Booklpleasures.com is pleased to welcome John McNellis, author of O'Brien's Law: A Romantic Thriller, as our guest. John practiced law in San Francisco for 10 years before transitioning to a successful career as a real estate developer.

He is also the author of Making it in Real Estate, now in its second edition. John has also served as a columnist for the San Francisco Business Times and is a frequent lecturer on real estate topics.

Norm: Hello John, thank you for participating in our interview today.

What has been the greatest professional challenge you've overcome to get where you are today?

John: Learning how to type. Nah, kidding aside, I’m blessed—and cursed—with too much optimism. To this day, I invariably think things will go smoother than experience would otherwise suggest.

In real estate, I somehow believe that a new development will take two years instead of its actual five. With my writing, I’m quite positive a book will need a single rewrite instead of half a dozen. And so on.

This optimism gets me out of the starting block, but also engenders a fair bit of frustration. I just have to keep reminding myself of how often I’m wrong. Persistence is success’s cornerstone.

Norm: What motivates a former attorney and real estate developer to become a novelist?

John: A love of great fiction and a lifelong desire to be a writer.

Norm: What goals do you have as an author?

John: To write a literary page-turner. A book with a swift-running, twisting plot that still makes the reader pause every now and then to admire the view, to appreciate the words’ eddies and swirls.

Or, hell, maybe just one decent review in a tony literary journal.

Norm: What is the most challenging part of the writing process?

John: Learning to love rewriting. I’m thinking of getting a tattoo that reads, “Rewriting is the key to happiness.” Either that or one with “Mom” inside a huge heart

Norm: What led you to explore the subject or theme of 'O'Brien's Law' in your writing? 

John: I was wildly miscast as a young lawyer at a fancy law firm and years later, it occurred to me that my belated coming of age—that is, my realization that I was in the wrong business—could make a fun story.

My hero O’Brien is much more amusing in his self-delusions than I ever was, he actually thinks he’s a great lawyer when the novel opens.  

Norm: What were your goals and intentions for this book, and do you feel you achieved them? 

John: Naturally, I wanted the Nobel Committee to send me a first-class ticket to Stockholm, or perhaps the Booker people to invite to London.

Failing that, I wanted to write a book that was well-regarded and fun, a pleasant diversion from the real world’s travails for a few hours. 

While I’m still waiting for those overseas invitations, the reviews have been more than kind, my readers have enjoyed the book and, in fact, are already nagging me for a sequel. 

Norm: Which came first, the characters or the story? 

John: I thought putting a comic, romantic and dangerous spin on a particularly unpleasant lawsuit I worked on as a rookie lawyer would make a good story.

So I knew what the principal actors would do in broad brush before I developed their characters.

Norm: Did you develop your book from an outline, or did it develop from a completed manuscript? 

John: I outlined it first, sketching out the story’s broad arc over, say, fifteen pages or so. Then when I started writing, the characters grew like ill-tended weeds and took over, bending and warping the story so much that only its very beginning and ending remained.   

Norm: Authors are often advised to write about what they know. Were there any aspects of the book that took you out of your comfort zone, and if so, how did you approach them in your writing?

John: Doing any serious research about other times and places smacks of real work, running afoul of my innate laziness. I find it far easier—and more satisfying—to base novels on reality, on as much personal experience as possible.

O’Brien’s is so closely rooted in reality that acquaintances accuse me of having written my autobiography. It’s not. I’m not nearly as fun, bold or pugnacious as the cocky Michael O’Brien nor were my legal cases remotely as dangerous…assuming one ignores paper cuts.  

Norm: Do you believe that good drama often comes from a character facing off against an antagonist, whether internal or external, and generating an emotional charge? If so, how did you apply this principle in your novel? 

John: With no Lex Luther, Superman would be bored stiff, working his day job as a reporter. If you don’t have a villain, you don’t have a hero. O’Brien has to fight not only for his career and the lovely Marybeth Elliot, but his very life when confronting his insidious senior partner, the felonious executor and his oddball client. 

Norm: Can you tell us about any current or upcoming books or projects that you're working on and would like to share with us? 

John: I’m working on a more serious novel entitled, Scout’s Honor about an ambitious young man who is lured into smuggling drugs, betrayed, set up to die and who then escapes to slowly rebuild his life into overwhelming success, yet is forever haunted by his crimes.

A story of crime, punishment and hopefully redemption.

Norm: Where can our readers find out more about you and O'Brien's law?

John: They can go to MY WEBSITE or follow me on LinkedIn or simply Google me. I write monthly essays for the SF Business Times that are posted to my LinkedIn address.

Or, if they’d like a free sample of O’Brien’s, they can listen to the first six chapters of the novel’s audio version on YouTube. 

Norm: As we near the end of this interview, if you could invite three novelists who specialize in legal thrillers to join you for dinner, who would you choose and why? 

John: I would rather invite Jane Austen, George Elliot and Patrick O’Brien to dinner. While they didn’t write legal thrillers, they wrote thrilling words, bringing so much heart and humanity into their stories and characters in their own unique, brilliant ways.

Norm: Thank you once again, and best of luck with all your future endeavors. 

Follow Here To Read Norm's Review of O'Brien's Law