Passion turns out to be the secret ingredient that allows some people to pursue successful careers in demanding work environments while simultaneously fulfilling their most creative dreams. Meet Claudia H. Long, a celebrated dispute resolution lawyer who writes one award-winning novel after another.
Congratulations on the recent publication of your newest novel, Nine Tenths of the Law. Please tell us what it is about and what inspired you to write it.
Nine Tenths of the Law takes place mostly in the present, or what should be the present—non-pandemic New York City and San Francisco—with short flashes to events from World War II. It’s a “sisters book,” about two daughters of a Holocaust survivor and their search for the menorah that was stolen from their mother’s hands by the Nazis at the start of the war. The plot is a mix of contemporary and mystery, with humor, mayhem, and murder, but at the core, it is a story of the cost of secrets and their ability to bind and destroy.
My mother was a Holocaust survivor who never spoke of her experiences; our family lived with a big no-fly zone area of what could even be mentioned. My sister and I knew that we could never complain about anything, though, because nothing could approach the suffering of the people who had endured the Holocaust. But as my mother became ill with Alzheimer’s, the barriers collapsed and the stories started to leak out. They were mixed up and confused, but after my mother passed away, my father told me many stories about my mother. All of those bits and pieces, along with what my sister knew, make up the skeleton for the plot of Nine Tenths.
In addition to being a multi-award-winning author with five novels under your belt, you are one of the San Francisco Bay area’s leading dispute resolution lawyers. Does expertise in dispute mitigation provide fodder for your plots? Or, if not plot fodder, applicable skill in understanding the rhyme and rhythm of a good argument?
Great question! Despite the title, which refers to the adage, “possession is nine tenths of the law,” there’s very little in the way of law in most of my books. Although—come to think of it—there is always a logical progression in my stories, and I can’t stand a plot hole. That would be a failure of proof!
Perhaps seeing the sorry side of humanity so often I’ve come to be more empathetic, and my day job certainly provides me with a choice of character traits to choose from.
By the time you wrote your first book, you had been practicing law for many years. Did you always know you would write a novel at some point?
I wrote my first novel in 1986 when my daughter was born. It never went anywhere, but I discovered the “high” that writing gives me. Many say that writing is a painful process, but for me, it’s like a drug. I’m almost dizzy with excitement when I write. I wrote a mystery that I ended up self-publishing, then I tried my hand at working as an agent, then I wrote another mystery that wasn’t any good, and then I wrote quite a bit of, er… “romance” under a pen name. The “romance” novels were very well received, and are still selling! Ultimately, though, I decided that I would write a serious novel, and Josefina’s Sin was born.
What prepared you for this transition from “romance” to historical literary fiction? And what led you to choose Mexico for the setting?
As mentioned, I was ready to get serious. My husband said, “Why don’t you write about Sor Juana?” Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a 17th Century poet and scholar from Mexico. I had written my senior thesis on her in 1976 (a million years ago!) and I grew up in Mexico City, so that was a natural idea. But I wanted my protagonist to be fictional, so I created Josefina, an innocent landowner’s wife who discovers herself, her passion, and poetry when she meets Sor Juana. I love Sor Juana’s works, her plays, and poems as well as her Carta Atenagorica (a letter in which she deconstructs a sermon a Jesuit priest had written), and I knew a lot about the era.
In my book, much, though not all, of what Sor Juana says is taken from snippets of her poems. I did the translations myself since I am completely fluent in English and Spanish, and I did a ton of research about the particulars of the time period.
Your next book after Josefina’s Sin takes place in San Francisco after WWI. And then for your third and fourth books, you are back in Mexico again, years later, with some of the same characters from Josefina’s Sin. What made you take a break from Mexico? And what brought you back again?
The order of publication isn’t the order of the writing. As happens sometimes, books with one publisher appear in their own time, without regard to books with another. I wrote The Duel for Consuelo while Simon & Schuster was bringing out Josefina’s Sin. When my editor there left, Consuelo was left without a publisher.
While my agent was shopping Consuelo, I wrote The Harlot’s Pen. That’s the big exception to the answer that there’s little or no law in my books. The Harlot’s Pen is all about women in the labor movement in San Francisco in 1920, the persecution of Communists and Socialists, and the passage of the Women’s Suffrage amendment. The story is seen through the eyes of a journalist who “embeds” herself in a whorehouse, which helped to sell it. The book came out with Devine Destinies, a small branch of a large romance publisher, the one for whom I’d written many books under a pen name. Meanwhile, Consuelo came out with Booktrope, which folded, and was re-published by Five Directions Press at the same time as The Harlot’s Pen was published by Devine Destinies.
For a while, after that, I didn’t know which direction I would go in next. I started a number of other projects, but nothing took hold. Then, one November (I always first-draft my books in NaNoWriMo, the international internet project that invented National Novel Writing Month), Chains of Silver took shape. You know it when it’s happening!
Which of your books would make the best movie or TV series and why?
I’m not very visual, so I don’t know if this is right, but it seems to me that The Duel for Consuelo would be a great movie. And definitely, Nine Tenths of the Law is the perfect mini-series!
Do some fantasy casting and tell us who is best suited to play the main roles.
I don’t know a lot about movie stars, but I do know that for Nine Tenths of the Law I’d love George Clooney as—well, anyone, but in this story, as Sam. This is fantasy, right? So Phoebe Waller-Bridge for Lilly, Kristin Bell for Zara, Dolph Lundgren as Walter Rosen, and Willem Long as Lev. I can dream!
Is it too soon to say what your next project will be?
I think there’s something brewing in the novella department: Colonial Mexico calls me back. But something about the 1930s in San Francisco is gnawing at me too. Hard to say. I loved writing in the modern era in Nine Tenths, but we’ll see!
Please tell Occhi readers where they can learn more about you and your novels.
Definitely follow me on Facebook! That’s my main social-media squeeze! www.facebook.com/ClaudiaHLong
I’m on Instagram @Claudiahlong and Twitter @CLongnovels too
My website is www.claudiahlong.com
And all my books can be ordered by your Independent Book Store, or on Amazon!
Author photo credit to Shelly Hamalian Photography
About Author
