Saturday, November 24, 2007 10:42 AM
Blawg Book Highlighter #11: Confessions of a Burned Out Ex-Lawyer
In these weekly Highlighters, I’ve tried to shine the light not only on the better known works on the law, but also on their lesser known counterparts. Because let’s face it, the better known ones don’t really need that extra light. They’re already in the bookstore windows.
There are a lot of works worthy of discovery that aren’t getting the attention they deserve, and one of my goals with this project is to uncover some of them and bring them into the light.
Back in Highlighter No. 2, I wrote about a blog-to-book success story, Jeremy Blachman’s “Anonymous Lawyer,” the fictional memoir of a hiring partner at a large law firm in a major city. While researching for Blachman’s book, I stumbled upon another fictional law memoir on blogger Cheryl Hagedorn’s Blooking Central.
What first caught my eye? The title: “Confessions of a Burned Out Ex-Lawyer.” .
What kept me reading? It is an unfinished work, or a work-in-progress, being irregularly updated in e-book form.
In other words, you can read “Confessions”, as it’s being written, for free: Confessions of a Burned Out Ex-Lawyer.
The e-book’s author, Cameron Case, is also its narrator, confessor and self-described asshole. Cameron is, by the way, a woman. I have no idea if she really exists, or if the name is merely a pseudonym (as I suspect). The e-book’s publisher describes the book-in-progress as “Fiction?| Genre: Confessional / Biography | undetermined.” In other words, it’s not easily definable or catalogued.
“Confessions” is a collection of stories drawn from the narrator’s past as a criminal defense attorney (she is now some sort of undefined legal pencil pusher). Though this is fiction, as you read it, you’ll undoubtedly find yourself, as I did, oftentimes wondering how much of it, if any, happened in real life.
Forgive the occasional typo or the run-on sentence (the latter of which, the author writes, lawyers love). This is an unfinished, raw product, after all. And the humor in it is so sharp and deftly crafted that you can easily put up with a few grammatical transgressions. Just be sure to close your office door when you read it so that you’re supervisor doesn’t catch you laughing out loud.
Consider this an early holiday gift from the Highlighter. If you like it, pass it on as a gift. The author has made the first thirteen chapters of the novel-in-progress available for purchase in print through self-publisher Lulu. You can find the chapters via this link: http://www.lulu.com/content/1275298
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Randy Richardson is an author, humorist, former journalist, and a lawyer. His fiction debut, Lost in the Ivy, a murder mystery set against the backdrop of Chicago's storied Wrigley Field, won the Writers Marketing Association's “Fresh Voices” Book Award and the Illinois Woman's Press Association's Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest. He writes the Dad Libs column for SanityCentral.com and is a frequent contributor to Chicago Parent magazine. In his day job, he is an attorney for the Social Security Administration’s disability appeals branch. At night and during lunch breaks, he serves as president of the Chicago Writers Association (chicagowrites.org) and works on his second novel while a 4-year-old tugs on his legs. Visit his website at www.lostintheivy.com.
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