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- Wyoming author James Chandler will tell you that his rise to the top of Amazon's Legal Thriller Best Seller list is a surprise.
His books "Misjudged" and "One and Done" draw from his personal histories as an army veteran, a lawyer and an athlete and give us attorney Sam Johnston with twists and turns with almost every page.
James Chandler, from Gillette, next on Wyoming Chronicle.
(lively music) - [Narrator] This program was funded in part by a grant for Newman's Own Foundation, working to nourish the common good by donating all profits from Newman's Own Food and Beverage products to charitable organizations that seek to make the world a better place.
More information is available at newmansownfoundation.org.
Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities, thinkwy.org, and by the members of the Wyoming PBS Foundation.
Thank you for your support.
- And it's my pleasure to be joined by author James Chandler here in Gillette on this Wyoming Chronicle.
James, thank you so much for joining us.
- Well, thank you for having me here and welcome to Gillette.
- Oh, it's our pleasure.
We're here in the beautiful Gillette Library, it's very nice that they've been wonderful hosts with us, but you are a writer and you are also a judge here in Campbell County.
And I guess right out of the gate, we should say that James Chandler is a pen name.
First of all, how did that pen name come about, and then we'll continue on here?
- Well, when I began the process of working with my publisher when the work had been accepted, we decided jointly that I needed to write under a pen name due to the nature of my day job.
And so he tasked me with coming up with a number of names, and so I submitted a list of names.
Most of them, James, was my father-in-law's name and was my fishing buddy and my bear drinking buddy, and everybody needs one of each, and I was fortunate enough to have all three in one guy.
So that was easy.
And then the last name I submitted a number of last name options.
And the one he picked was Chandler, which just happened to be the last name of my favorite football player growing up, Bob Chandler, who was a receiver for the Buffalo Bills and I think the Oakland Raiders.
- I actually remember who he was.
- Yeah.
- As we were talking about off-camera.
Before we get into your career now, your second career as a writer, which has just had an unbelievably successful start, let's talk about your history.
Where did you grow up?
- I was a military brat and my father retired in the area of Boise-Nampa, Idaho to the 20 miles to the West of Boise when I was in junior high.
So I went to junior high and high school there.
And then I went to college in Eastern Oregon, Eastern Oregon State College at the time, University now.
- Typical high school life, an athlete, having some fun, doing the things that teenagers do?
- Yeah, and probably more than I should have.
- (chuckles) And what sports did you play?
- I played football, basketball and baseball at Nampa High School.
- And then you went on to play baseball in college?
- I did, I played baseball at Eastern Oregon University for four years.
- And after that, what was next?
- Well, it quickly became apparent I had no future in baseball, scouts made that clear.
It was 1982 and if you remember, tough employment times at the time, 13-14% unemployment, I couldn't find a job.
I had recently met my wife, fell in love and was looking kind of, didn't know, really know what I was gonna do.
Nobody was hiring, but the United States Army was hiring.
It was right after Ronald Reagan fired air traffic controllers, they all got out and they were looking for people to come into the military and do that.
So I enlisted as an Air Traffic Controller, was selected for Officer Candidate School, went down to Fort Benning and did that, and we, my wife and I loved the army, and spent 20 years, 13 moves doing that.
- You then must've made a decision after the army that you wanted to become an attorney.
And I'll say Paul Phillips.
- Yes.
- And we'll visit with you as Paul Phillips for the rest of the interview.
Paul, is that the case?
- Yeah, I got to the Pentagon, the five-sided wind tunnel, and kind of made a determination for family reasons that 20 was gonna be enough and started thinking, you know what might I do?
I didn't really wanna do the defense contractor thing, so I decided I would try Law School at night.
So I went to George Mason University School of Law, starting in 2000, four nights a week, year round for four years, and graduated in 2004.
- What brought you to the West?
- Well, we wanted to get as far West as we could, and I didn't do very well in Law School.
I was trying to raise a family, I worked full-time on the Secretary of Defense's staff, and the chief of staff of the army staff.
I traveled a lot and I had a young family and I had told my wife, you know, this law school thing, maybe a hobby, maybe I'll make a living at it someday but I didn't miss any dance recitals, I didn't miss any soccer games.
And so I applied all over the Western US and I got two interviews.
One was in Dickinson, North Dakota, there's a big law firm that's been there, I think since 1870, and they didn't hire me.
The only other interview I got was with John Perry and Dan Price who were the judges in the Sixth Judicial District at the time, they hired me to clerk.
- And you were a practicing attorney here for awhile, that you had wanted at some point to become a judge, why was that?
- Well, I love being in the courtroom and our practice and my firm was primarily civil litigation.
We did a lot of wills, trusts and estates.
We did a lot of transactions, a lot of real estate and, you know, it's good work and it's important work, but I like to be in the courtroom, and I wasn't getting the sort of courtroom time that I felt like I would enjoy and, you know, the opportunity to help people as a judge is there every day, all day long.
So kind of the desire to get into the courtroom more and a desire to help the community and payback some of what Gillette's done for my family and I, and threw my hat in the ring and to my everlasting surprise, governor Mead appointed me.
- So you wrote, and the primary character in this book is this attorney Sam Johnston.
- Yes.
- What's his genesis?
- His genesis is he sort of an amalgam of people that I've known, of guys that I've known who, you know, real heroes and lawyers that I've known and was just one of those things where I thought through, you know, what could I write about that I could write about realistically based on the knowledge that I have, and that might be of interest to somebody.
- He has a military background.
- Right?
- Troubled.
- Yeah.
- Perhaps PTSD, had to see some of his close buddies die in an IED explosion, was injured himself.
Wasn't a great student, came to the West.
Is there some parallel with your career here?
- There's some parallel, but I'm not Sam.
- [Craig] Sure.
- And Gillette isn't Custer.
There's some of me probably in every character in the books but inspired by a couple of guys that I know.
And some of the stories that they've told me of their experiences.
- How does one get published?
And how, was that a struggle for you?
Did you almost give up, did it happen immediately?
- It was a big struggle.
I mean, you know, it took me, well, it took me 60 years to write the book but mechanically it took probably the better part of five years to write it.
And then I probably spent 18 months maybe trying to find a publisher.
I had given up, in fact, I started out trying to obtain an agent and I don't know how many rejections I got.
It had to be six or seven dozen maybe, and then I started working on applying directly to publishers and I spent another 6-8 months and probably got at least that many rejections.
And I had given up.
- Literally?
- I had stopped because it's tough stuff because you know, every agent, every publisher wants a submission packet done sorta their way, someone a synopsis and an outline, someone two chapters, everybody wants a cover letter.
You've got to tailor them all individually so that you, you know, are presenting to them as if they're the only one that you're selling to.
It's tough stuff.
And it takes a lot of time, and, you know, just the constant drum beat of rejection after a while it gets to you.
So I had stopped and I went to, in September of 2019, went to the Judicial Conference in Jackson and the speaker there, the keynote speaker was a judge named Martin Clark out of Charlottesville, Virginia.
And he was up talking about publishing books.
And he goes "In every group I talked to, there's a guy or gal with a book."
And he said, "If you're that guy or you're that gal come see me after this?"
So I did, I walked up and he said, "Are you the guy?"
And I said, "I'm the guy."
And so we talked for a little bit and he gave me his agent's name, who summarily rejected me.
But more importantly, you know, he said, "Hey don't give up on this, keep your stuff out there.
You know, if you wanna do this, you know."
So I went back, came back to Gillette and I told my wife, I said, "I'm gonna give it three more months, I'll give it till the beginning of 2020.
And if I can't find somebody to publish me by then, then you know what, I've written a novel, bucket list accomplished, we're good."
And on December 12th, 2019, I got an inquiry.
Yeah, I cut it close.
I got an inquiry from my publisher, Severn River Publishing LLC and they said, "We wanna talk to you about a contract."
And on January 2nd, 2020, I signed on the dotted line to write four novels for them.
- So your first book is "Misjudged."
- Right.
- It has staying power and has been at the top of Amazon's Legal Thriller Best Seller list for a long time.
Shocking to you?
Did you know you wrote a great novel?
- No, I felt like I wrote a good novel.
I remember finishing it and when I, you know, I signed in January and they gave me about four months to sort of revise it, I had written it as a standalone novel.
So they gave me a couple of months to kind of revise it to make it the lead for a series of four, that was the contract I signed.
So when I finished up in April or may, or whenever it was I felt like it was a good novel.
I felt like, "Hey, you know what?
I don't have anything to be ashamed of here.
This is as good as what's out there and than, you know, better than some" but I had absolutely no idea, you know, what was gonna happen.
They went then from, you know, you turn in the novel and then they do cover design, and then it goes through copy editing and then proofreading and advanced readers.
And I kept getting positive feedback, you know, from my publisher and their people.
But I'll tell you how it was, in October, so six months ago now, my wife and I were driving somewhere and I had been kind of looking around online at the legal thrillers.
And I realized there was 100, top 100 published and there were like 25 authors in that top 100, because most of them have a few books out there.
And I can remember to this day, I remember the exact moment I told my wife, I said, "If I could ever get a book in the top 100, I'd be in the big leagues."
- Well, how does top five sound?
- Yeah, how does two in top five, you know, six months later, it's unreal.
- And these are authors like John Grisham.
- Yeah.
- Your readers compare you to him.
You told me off camera you don't read reviews.
- No.
- But who are your mentors in as legal thriller authors?
Do you have one?
- I don't know that I have a mentor.
Well, so when I decided to write this book which now is maybe seven years ago, I made a determination, I was not gonna look at another legal thriller because I didn't one, wanna be intimidated.
And two, I didn't wanna be accused of poaching somebody else's idea.
So the last time I was reading legal thrillers regularly I love Scott Turow, David Baldacci, John Grisham of course, Robin James, Lisa Scottoline, I mean, I sort of read them all.
So I don't know that I would have one Scott Pratt, but I remember "Presumed Innocent" struck me when I read it.
My favorite, one of my very favorite authors of all time is Robert Traver, John D. Voelker wrote as Robert Trevor, "Anatomy of a Murder" I think is a fabulous book.
- "Misjudged" is awesome.
- Yeah, thank you.
- It's a page turner, you can't put it down once you start, at least I felt that way and I think many others have too, but I recognize a lot of Wyoming in the book.
I mean, certainly you say that it set in Custer, Wyoming, but it's small town and judges know attorneys, and people know people at the cafe, and it feels like you wrote about Wyoming.
What's in the back of your mind when you're setting the scene for these books?
- I sorta try to imagine different places in Wyoming, different towns in Wyoming.
And you know, I almost didn't set it in Wyoming because of the success of C. J.
Box and Craig Johnson, when it came time to write, when I had actually signed the contract to write, I did consider talking with my publisher about setting it in South Dakota or setting it in Montana, because I thought maybe this Wyoming thing is being overdone, and so apparently it hasn't.
But, you know, I love Wyoming like only a guy who's been everywhere else can.
I've been in 46 States in 39 countries, and I'm here because I wanna be here.
So there's no one place, there's no one thing, I try to sort of imagine it all.
- Who are your readers, do you know?
- Not really, I really don't.
I know that I get emails, I've gotten emails from Bangkok, I've gotten emails from London, I've gotten emails from Ontario, Canada.
I just got a wonderful email from an attorney in Kansas city last week.
So I'm not real sure.
- You say you don't read reader reviews on Amazon, but there also book critics out there.
Do you have a chance to interact with them to see what they have said about your books?
- I have never looked no, and I'll be honest, I peak at the sort of the star rating and make sure that it's... - Hard to miss that.
- Yeah, it's hard to miss that.
Everybody's got it there, right?
Whether it's Goodreads or Amazon.
So I look at that but I don't delve into the individual opinions or anything like that.
I don't know if anybody's ever taken their time to critique it, you know, a book critic per se.
- So when you were writing "Misjudged" and now your current book that's out "One and Done," do these books change course from what you originally thought?
Do you outline the whole story and then write it, or do you, let's use the baseball metaphor, throw yourself a curve ball every now and then and change what you hadn't initially planned?
- The "Misjudged" is pretty much as I had planned.
I went about writing, I had never written a novel before, I didn't know how to write a novel.
So I spent a lot of time in this library in fact, pulling books off the shelves that I had liked and enjoyed and studied, how is this book structured?
And, you know, I bought online things and looked at them, but really what helped me was to just look at, you know, how does this writer structure a story?
So "Misjudged" kind of from beginning to end with the exception of the beginning, I had to change things a little bit to make it sort of the lead for a series.
- [Craig] Right.
- That book is pretty much what was outlined, we have a creative consultant Severn River that helps me sort of walk through the story.
And does this make sense?
And how will that turn out later?
"Misjudged" is pretty much the product of my outline.
"One and Done" the ending is totally different, and for better or worse, when I finished the first draft of "One and Done", I didn't really like it.
So I said, "Well, what would happen if I did this?"
And then I liked it.
So then I had to go back through the book and sort of leave a trail of bread crumbs to get to where it ends up.
- So you have written about this attorney and you have planned to write four books about him, at least I would assume maybe more will come.
Are there other genres that you've thought about now, Paul that you, you know what, now that I'm kind of in this game I might want to write a nonfiction book or a different type of thriller, anything that's come to your mind?
- Yeah, I'm a fanatical fly fishermen and I've caught fish on my fly rod in 32 States, hope to get Hawaii in June.
- [Craig] Nice.
- I self published a book years ago on fly fishing, and it was really just a gift for my... - Kind of a "How to" book?
- Well, more of just essays.
- Okay.
- In my name called 'Small Streams and Daydreams" and just a series of little essays, which really were emails I had sent to my father-in-law over the years.
And when he passed away, I did his eulogy and everybody said, "You should write a book."
So I went to all my friends and I combed back to them and they sent me emails that I'd written over the years.
And I kind of packaged them all together and called it a book.
And it was a Christmas gift for my daughters to really get to know my father-in-law, their grandfather, and me maybe a little bit better.
And you know, it's done well over the years and I think that could serve as a pretty good basis, maybe for a nonfiction book on fly fishing.
And then, you know, I'm a big Army of the West fan, so maybe, but boy, that's a lot of writing, so.
- Give us an idea, I mean, you have a full-time job.
- Right.
- And you have a full-time job.
I mean, you've got two things going on here.
How do you write?
When do you find time to get it into your day?
- well, I get up at five if I sleep that long, and then I'm in my office by six, I carry a laptop everywhere I go.
And I try to write from 6-7 to 7:30, I'm doing something writing related.
It may be maybe publicity related, ut may be answering emails, it might be, you know, writing, writing.
And then I start my day job at 7:30 and then I write a little more at lunch, maybe if I'm in the mood, and then I don't write in the evening very well.
And then weekends and holidays, it's a weekend and holiday killer.
- I can imagine that it is.
So what's your pace?
Do you wanna do a book a year, a book every year and 1/2?
- Right now, my contract calls for a book every nine months.
- [Craig] Can you meet that?
- I've met that so far.
- [Craig] That sounds like quite a challenge.
- It is a challenge and I'm sort of in the nascent stages of beginning to look at, "Are we gonna extend this thing?
Where are we gonna go with Sam?
Are we gonna go with Sam?
How many books can I write?
So we're taking a look at it."
- How would you describe to me you feel after you've spent an hour writing, is it invigorating for you?
Is it taxing?
How do you feel when you write?
- I think it depends on the portion of the book that I'm working on.
Some portions are easier than others.
- [Craig] Some must be tough.
- Yeah, I can feel, if I'm doing, for example, an exchange between an attorney and a witness in a trial, I can finish that scene and be invigorated.
If I'm doing something that's more, oh, I don't know, prosaic, I guess you'd say more open writing a fishing scene or a scene between two people.
I may be calmed, it might be therapeutic.
- You write a lot about the legal world, obviously it's a legal thriller with sometimes great respect for the judicial system.
Is that on purpose in your writing?
- No, I'm, I don't know that I do anything on purpose.
I'm trying to read and write a book that I would like to read and I... - There's also a drunk judge though.
- There's a drunk judge, right, which has definitely is not me but I have great respect for the law.
I revere the law and I revere our system of law.
And if that comes through, that's good, but I'm not trying to sell a point of view on anything that I do.
I'm just simply trying to write books that people can sit down and read and enjoy.
And so, you know, for me a good book it's gonna be entertaining.
It's, you know, I try to write with a minimum of, you know, I don't want any politics.
I don't wanna, you know, nobody cares what my politics are, so I'm gonna try to write books that don't have any politics in them, they're not gonna have any graphic violence in them, they're not gonna have any explicit sex in them.
And they're gonna have a minimum of bad language and I'm working on that.
There'll be less in the later books than there was in the first.
- Not a lot in the first either, by the way.
So "Misjudged" "One and Done" "False Evidence."
- Right.
- Coming out in February of 2022, do you have a title for the fourth book yet?
- I don't, and I haven't even thought of it to be honest with you.
- How do you come about, how did you come about the titles?
- Well, "Misjudged" I had, you know, the wonderful thing about Wyoming and the Wyoming Judiciary and the Wyoming Criminal, the Wyoming Legal System really is it's so small that we all do know each other.
So it's easy to develop a plot sort of around judges and attorneys and courthouses because it really is the way it is, you know?
And that's the wonderful thing about the system here.
So "Misjudged" I guess kind of sort of wrote itself a little bit and you know, "One and Done" had to do with DeVaunte Blair, one of the main characters in the whole idea of "One and Done" in a basketball sense.
"False Evidence" is a concept where an attorney understands in advance that his client is going to or intends to lie to the tribunal, to the judge or to the jury.
And so that's sort of the central theme of the third book.
- Paul, we've asked you to read a little bit from one of your two books, what do you have for us here?
- Well, I was gonna read just a little bit of "Misjudged."
A couple of paragraphs that I think are sort of the essence of Sam.
- Go ahead.
- "Sam set quietly, fly rod across his lap, staring at nothing, hearing only the roar of the water against rock and feeling the morning sun on his shoulders and the high mountain, early summer breeze on his face.
He twisted the lid off a pewter flask and took a long pull from it, then wiped his mouth and returned the flask to his vest pocket.
Upstream, the small Lake formed by snow runoff was beginning to reflect the rays of the sun just peeking over the jagged crests of the highest peaks in this part of Oregon, somewhere an eagle shrieked.
He gave a desultory look at the selection of flies in his box, at last he selected a tiny attractor.
Having made up his mind, he leaned forward and began the process of tying the tiny fly to the tippet, the fly would work.
At this elevation, the small trout had only a few months to Gorge themselves before their world was once again covered with several feet of snow and ice.
If he could muster the energy and the interest to get going, he would catch fish.
He edged closer to the bank of the tiny creek, false casted a few times and flipped the fly upstream near a large boulder behind which were several inches of still water, and if Sam was right, of fish.
He played the brook trout as quickly as possible, remove it from the hook, then carefully released it in the shallows at his feet.
"I'm in the books," he whispered.
Sitting back down, he took another long pull from the flask.
With his left hand, he reached across his body and drew the pistol from the shoulder holster.
He purchased the lightweight compact double action 38 caliber revolver a couple of weeks prior.
The guy at the gun counter had tried to talk him out of it explaining the little revolver held only five rounds.
When Sam remarked, "I only need one."
The poor man, put his head down and finished the required paperwork without another word.
Sam looked at the revolver in the morning sun and took a deep breath, one round and it would all be over.
No more pain, no more regret.
Over the sound of the rushing creek, he heard once more, the thump of rocket propelled grenades and the scotto of automatic weapons from more than a decade ago.
The soft touch of the high mountain breeze yielded to the forest from the concussion and the mortar rounds, and the light round, light from the morning sun gave way to intermittent flashes caused by the burst.
He closed his eyes and heard the screams of his men, wounded and dying and fighting to the end."
So I think that's sort of the essence of Sam.
- When I read that I almost couldn't believe what I was reading.
And it's not too much of a spoiler alert that he did not commit suicide.
- He did not.
- Thank goodness he didn't.
Well, Paul Phillips, James Chandler, your books are great.
They are thrilling, or they at least were thrilling to me.
And thank you so much for joining us on Wyoming Chronicle.
- Well thank you for having me.
(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program was funded in part by a grant for Newman's Own Foundation, working to nourish the common good by donating all profits from Newman's Own Food and Beverage products to charitable organizations that seek to make the world a better place.
More information is available at Newmansownfoundation.org.
Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities, Thinkwy.org.
And by the members of the Wyoming PBS Foundation, thank you for your support.