Author Interview with Michael H. Rubin
We are talking with Michael H. Rubin Author of Cashed Out! Let's find about more about Michael and his writing.
Tell us a few things about yourself that our readers would like to know.
The novels that are published under the name “Michael H. Rubin” are actually jointly written by my wife, Ayan, and me.
We work out the key plot points and characters on our daily early morning power walks at 4:30 a.m. We have never had any problem coming up with either storylines or characters. We talk through possibilities until we feel we have the basics for a novel in place. Once we have the key characters and the arc of the story (beginning, middle, and end) in mind, we do not commit this to an outline; rather, once we establish the general structure, we start writing. We write wherever and whenever we can. Early in the morning. Late at night. On airplanes. Waiting at an airport to catch a flight. In hotel rooms while on business trips.
We don’t stop until we have completed the first draft of the entire book. In working on the first draft of our latest thriller, CASHED OUT, as in the case of our other manuscripts, we began by writing down anything and everything that we thought might be relevant or interesting, just as foliage in the Deep South springs up profusely after a rain, with tendrils of weeds sprouting everywhere. Then, we get out the editorial shears and cut everything down to size. We edit out passages that slow down the story. We prune away excess adjectives. We slice through complex sentences in an effort to make the prose flow.
We’re pleased that reviewers have enjoyed our work. Forward Reviews calls Cashed Out “enthralling” and “fast-paced,” and The Providence Journal has called Cashed Out a “gem of a tale” featuring a lawyer “down and out enough to make John Grisham proud” and “culled from the likes of Michael Connelly by way of James Lee Burke.”
Tell us about your writing process.
As I mentioned, before we ever start writing, my wife and I have talked through the key characters and their motivations, and we know the beginning, middle, and end of the novel, although we don’t yet know all the subplots or minor characters. Part of the fun in writing is to see how these develop during the writing process.
Although we never begin with a written outline, we “outline in reverse.” In other words, once we write a chapter, we jot down general information concerning that chapter on a spreadsheet. As each new chapter is drafted, the essence of its contents gets added to the spreadsheet. This helps us in several ways.
First, it aids us in keeping continuity straight. Did characters say or do something in chapter 14 that is unintentionally at odds with what they said or did in chapter 3? Keeping an outline in reverse helps us avoid inadvertent continuity errors that can creep into a manuscript.
Second, a reverse outline is extremely useful in keeping time frames aligned, especially in a thriller like CASHED OUT, where the protagonist races against the clock, evading life-threatening danger while attempting to both retrieve $4 million of his dead client’s cash and salvage his own reputation.
Third, a reverse outline is invaluable when you’re trying to locate something you wrote in a prior chapter so that you can properly reflect the foreshadowing you built in while composing earlier portions of the manuscript. Although computers can electronically search for words you used, they won’t help you find concepts you had introduced, plot points you had staked out, or twists and clues you had added. That’s where a reverse outline comes in handy.
Fourth, once a manuscript is finally completed and it’s time to write a synopsis, a reverse outline provides a quick way to review the entire storyline in detail.
We’ve found that the reverse outline method saves us from being straight-jacketed into a preordained plot. We prefer not to spend time creating a detailed outline in advance because we do not want to tire of the story before we even start writing it. Likewise, employing the reverse outline method in conjunction with our intimate knowledge of the main characters and the primary arc of the novel before committing anything to the page lets the story and characters evolve as we write while simultaneously enabling us to see where we’ve been. It’s like having a backup camera in a car that works in tandem with the rearview mirror. You need to pay attention to what’s in front of you, but when you have to look backwards, it’s reassuring to know that you’re getting the clearest and broadest view possible.
Any advice you would like to give to aspiring writers?
The best advice I’ve ever received is the one all fledging writers get but find hard to put into practice—show, don’t tell. A novel isn’t a textbook. A novel isn’t a history lesson. A novel isn’t a rushed outline. A novel shouldn’t be dry and pedantic. A novel should be so compelling that readers feel as if they are completely “in” the story, not outside of it.
As you might imagine from this, the harshest criticism I received when I was starting out was that I was telling, not showing. It took many, many rewrites to learn how to show and not tell.
In addition to the great advice I received about showing and not telling, the other invaluable advice was “don’t give up.” Almost no one writes a classic on the first draft. Few do so in their second draft. It is often said that mastering any skill requires 10,000 hours, whether it is playing an instrument or learning to write fiction. My wife, Ayan, and I write our novels together. She is a great writer and editor. With a red pen, she cuts out excess verbiage, stilted language, and boring paragraphs, and we revise the manuscript again and again, improving it each time. Every author needs frank comments and constructive criticism coupled with a sincere reminder that you should rewrite, and that you shouldn’t give up because what you have to say is worthwhile.
Do you have a day job other than being a writer? And do you like it? Does your day job ever get in the way of your writing?
I’m in the full-time practice of law as an appellate attorney, and I am one of the managers of a firm with offices from the West Coast to the Gulf Coast to the East Coast. Being an attorney is actually an advantage in writing thrillers. Look at the many great lawyer/authors, like John Grisham, Scott Turow, and Brad Meltzer. The skills a lawyer has to have in the courtroom are the same ones a thriller author has to possess—find a way to tie together all the facts while holding the jury’s (or reader’s) attention and weave that into a compelling story.
People often ask how my wife and I find time to write with everything else we have going on. The answer is simple. If you like to watch football, you’ll find time to do that. If you like to hunt or fish, you’ll find time to do that. If you like to write, as we do, you’ll find time to do that. We all find time to do those things that are most interesting to us.
Do you enjoy book signings?
My wife and I relish the opportunity to meet with readers. In the past six months we’ve been on a book tour that has taken us from New Orleans to New York, from Jacksonville to Toronto, from Houston to Los Angeles, and points in between. I am a public speaker and humorist who has given over 400 major presentations across the country, as well as in Canada and the U.K.. My wife spent years in television, and together we’ve developed a unique, fast-paced multi-media presentation about our novels where nothing is static, and things change on the screen every 3-to-7 seconds as I speak. The presentation reviews the background of the novel and is tied to the locale in which I’m speaking. I even do this type of presentation live via Skype and Facetime to bookclubs around the country.
If you were given the opportunity to form a book club with your favorite authors of all time, which legends or contemporary writers would you want to become a part of the club?
If I were hosting a book club, I’d invite Dashiell Hammett, E.B. White, and Dorothy Parker. Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon and other classic detective novels. E.B. White, who worked for the New Yorker, wrote Charlotte’s Web, as well as The Elements of Style to which many writers today still refer. Parker was a short story writer known for her wit and was part of the Algonquin Round Table, along with Robert Benchley and Alexander Woollcott.
I’d love to hear Hammett, White, and Parker address the art of writing in conjunction with a discussion of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, and Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.
How big of a part does music play while you write?
I’ve been a professional jazz pianist in the New Orleans French Quarter, so music is always “foreground” to me, not background. I can’t write while music is playing, because I find myself listening to the music rather than concentrating on the writing. But, whenever I can, I find time to play piano, and I try to do it every day.
Writing a novel is like playing jazz. Both involve working creatively around a theme. In jazz, the theme is melody and chord structure. In a novel, the theme is the plot. In jazz, I use the theme as the jumping off point to create my own interpretation, freely improvising within an identifiable structure. Writing a novel is like that for me. My goal is to creatively use words to develop a plot line into a meaningful story, flesh-out the characters, reveal things that readers might not previously know or have thought of (and that even I might not have thought of when I started writing), and move the tale along to a satisfying conclusion.
What authors influenced you?
As an author of thrillers and mysteries, you would think that my three favorite writers are all authors in the same genre. Of course, John Grisham, Scott Turow, David Baldacci, Lee Child, James Patterson, and Michael Connelly, to name just a few, are wonderful. But, perhaps surprisingly, my three favorite authors, the ones who most inspire me, are Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Ray Bradbury.
Charles Dickens wrote his novels in serial format, composing a chapter or two at a time. Those chapters were published in weekly or monthly magazines, and readers anxiously awaited each edition to find out what happened next. Dickens initiated what we now call “cliff hangers,” chapters so enthralling that thousands upon thousands hungered for the upcoming installment to be published. Dickens also created characters so compelling that, more than 150 years later, we still enjoy reading about them and are still moved by tales of such memorable individuals as David Copperfield, Ebenezer Scrooge, Oliver Twist, and Fagin. Dickens inspires me both to write chapters ending in such a way that the reader thinks, “Okay, I’ll just go ahead and read a few more pages of the next chapter to find out what happens,” and to devise memorable characters who leap off the page and into your imagination.
Mark Twain was not only a remarkable humorist and observer of life, but he was also able to write in such a way that the reader understood more than the narrator of the story appears able to do. Consider, for example, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Although the novel is told through the eyes of Huck, who is only 13 or 14, the reader is able to comprehend what is going on and the motivations of those with whom Huck interacts much better than Huck can. Twain inspires me to write novels in which the reader sees the implications of some things that the characters themselves do not.
Ray Bradbury wrote what is often referred to as science fiction or fantasy, but his novels, such as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Dandelion Wine are rightly treated today as literature. Bradbury showed that one can write literary fiction within the confines of what some would see as a limited genre. He wrote clearly and movingly. He said that he admired Eudora Welty for her “remarkable ability to give you atmosphere, character, and motion in a single line.” Bradbury did all of that in prose so readable that one does not ever see the effort it took to achieve these goals. Bradbury inspires me to carry readers along on top of the wave as the plot crests, without getting snagged in the undertow of too many adjectives or asides.
For these reasons, as an author of thrillers, I continue to be moved and inspired by Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Ray Bradbury.
Get your copy today!
Cashed Out
by Michael H. Rubin
Thriller
August 15, 2017
One failed marriage. Two jobs lost. Three maxed out credit cards. “Schex” Schexnaydre was a failure as a lawyer. Until three weeks ago, he had no clients and no cash — no clients except for infamous toxic waste entrepreneur G.G. Guidry, who’s just been murdered, and no cash, except for the $4,452,737 Guidry had stashed with him for safekeeping.
When Schex’s estranged ex-wife, Taylor, is accused of Guidry’s murder, she pleads with Schex to defend her. He refuses, but the more he says no to Taylor, the deeper Schex gets dragged into the fall-out from Guidry’s nefarious schemes, ending up as the target of all those vying to claim Guidry’s millions for themselves.
About the Author:
A nationally-known speaker and humorist as well as a full-time attorney, Michael H. Rubin has had a varied career. He has also been a professional jazz pianist in the New Orleans French Quarter, a radio and television announcer, and an adjunct law professor. His debut novel, “The Cottoncrest Curse,” received the Book-of-the-Year Gold Award at the annual meeting of the American Library Association in 2015 and was named the top thriller/suspense novel published by a university or independent press. Rubin is the winner of the Burton Award, given at the Library of Congress, for outstanding writing, and is a member of the Author’s Guild, the International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America, and the International Association of Crime Writers.
Social Media:
