BEHIND THE WORDS LITERARY CONVERSATION
with
Mark Shaiken
#1 in the Fiction category 1st quarter International Firebird Book Awards
Your legal career dealt in facts, but For Cause wrestles with manipulated truth. At what point did you personally start to distrust what you see—and did that moment spark this story?
I trust many things – as examples, many people I know and even many news outlets like PBS. I have also come to distrust a number of things: social media, and now certain forms of media such as deepfake videos. I don’t know when the distrust started, but I worry about the inability to distinguish fact from fiction and the use of falsities to make a point, influence a decision, get ahead, keep others behind, and to win, all at any cost, and all without regard for truth. Sadly, it’s the world we live in. I am 70. I worry I won’t see an end to these disturbing trends in my lifetime.
Many thrillers rely on speed, but your work blends pace with reflection. Do you ever worry that pausing for meaning might cost you momentum—or is that tension intentional?
I try for both speed and reflection. It does cause tension and tension is good in a thriller. Along the writing journey, I’ve learned some about the balance between speed and reflection. I think I’m better at it in book 5 of the series than I was in book 1 and I have a better feel for putting the foot on the accelerator, and maybe by book 6-10, I’ll be even better at it.
Deepfake technology challenges the idea of evidence. Do you think storytelling itself is a kind of “ethical deepfake”—convincing us to believe something that never happened?
I don’t think that. When you read a story, a work of fiction, you know it’s fiction. No one is trying to convince you it is real. Sometimes the story is telling us something that might happen—so it carries with it the author’s duty of believability. Other times, the story is telling us something that probably can never happen—so it carries with it the author’s responsibility to make the story fun, exciting, dreamy, futuristic, but something that can’t happen, at least not in the present. In both cases, the author isn’t telling us that the story is true and the reader knows it is not true. A deepfake, at least the one in For Cause, is telling us to believe as true that which is not.
Your transition from law to writing happened after a long career. What creative risks were you unwilling to take at 40 that you now fully embrace?
At 40, I was in court all the time hopefully telling the court a true story, but I didn’t have time to explore creative risks like I do now in my new season as an author. I think if I had had the time at age 40 to write fiction, I would have been willing to take creative risks and maybe even more than now because back then, I had the safety net of the law career. Now, I have no net.
In your essays about aging, you reflect on identity. How has writing thrillers changed who you are—not just what you do?
I came to realize as an attorney that being a lawyer was what I did—not who I was. That was a very important lesson, and I hope I am able to carry that lesson with me in everything I do. Applying that lesson to my new journey, writing is what I do, but it isn’t necessarily who I am. But while I’m writing, I can inject who I am into my characters. For example, such as Pascale. He is an aging bankruptcy lawyer and mentor to the star of the series—3J. He worries about what will come next for him after his law career comes to an end. He plays guitar. So while he is not me in all regards, there is lots of me in him.
If your protagonist 3J could cross-examine you as her creator, what uncomfortable question would she ask—and how would you answer under oath?
I’ve been cross-examined in my life in depositions as a witness, as an expert witness in court, and as a bankruptcy trustee in a trial. It would take a lot to ask me a question that would make me feel uncomfortable. I don’t foresee any gotcha questions from 3J that she will ask me. And anyway, I would hope she would be my lawyer, not opposing counsel.
If your dog, Emily, could read your books, which character would she trust the least—and why?
Emily trusts everyone who gives her love and food. All the good characters in the books would give her both. I expect even Robbie McFadden would give her both. I mean . . . even a mobster needs a loyal canine. I expect that the really bad guys in the books would not garner Emily’s trust, like Wayne Shumaker in For Cause; Bobby Ray in Cram Down; and Woody Clarke in Unfair Discrimination, to name a few. I created none of them with an ounce of love and affection. Emily would know to steer clear.