about Rachel Cusk, Elizabeth Kostova, Jennifer Egan, and Nicole Krauss. My favorite modern essayists/critics are David Foster Wallace, James Wood, and Martin Amis (the wittiest ever). My journalistic preferences are Joseph Mitchell and Janet Malcolm (impeccable prose style). As for poetry, I find myself returning over and over to Rilke (optimism), Philip Larkin (pessimism), James Dickey, Robert Morgan, Seamus Heany, Louise Glück, and Billy Collins. How’s that for eclectic? And of course, no writer should ever let Bill Shakespeare get too dusty on the bookshelf—we performed portions of his plays in high school; that kind of genius continues to echo throughout a lifetime.

Besides reading and writing, what else do you like to devote your time to? Are you inspired by other art or artists?

My wife and I hike regularly. Physical activity stimulates the brain and many writers swear by it before sitting down at the desk.

Like the protagonist in the book, I am a big fan of music and painting. My musical tastes are essentially the same as the narrator’s. One of the marvelous things about living in Asheville is the many live music venues. Unfortunately, some were destroyed by Hurricane Helene. But the outpouring of community support for them has been phenomenal, and I’m confident they will return and be better than ever. Prior to the storm, it was not uncommon for me to check out an Irish punk band one night, see a wunderkind jazz guitarist the next, and then catch a Southern jam band at a different venue after that. 

My friend and editor, Tom Rash, is a music aficionado. I’d say we agree on artists ninety percent of the time, but our discussions about the other ten percent are often very spirited and hilarious. We are forever discussing desert island albums, songs, groups, etc. Thankfully, we agree that Exile on Main Street is the greatest rock album of all time—just barely; there’s a lot of competition out there. I still maintain that one song should have been left off of Exile, but Tom considers such talk heresy. Of course, as a first-rate editor, he doesn’t think twice about cutting my stuff all the time.

My wife and several of her friends are painters, so I am constantly immersed in that world and try to learn as much as I can. In the novel, I made the character of Emily (Jack’s wife) a painter, although I made her taste more like mine than my wife’s. I just wanted to mix things up a little bit, like an abstract expressionist might. I’ve become such an art fanatic over the years that, at this point, my “dream life” would be living in Paris, frequenting museums, and then having drinks at a cafe by the Seine where we discuss, say, the subject of light in painting.

Knowledge of music and painting comes in handy for a novelist (as does, say, motorcycle maintenance and how to play tennis well). It allows you to draw certain analogies that can quickly cut to the heart of the matter. Like when my narrator says that a prisoner’s “blue eyes have the piercing intensity of a Van Gogh self-portrait,” an art lover will know that look immediately. And for those who don’t know the reference, it’s not a problem, they can google it. And then maybe they’ll fall down the rabbit hole and end up loving Van Gogh as much as I do.

What, if anything, did you discover about yourself by writing this book?

That I’m more resilient than I thought. That I wouldn’t let serious obstacles like self-doubt or writer’s block deter me from finishing the project.

And this: I really, truly do love the sound of words, in the same way that my musician friends love the sound of guitar strings. I learned that I am happy sitting alone in a room, without any hope of reward, repeating phrases over and over and over in my head until I think they’re perfect, or at least until I think they can't be improved upon. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

What do you hope readers take away from reading Lifer?

That you should never generalize about inmates, for any number of circumstances can cause a person to commit uncharacteristic, even unthinkable, acts. Someone’s life can go terribly wrong in an instant. We are, all of us, just a couple of bad decisions away from ruining our lives and the lives of those we love.

On another level, I want my book to serve as a warning about the very real threat posed by white supremacists. This is your wake-up call.