Springfield Journal-Register | Conversation with David Ellis | Chicago Sun-Times | Fort Myers News-Press Springfield Journal-Register, February 18, 2007Books and briefs / Lawyer squeezes in time for his other love - writing by DANA HEUPEL, STATE CAPITOL BUREAU Ellis, 39, became chief counsel for Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan earlier this month. He expects long hours as the legislative session heats up. But he also expects to carve out at least an hour a day to work on his sixth novel. "I can't wait to write," Ellis says. "When I get to that time, I get very excited." But as a teenager, sports and girls took precedence, he says. He graduated from Downers Grove North High School and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in finance. He finished law school at Northwestern in 1993 and went to work for a Chicago firm. Then, in 1996, while on a warm-weather vacation, he was watching a sunset and "thinking about my life." Writing, he says, "was something I always enjoyed doing, this creative outlet that I haven't been pursuing for all these years, and I couldn't think of a reason why." Writing and rewriting for an hour a day over the next three years resulted in his first novel. He pitched the manuscript to about 70 literary agents over 11/2 years before he found one to represent it. But the first publisher to read it - the Penguin Putnam house in New York - bought it. The story is told in the voice of a man accused in the disappearance of his lover's husband. As the story unfolds and twists, Ellis' courtroom scenes suspend the reader between divergent beliefs about the man's account of the events. "I rewrote every single passage in my first book. From the first draft to what you read in the published book, there's not a single line that's the same. I kept changing it. I was teaching myself how to write." Since then, "I've become more efficient," he says. "I've learned how to keep it lean on the first draft." Not only did the Edgar award gain his novels a worldwide audience, "it got me noticed within my publishing house," which works with best-selling writers such as Tom Clancy, Patricia Cornwell and Amy Tan. "Now, suddenly, I'm not such a small fish anymore," he says. Three other books followed: "Life Sentence" in 2003, "Jury of One" in 2004 and "In the Company of Liars" in 2005. All were published by Penguin Putnam. In the latter novel, Ellis took the unusual approach of beginning with the end of the story and then tracing backward through time to reveal the original motive for the character's actions. Ellis' fifth novel, "Eye of the Beholder," will be published in hardback in July. He is working on another book, which he says is "in its infancy." Although none of his books have quite made the best-seller lists, each has sold more copies than the previous one, he says. "I'm not in that category yet," he says, "but I'd love to be some day." Ellis lists Scott Turow, the best-selling legal-fiction author - who also is a practicing Illinois attorney - as one of his favorite novelists. "I look up to him as much as any writer," Ellis says. Turow also admires Ellis' work, both as an attorney and an author. "I know Dave well in both capacities," Turow wrote in an e-mail. "I worked on a case with him when he was starting out as a lawyer - he is exceptionally able - and I have read a couple of his books, which are amazingly compelling (and) well-wrought. "His agent is my former publisher, Larry Kirshbaum, who feels that the sky's the limit for Dave's literary career, and I share the same opinion." Although not as well-known as Turow's, Ellis' works are distributed by major booksellers, such as Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Borders and Amazon.com; they also are sold around the world in various languages. Ellis says he and friends have seen his books for sale in Italy and Southeast Asia. Finding one of them in a far-away place still thrills him, he says. "It never gets old - it gives me chills to think about it." Ellis also is a sought-after speaker by numerous reading groups and book fairs. "We selected his first book to read and discuss at our February meeting," says Erin Rednour of Jacksonville, who leads the Springfield Barnes & Noble mystery reading group. "It takes you on a carnival's scrambler ride at the end. Very well-done. Very enjoyable book," she says. "I am definitely going to be reading more of his books." As an attorney, Ellis has worked for a large firm in Chicago, served as a deputy counsel to the House Democrats in 1999 and 2000, and was a partner in his own firm before moving to Leland Grove when he took his current post. Ellis decided to come back to state government "because of Speaker Madigan," who "takes the opinion of his attorneys seriously," he says. "When you're working for state government, it doesn't feel like a business," he says. "It feels like the pure practice of law." Ellis says his characters and plots sometimes are loosely inspired by real life, but "I'm not interested in using real-life characters because that takes away the creative process." "I've heard some pretty interesting things I'd like to put in books, but I feel like it would be compromising attorney-client privilege," he says. "There's plenty else to draw from without having to get people who walk into your office." But fiction writing has made him a better lawyer, Ellis says, because it taught him to keep his audience in mind while writing legal papers. "The best legal writing is simple and straightforward," he says. "That is a similar skill to what you do in creative writing." His wife, Susan, a lawyer for the attorney general's staff in Springfield, always has been supportive, Ellis says. "She knows it's important to me," he says. But Ellis' narrow window of writing time may soon contract even further. Along with his new job of supervising a dozen lawyers during the legislative session, and serving as House parliamentarian and ethics officer, he and Susan are expecting their first child in April. After the baby is born, the writer says, "that may be a different story." Dave Ellis is the chief legal counsel for House Speaker Michael Madigan and an award-winning author of legal thrillers.
A Conversation With David EllisQ. You are a successful attorney and a successful novelist. Would you ever consider giving up your law practice to write full time? I have been fortunate to have a lot of variety in my legal practice, which has been a blend of trial work, constitutional law, politics, and work in the legislature. It’s hard to imagine a day when I walk away from it. Q. Do you get ideas for plots from cases you’ve tried? Not usually. That would be a little too close to my “backyard,” and I try to keep a manageable distance. Where’s the fun in making up a story if it’s something that really happened? Having said that, of course I am influenced by events in Chicago’s political and legal community. It shapes the way I see the world and therefore, probably to some extent, shapes the plot as well. Q. How much are your characters based on real people, or are they composites of various people—judges, other lawyers, defendants, clients, girlfriends, etc., you’ve encountered throughout your life? There is no one character that can be directly traced to a single person I know. But I borrow liberally. I take certain characteristics in people, certain quirks, and inject them into my characters. When you work in politics, you want to make sure that no elected officials are seeing themselves in your novels. Q. Are you anything like your fictional hero-attorney, Paul Riley? Paul Riley is more like the lawyer I hope to be. He has my sense of humor and maybe some of my confidence, but he is at a different stage in his life than I am. Paul has risen to the top of his profession. I am still enjoying the climb upward. Q. Does your wife Susan look or behave like Shelly Trotter? Ha! She would enjoy that question. My wife is far more beautiful, let me, ahem, start with that much. My wife is fearless like Shelly, but with none of the personal demons. I love Shelly as a character because of her vulnerabilities. It makes her real. But I would never draw a character like my wife. Q. If EYE OF THE BEHOLDER were made into a movie, who would you choose to play the main characters – heroes and villains? I’ve never been good at this exercise, and I am asked often. I usually let others tell me who should play the characters. But if pressed, I’d be looking for someone like Harrison Ford to play Paul—someone who is not too handsome, not too slick, in fact a bit awkward and uncomfortable in social settings. Q. You’ve said LINE OF VISION was rejected by about seventy-five agents before it was accepted. What gave you the strength not to give up? By the time I had finished writing Line of Vision, I had fallen in love with writing. I couldn’t stop if I tried. In my experience, that kind of passion translates into success. I had made a decision to do everything I could to see my goal through to the end. I expected rejections but knew that I would improve the manuscript, improve my “query” letters to agents, keeping honing my skills until it was impossible for an agent to turn me down. Q. Do you make the time to write every day? Just about. When I was in private practice in Chicago, I was completely in control of my schedule. I could look ahead at a week and know that there might be some days when I couldn’t write, but others where I could carve out an entire afternoon. Now, working as Counsel to the Speaker of the House, my time is not always my own, so it takes more discipline. This I can say for sure: There is not a waking hour of any day that I am not thinking about the book I’m writing. Q. Where did you get the idea for the plot of EYE OF THE BEHOLDER? Paul Riley has been in every novel, and from the first book, I have explained his background as the man who put away an infamous serial killer. I based this portion of his background on my friend and colleague, William Kunkle, who prosecuted John Wayne Gacy. In the back of my mind, I always wondered if I would delve into that serial-killer story. And then I merged that idea with what I believe to be the single greatest conflict that a prosecutor could ever face: the notion that he may have put away an innocent man. Q. Who are some of your favorite authors? Scott Turow is my favorite. His prose flows so beautifully that it appears effortless. I also love the darkness of Joyce Carol Oates. Anita Shreve, though she writes in a genre I wouldn’t normally prefer, writes with such grace that I look forward to everything she produces. Within the genre, I am very impressed with Nelson DeMille, Lee Child, and Barry Eisler. Q. Where do you get your ideas for new plots and characters? It starts with a kernel of an idea—a “what-if.” What if a prosecutor had reason to believe that he had convicted the wrong man—would he have the strength of character to investigate the possibility? What if a boy was searching for the father he never knew and then found himself caught in an undercover police sting as a result? Often, the kernel ends up not even being the central idea in the story, but simply the idea that got me started. I build layer upon layer until I have a story. Q. Do you like to read mysteries? Were you inspired by any other writers before you picked up the pen? I love mysteries. As mentioned above, Scott Turow is the first one to inspire me. Another writer who inspired me was Phillip Roth, who writes dark and conflicted characters. The characters in these authors’ novels, more than any others, helped me draw Marty Kalish, the protagonist in Line of Vision.
Q. How did it feel when the Chicago Tribune compared you to John Grisham and said “your plotting was even sharper?” Always great to be mentioned in the same breath with a best-seller. It’s a thrill to have your work recognized by a major newspaper or magazine. It’s icing on the cake, because what really moves me is the process of creating the characters and the story. It’s one of the most invigorating experiences I know. Q. Are you still running marathons? Yes, but with our first baby having arrived, I see myself slowing down in that arena. I will always run, but I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to train to that extent. It remains to be seen. Q. Are you still fascinated by magic tricks? Absolutely. Anything that doesn’t appear to be what it seems fascinates me. That’s why I love mysteries. Q. Would you explain your technique of “misdirection” in your novels? I simply put myself in the shoes of the reader—the intelligent reader, who isn’t going to fall for the easy tricks. I usually dream up my final “surprise” well before I begin drafting the novel. I keep it fair—I leave clues, because the best kind of surprise is the one that was right in front of your eyes all along. But I am seeing now that my faithful readers expect that from me, and they are on the look-out for the switch-up. Hey, that just makes it more fun to trick them the next time! Q. Do you think about writing in other genres or are you “wedded” to thrillers? I would never say no to anything, but I love surprises and suspense, so I see thrillers in my future. Chicago Sun-Times interview with David EllisIN THE COMPANY OF LIARS Holding court with author David Ellis Trial attorney David Ellis is an author. Which makes him about as rare as bad beer at Wrigley Field. But here's the thing: Ellis, 37, can actually write. Oh, and plot like a mo-fo. That, the Downers Grove native and former high school jock will tell you, is his strongest suit. Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews and several other pubs agree. So, apparently, do the folks who hand out coveted Edgar Allan Poe Awards for best first novels. Ellis garnered one for his debut effort, 2001's LINE OF VISION. IN THE COMPANY OF LIARS (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $24.95), his fourth and newest mystery-thriller, out this month, already is getting raves -- and not just from blurbmeister pals, either. "This is another impressive performance from a writer who expands his ambition and artistry from book to book," declared PW in late February. It's also a Mystery Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection. And if past praise is any indiction, that's merely a taste of what's to come. A confident first-run of 50,000 -- about 700,000 short of Scott Turow and millions short of John Grisham, but highly respectable nonetheless -- bodes well, too. A mass market paperback version (all his books have gone mass market) will likely quintuple that number. In this tale of murder, terrorism and governmental shadiness, Liars unfurls chronologically in reverse, with some purposely bamboozling red herrings tossed in for good measure. Circumstances and characters aren't always what and who they appear to be. Ellis, as those who read him know, digs his twists. He's a trained performer, too, both on the stage and on the page. Success in law (trial law, anyway) and literature depends on it. "I think lawyers are naturals for creative writing and for fiction writing," he says over midday java in a cacophonous coffee shop across from his law offices in the Civic Opera Building on North Wacker. Dressed in a dark-blue double-vented suit, a red power tie and a spread-collar white button-down, he looks every bit the legal eagle. "I'm not surprised that lawyers write fiction, because I think at the end of the day, the same talents that go into being a good trial lawyer go into being a good writer. No. 1 is you have to recognize that there's an audience, and you have to see through their eyes. If you have a jury in Cook County, and you're trying to convince them of something, it's very possible that you come from a very different background than those jurors. They could have any number of differences from you. And yet, it's their opinion that matters, not yours. So you have to present things in a way that's gonna convince them particularly." For the past five years, Ellis, who lives in Lincoln Park with his wife of almost two years, Susan, an attorney, has handled cases involving election law and government. He joined his current practice, Williams, Bax & Ellis, P.C., in 2000, after stints with big firms and in Springfield, where he served as deputy counsel to Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan. But he's spent most of his life in and around Chicago, absorbing the sites and sounds and sly dealings of a city where clout is king, and drawing repeatedly on experiences in and out of the courtroom for his story lines. An avid runner, Ellis has three marathons and a slew of shorter races to his credit. Aside from physical fortitude, running brings creative clarity. And when it comes to penning intricate thrillers, clarity rules. "I do my best thinking when I'm alone," he says. "I also do my best thinking when I'm inspired. So I run with headphones, and I listen to music that inspires me." The Cure, R.E.M., Smashing Pumpkins, assorted hip-hop, Alanis Morissette. His mood, distance and pace dictate the mix. Ellis wrote as a young kid (Hardy Boys-inspired fare, he says), but then sports and girls and studies and girls got in the way, and prose took an extended powder. A finance major at the University of Illinois (no hurtful hoops jokes, please), he went on to earn a law degree at Northwestern in 1993, leaping thereafter into Big Firm life. As it is now, law was his primary focus, but writing was ever on the brain, if only in its deepest recesses. Life just got in the way. That, however, would soon change. Missy Thompson, Ellis' former associate at the now-defunct firm Pope & John, recalls a creative writing class they took together through the University of Chicago in 1995. At the time, she says, Ellis mentioned nothing about authoring a novel. In fact, unbeknownst to her and most everyone else, he'd just begun work on his first, Line of Vision. Pre-submission tweaking continued for the next three years, and select friends viewed the work-in-progress. Then, at long last, he sent it out into the world. "I didn't think that either of us really took [writing] more seriously than the other," Thompson says. "We thought, well, that was interesting and that was fun, and then we just went on to other things. We never read each other's stuff and I don't think we even wrote anything out of class ... I don't even think we turned anything in. It was more how to do the process. Because I wasn't writing anything, maybe I just didn't have any higher expectations of him," she says, laughing. For Ellis, wisdom from his late father ("the most important influence in my life, without question") and best-selling Chicago counselor Scott Turow (they worked on a case together), and dogged persistence in the face of rejection kept hope afloat. Before long, his first manuscript found an agent, a publisher and, eventually, an audience. The Cult of Dave, as you might call it, has grown considerably since, and their hyperbolic plaudits keep coming. "David Ellis sets a new standard with this superb legal thriller," declared blogger Stacy Alesi at bookbitch.com of 2003's LIFE SENTENCE. Amazon.com is filled with similar accolades, and jaded newspaper critics from coast to coast have been wowed as well. Ellis, for his part, retains an understated, "aw, shucks" attitude. He doesn't lack confidence, but neither is he a horn-tooter. Far from it. One friend calls him "modest to a fault." "The amazing part of Dave is he gets it all done, 'cause he doesn't sleep much," says Ellis' law partner and colleague of 13 years, David Williams. The two met in 1993 as newbie associates at Pope & John. "He's not a part-time writer or a part-time lawyer. He really throws himself into both, and it's not an easy thing to balance the two. But he manages to pull it off. And he has the unbelievable ability to get things done very, very well in tight time frames. He'll have a brief due Monday, and he'll know if it's Thursday afternoon, he doesn't really have to hunker down until Friday at 2, and he'll work all weekend and stay up all night to get it done, and get it done." Ellis' fifth work already is in progress, and he's brainstorming on plots for the sixth. (Don't ask, he won't tell.) The obsessive process of writing, he says, never truly ends. Neither, it seems, does the public's hunger for law-based books, TV shows and films. "Law affects every aspect of our lives," he says, seated behind the desk of his newly uncluttered office high above the city. "There's attention there, because we don't understand something that is having a profound influence on us, so we want to know more about it." And while he's gunning to be tops in his field (Dad would have expected no less), the next Grisham or Turow, Ellis is content simply to have seen the light and realized a dream so early on. "I'd love to have Scott Turow's success," he says. "If that happens, great, but I'm not gonna worry about it. You can psyche yourself out. All you gotta focus on is, What's the best book I can write, and what do people want to read. And there's always a tug between writing what you think serves your artistic integrity and what people want, but that's a tug I don't mind having." 'Put the gun down, Doctor' McCoy is first through the door. She hears the man running through the house, his bare feet slapping across the hardwood floor. "Back bedroom," she is told via her earpiece by a member of the team at the rear of the house, looking through the kitchen window, blocking an escape route. They flood in behind her, a team of eight agents, but she is first down the hallway. Her back against the wall, both hands on the Glock at her side, she shuffles up to the bedroom door and listens. Over the sound of her team's shoes on the hardwood, she can hear sobbing. She reaches across the width of the door and tries the knob. The door opens slightly, then McCoy pushes it open wider with her foot and pivots, her Glock trained inside the room, and she sees what she expects. He is standing at the opposite end of the bedroom, near what appears to be a walk-in closet and then a bathroom. A large bed separates the man and McCoy. McCoy holds a hand up behind her, freezing the other agents in place, before returning her hand to the Glock trained on the suspect. "Put the gun down, Doctor," she says. Doctor Lomas, she knows, is a broken man, nothing like the proud figure she has seen in the company brochures. She stifles the instinct to think of him as a victim, though a victim, in many ways, is precisely what he is. • See why Dave decided to write a book "backwards" Interview with David Ellis — Fort Myers News-PressAuthor on legal path. By JAY MacDONALD Do legal thrillers seem a little long on titillation and short on litigation lately? David Ellis thinks so. "I don't do explicit gore and I don't do explicit sex," says the 35-year-old corporate attorney by phone from his Chicago law office. "That's for someone else. I wouldn't be good at it and I'm not interested in doing it." Ellis, along with fellow young lawyer-authors David Baldacci (ABSOLUTE POWER) and Brad Meltzer (THE FIRST COUNCEL), works to incorporate the archetypes of Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason series with the second-generation refinements of Scott Turow and John Grisham into something that would surprise even a Chicago jury. Ellis His latest, LIFE SENTENCE is a strong follow-up, exploring the knotty world of state politics with enough twists and turns to qualify as an E-ticket Disney ride. At a time when legal thrillers seem overrun with serial killers, CIA operatives, ruthless drug kingpins and nefarious White House staffers, Ellis represents a return to good old courtroom drama — what he calls "the Perry Mason moment." This is one counselor who makes no apologies for his love of spine-tingling courtroom revelations. "I like to say things about the law with my courtroom scenes and I like to reveal a lot in court that wasn't revealed outside of court. That's what a courtroom is supposed to be about, right? It's supposed to be about each side pursuing their version of the truth and ultimately a conclusion is reached. "I think it's classic, the classic Perry Mason moment. Not every book should have it and not every trial should have one such scene; everything has to have a reason in a book and if you're doing a courtroom scene just because your readers want one, that's not a good enough reason. But if it's going to reveal something, either about the lawyer or the witness or a fact that is a plot twist, then it's great. I've really enjoyed using courtroom stuff as a tool." If Ellis can be said to have developed a signature after a mere two novels, it is this: Don't trust anyone, including your narrator. In LINE OF VISION, we don't know whether to trust our narrator, investment banker and accused murderer Marty Kalish, until the last page. In LIFE SENTENCE, our suspicions of our narrator, state senate legal counsel Jon Soliday (who shares a secret about a long-ago murder with his powerful boss) are a little harder to pin down. "In this book, we're wondering not whether Jon is being dishonest with the reader but whether he's being dishonest with himself. That is especially true in the case of a painful memory. Maybe he's always thought in the back of his mind that his good buddy had more to do with it than he let on and he doesn't want to know. I mean, if he knows that, then he has to confront his friend, confront the guy who has always stood by him and is really his source of power. I mean, he's on his coattails, right? He doesn't want to think about any of that." Indeed he doesn't, but we love to. Which makes the Perry Mason moments in an Ellis novel doubly effective. "Those things that are being revealed are not necessarily the truth," he points out. "Both of my books have Perry Mason moments that are not true." Misdirection, after all, is a time-honored skill, both in the legal profession and in the crafting of legal thrillers. "That's exactly right. If you're a criminal defense attorney, your job is to get a result that your client wants. It's not about finding the truth, and there can be a great deal of manipulation of facts, as long as it is done within the rules of ethics. Aggressive lawyers will certainly encourage people to remember things in a favorable way. The rules are not strict enough to completely prevent this stuff from happening." His latest foray into the complex machinations of state politics follows his own stint as deputy counsel for Michael Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, from 1999 to 2001. It was quite a change from working on glacial-paced commercial litigation and class actions involving mega corporations such as Microsoft and Commonwealth Edison. "I wanted to learn about legislation, I wanted to learn about the process, I wanted to learn about government. It's amazing how little many lawyers know about how the government works and about legislation in particular, which is ironic but it's true. I look at legislation now with a whole new eye," he says. During summer months when the state legislature was not in session, Ellis served as counsel for the bipartisan House death penalty task force, a legislative committee that broke ground for the governor's commission on the death penalty, of which Turow was a member. The experience helped Ellis crystallize his position on capital punishment. "I am opposed to the death penalty for several reasons, and one is colored terribly by what has happened in Illinois," he says. "The reliability of our system is so suspect that I can't imagine anybody being in favor of the Illinois death penalty system right now. If we want to say you cannot take human life, you should not punish that by taking human life, too." Like Turow, whose experiences informed his latest novel, REVERSIBLE ERRORS, Ellis plans to weigh in on the issue in his third book. And yes, expect much of the action to take place before a judge and jury. "I happen to think that the courtroom is the perfect setting for all of these things and the reason is because it's supposed to be. It's a natural. You can't walk into a book and say I'm going to have less courtroom and more sex. I have to see how the character develops first. Everything is fluid. Would it make sense to have a scene that is sexy or sexual? Maybe. We'll see. The most I can say is that I suspect the courtroom will play a role in most of my novels because it is such a natural in this kind of genre." ©2003 - Fort Myers News-Press LINE OF VISION, Dave's first novel, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. Since then, he has published LIFE SENTENCE, JURY OF ONE, and IN THE COMPANY OF LIARS. Dave's new novel EYE OF THE BEHOLDER is now available.
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