An Interview with Robert Whitlow by Gina Holmes

Robert Whitlow is the best-selling author of legal thrillers set in the South and winner of the prestigious Christy Award for Contemporary Fiction. A Furman University graduate, Whitlow received his J.D. with honors from the University of Georgia School of Law where he served on the staff of the Georgia Law Review. A practicing attorney, Whitlow and his wife, Kathy, have four children. They make their home in North Carolina.



Interview 2006 via telephone.

Gina Holmes: I think most people know you’re an attorney as well as author. I’ve seen your law office’s web-site and noticed there is a link there to your novels. Your partner is supportive of your writing?

Robert Whitlow: Yes, they get a kick out of it. I use some of my co-worker’s names for characters in my books. In one book several of them appear as deputy sheriffs.

Gina: They like that I’m guessing.

Robert: Yeah.

Gina: You don’t kill them off?

Robert: [Laughs.] No.

Gina: That reminds me of Frank Peretti’s Monster. He has a character named Allen Arnold (WestBow publisher) who gets killed off. I laughed when I read that and wondered if Mr. Arnold did.

Robert: Yeah. I think he got a kick out of it.

Gina: Do you work full-time as an attorney?

Robert: Full-time. From ’97-2000, I had cut back when I was working in Georgia. I’m from Georgia and was a Georgia attorney for twenty years. I’m still a Georgia lawyer, but now practice in Charlotte.

Gina: What brought you to Charlotte?

Robert: We moved here in ’96. The reason for that was that my wife, Kathy, had a dream in 94 that we were going to move to Charlotte, and I don’t even remember her telling me that. A year later in ’95, she had another dream. Neither one of us dream a lot, she told me that she believed she saw the house we’re going to live in, in Charlotte. So, I thought, what am I going to do with that?

Gina: Drive around Charlotte until she recognizes it?

Robert: Charlotte’s a big city. My wife was talking to a friend and told her about the house she dreamt about, and her friend said, that’s my brother’s house in Charlotte and it’s for sale.

Gina: Wow.

Robert: She even got the asking price in the dream. I bought it for less though and I’ve always wondered if that was a sin.

Gina: [Laughs]

Robert: But that’s just the honest, straight answer of what happened.

Gina: Do you think that was God saying you were to move there?

Robert: I do. Otherwise I would never have become a writer. I was at a law firm in Georgia and extremely busy. I would never have had the time to undertake a project like writing a novel. When we moved, I worked part-time for a few years. It was really within a month of the move that I got the idea for my first novel. I’d never had any ambitions to write a novel. I would look at a novel and wonder how someone could do that.

Gina: Were you an avid reader?

Robert: I had read growing up. I have an older sister who is a professional librarian. She seems to have that gene. She would give me books to read in the sixth or seventh grade.

As an adult, I read so much in my practice, plus I had four small children who were so close in age, I didn’t have time to read recreationally.

Gina: What do you like to read now?

Robert: Grammar books.

Gina: [Laughs.]

Robert: [Not laughing.] “Woe is I”, which is a grammar book. This year I’ve read three novels: Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, & The March.

Gina: Is there an author you’re particularly impressed with?

Robert: Charles Martin who also writes for WestBow is a very, very, talented young writer. I respect his craft quite a bit.

Gina: I’d read besides being a husband and father to four, you like to hike, trout fish & garden besides being a full-time attorney and author. How do you find balance?

Robert: I don’t do as much trout fishing as I used to. We let the garden go—just grow grass now. I do still exercise. I think most lawyers can’t really say they work “full-time”. I work about thirty-five hours a week. I will write some in the morning before going in to work and then write more in the evening. I don’t watch a whole lot of TV.

Gina: How much time in the morning do you devote to writing?

Robert: Only about forty-five minutes.

Gina: Do you edit during that morning time or jdo just straight, unrestricted, creative writing?

Robert: Both. I tinker with what I’ve written the day before and then go on. But I do the bulk of my writing in the evenings and on the weekend.

I’m not putting out two or three books in a year either. I put out one book a year at best.

Gina: Is that by design, meaning if you tried to up your output do you think you might lose some of the deep characterization you’re known for?

Robert: Yes. My temperament wouldn’t tolerate cranking out too much. Everyone’s different, but for me, after two or three hours of writing, I’m finished. I might be able to drive the plot forward after that, but I’d lose nuance.

Gina: Do you do extensive plotting before you write?

Robert: No, I’m more organic.

Gina: Seat of the pants?

Robert: Yeah, that’s it. I’ll have broad direction in my mind and a few notes scribbled on a piece of paper and then I go on a voyage of discovery.

Gina: Interesting. I’m finding a pattern of writers that write seat of the pants often put out about one book a year. It takes longer to write this way I think.

Robert: I’m trying to keep writing fun, because I have a job I’m happy with. I’m very thankful I have a good law practice and the writing can be something that’s an enjoyable activity, not something I’m trying to support my family on.

My children are all in their twenties now, but I still have two in college. It’s hard to make a living as a writer when you're paying private school tuition.

Gina: It’s probably hard to make a living as a writer regardless.

Robert: Some people do okay. I think Ted [Dekker] does well. But he’s going at it full-force.

Gina: My impression is that he’s quite driven.

Robert: That’s one model and that works for him.

Gina: Most writers seem to have the goal that eventually they’d like to live off their writing, that doesn’t sound like your goal.

Robert: No. I like being a lawyer and if I believed writing wasn’t something I was supposed to continue with, I’d simply quit.

Gina: Wow. I don’t hear that...ever. You could just give up writing, really?

Robert: I might continue to do things just for myself. I guess once that well is tapped, the water flows, but the solitary life of the writer is not for me. I’m not cut out for that as a full-time vocation. Sitting alone in my room with my laptop, I’d drive my wife nuts. I need to be involved with people in a work environment.

Gina: Do you ever attend writer’s conferences?

Robert: I’m a member of ChiLibris. Which is a group of CBA writers who’ve had at least two published novels. We have an annual retreat a few days before the CBA convention. Are you familiar with them?

Gina: Yes.

Robert: It’s a great group of people.

Gina: Do you teach at writer’s conferences?

Robert: I do some local things, but I don’t do a lot of traveling. I don’t get a lot of invites either. Not that I’m looking for them, I’m not, but if say Mount Hermon invited me to speak, I probably would. I doubt they’ll ask though.

Gina: [Laughs] They might now that they know you’re interested. Why Mount Hermon?

Robert: I’ve just heard they’re one of the best.

Gina: Another great conference is the ACFW’s.

Robert: What’s that?

Gina: American Christian Fiction Writers. It’s a huge group of Christian writers, who have come together to help each other promote, learn, and fellowship. It’s an awesome group, you should really check it out.

Robert: I will. Are you a writer?

Gina: Yes, I write suspense. [boring conversation here about Gina and who is considering publishing her, etc. During this conversation we get on the subject of his publisher, Allen Arnold at WestBow.]

Robert: When I met Allen in ’99 he was a marketing guy with Nelson. He is really sharp. He comes up with excellent promotions. Selling a book is like selling cans of cola, you need shelf space, and he gets it. In the marketplace where everything is driven by promotions, sometimes the best literature doesn’t always get its rightful place in the sun. This is a business. But Allen really has a way of making that happen for a book.

Gina: Yes, I’ve heard over and over that WestBow does an excellent job of promoting their authors.

Robert: You know my latest book, Jimmy, is in hardcover, which I didn’t really care.

Gina: C’mon, that’s pretty cool, you have to admit it.

Robert: Well, what I really want is for people get a chance to read them. If my first book came out in hardcopy, my mom might have bought only one book. [Hardcover is much more expensive that a paperback.]

Gina: Speaking of your books getting read and shelf space, you’re a best-selling author and very well known. What do you think your success is due to? Do you think you simply wrote a good book and were lucky/blessed, or was it due to marketing or something else?

Robert: I don’t do a whole lot of marketing. What they do is with the first book they just throw it out there and see what happens. That’s what happened with
The List.

Back then Nelson was doing more speculative fiction which gave me a chance, plus they were looking to fill that Grisham niche. I’m from a small southern town. I’ve got a legal component in my books and some suspense.

The local bookstore by my house had two copies. I went into the store and offered to sign them. The owner told me he hates lawyers, then checked my face against the back of the book author photo to make sure it was really me. He told me the company wouldn’t take them back with the author’s signature on them, so he told me to sign just one.

Gina: [Laughing hysterically] Oh man, that’s rough. He didn’t think he could move two copies. That’s hilarious.

Robert: [laughing] That’s a true story.

Gina: How did The List do by the way?

Robert: In the first six months it sold twenty thousand copies.

Gina: Wow, nice.

Robert: I didn’t know that was good. I thought a million was good.

Gina: So you were bummed out, huh?

Robert: I found out you don’t have to sell a million copies to be a best-seller.
It sold twenty-thousand copies between word of mouth and being picked up in ABA stores like Barnes & Noble. The success of that book was a blessing and hopefully it had to do with the craft too.

So, it did well and then The Trial was picked up by Crossings as a primary selection. That helped get fifty thousand more copies out there, which didn't make me much money directly, but indirectly it helped a lot because it helped generate more word of mouth.

Gina: In ’96 you started writing The List. How did you get from drafting this idea to a contract?

Robert: I had the idea for the story and my wife told me I should write the book. I worked on it for about eight or nine months, had about twelve or thirteen chapters, then I spilled a drink on my laptop. I did have a hard copy, but after that I didn’t do anything with it for a year.

But, I just couldn’t get away from it, so I went back and read it. I even forgot some of the characters it had been so long. I will tell you, it was really b-a-d. Except for one chapter that was really good. That one chapter was my encouragement to pick it back up.

And then, I bought a book in January of ’97 that changed my life.

Gina: Let me guess, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

Robert: That’s the one! I went to a writer’s conference in Atlanta—Most discouraging thing I’d ever done in my life. Everyone talked about how impossible it is to get published and then once you are published you don’t make any money...and then I spilled the drink on my laptop and I said to heck with this.

Gina: [Laughs]

Robert: You know that book liberated me from writing legal briefs in fiction form--trying to explain, telling instead of showing. Didn’t know a thing about point of view or what a beat was. As an attorney, I knew how to write and some of my briefs were even entertaining, but I never wrote fiction before I wrote The List.

That book really changed everything.

Gina: Self-Editing is the best how to book out there, most definitely. There ought to be a mandate for any aspiring fiction writer to read it. It can save you years of frustration.

Robert: The thing I like best about that book is it just gives a few excellent lessons instead of trying to teach too much. If you can hold on to the lessons that books gives you, that will really improve your writing.

Gina: I’m hearing a lot about branding lately, authors needing to brand themselves. Looking back through what you’ve written, I don’t see that with you. At first you were compared to John Grisham, then to James Patterson, recently with Jimmy it’s Mark Twain.

Robert: [Laughs] That’s my maturation as a writer, you know? [Laughs harder] That cracked me up. I saw that on the back cover copy and I call Allen up and said, “Allen, you sure you want to say that?” But you know the crazy thing about that is they didn’t know at WestBow that while writing that novel I was actually reading Mark Twain, at that time. So when that popped up on the back cover I thought, whoa.

But, the branding thing is true, though Jimmy is a very different book then my others. Allen was very gracious to allow me to do something that was really in my heart to do—write about this mentally challenged young man. It does have a legal component, but it is not a ‘what’s going to happen next’ kind of book, unless you’re wrapped up in who this young man is as a person. The novel rises or falls on your connection with him.

Gina: What gave you the idea for that book?

Robert: I don’t know. It was just something I really wanted to do. After writing that, I’m not really sure where I’m going as a writer now. Though the book I’m working on now does go back to what I’ve been doing.

Gina: What are you working on now?

Robert: A novel about a lawyer turned minister. He gets called in for this odd older man that lives in his town to represent him on a smaller criminal charge that turns into something a whole lot more involved than he anticipated. The effects upon him are more significant than he would have ever guessed.

Gina: Is it okay that I mention the plot?

Robert: That’s fine.

Gina: You’re obviously an intelligent guy, you’re an author, an attorney, so how difficult was it to write from the pov of a mentally challenged boy?

Robert: I loved it because one of my heroes is Hemingway. I believe Hemingway and television are the two biggest influences on novels. Hemingway set us free from the heavy handed, flowery narrative to a more journalistic style. And the television of course influences dialogue and action.

I loved writing as Jimmy because I had to go back and cut back my vocabulary. I’m not trying to make a big deal about this, but hopefully it comes out as a pure, simpler, more powerful emotion.

Gina: That's great that your publisher supported you wanting to write something different.

Robert: Yes, there has been a lot of support all around. One of the things I love about the ChiLibris group I mentioned, is that everyone’s so supportive and not competetive. It’s really nuts for writers to be competetive. because you’re not running a race against each other. Basically you’re just jealous that another writer is doing well. I think we’re all in this thing together if we have a kingdom perspective on it. And I love that about ChiLibris.

Gina: Yeah, I think that’s one of the biggest things the CBA has going for it. We all answer to the same boss and that effects how we treat each other. We’re accountable to one another on a very high level. I think it’s probably an entirely different environment than you would find outside a group of Christians.

When we talked about your journey to publication, we didn’t get very far....

To be continued tomorrow.