Warms the cockles of the heart when we see somebody escape the law to fiction writing (St Martins Press no less) and get paid for it !
The CT Post reports
http://www.ctpost.com/living/article/Stamford-lawyer-takes-another-shot-at-literary-8337197.php
Wendy Walker has been living with fingers crossed for several months now.
The Stamford writer is hoping that the buzz surrounding her new novel, “All Is Not Forgotten” (St. Martin’s Press, $21.31), might mean that her days of juggling a writing dream with a career as a lawyer are numbered. The psychological thriller, which will be published July 12, has been garnering strong advance praise from fellow authors and booksellers, and the movie rights have already been bought by Reese Witherspoon.
“Talking with her for 45 minutes about the book has to be one of the highlights of my life,” Walker says of having the astute Oscar-winning actress-producer tell her how much she loved the character-driven psychological thriller. (Witherspoon is a famously voracious reader whose production company snapped up the movie rights to “Gone Girl” and “Wild” before they became blockbuster books.)
“It was a do-or-die situation for me. My last real effort,” the author says of taking another shot at novel writing after the disappointing response to her early books caused her to take a long break to work as a lawyer.
“My legal practice was starting to take off, but I cleared the decks last spring and then lived and breathed the novel for three months,” Walker says. Her agent’s suggestion to try writing a thriller rather than women’s fiction has paid off.
The writer is a divorced mother who hopes her attempt at reinvention might be inspiring to her three children.
“The kids have seen me through all of the ups and downs. Working at one job, but trying to accomplish a Plan B. ‘Why do you have to write?’ they asked me and I told them ‘Because this is my dream.’ I’m glad that they’ve seen me just keep at it. Their support has been one of the best things about this experience.”
“All Is Not Forgotten” tells the harrowing, suspenseful story of the aftermath of a rape at a high school party in suburban Fairfield County. When Jenny Kramer is taken to the hospital, she’s given a drug treatment for those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder that is designed to wipe out memories of a traumatic event.
In the aftermath of the rape, Jenny’s parents are split on how the family will move forward, with her mother Charlotte preferring to put the crime behind them, and the father, Tom, vowing to find the man who assaulted his daughter. As the hunt for Jenny’s rapist continues, the Kramer family begins to fall apart.
What places the novel in the company of contemporary best-sellers like “The Girl on the Train” and “Gone Girl” is Walker’s choice of Jenny’s psychiatrist as the unreliable narrator of the story. As increasingly disturbing events unfold, the doctor’s possible hidden agenda will keep readers from putting the novel down until they reach the startling finale.
Walker began thinking about the book a few years ago when she read a New York Times story about the use of intensive doses of painkillers immediately after a trauma to minimize PTSD in the weeks and months following the event. The experimental treatment was being conducted in military situations, but the writer thought, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if it was used in the civilian world with assault trauma?”
The possible psychological impact of memory loss might be beneficial to the victim, but it could also make it harder to convict anyone charged with the crime. “That would be the first thing a defense attorney would bring up,” Walker says of tampering with memories of an assault.
But can memories truly be erased? And what are the physical dangers of trying to soften recollections of a terrible event with drug treatments?
After working in the so-called “chick lit” genre in her earlier books, Walker enjoyed switching gears to psychological suspense and facing up to the challenges of combining an intricate mystery plot with characters who resonate with readers. The novelist wanted to create a book with the sort of surprises that made “Gone Girl” so gripping, but with a three-dimensional family drama in the tradition of “Ordinary People.”
“A lot of thrillers are fun to read, but they’re like candy,” Walker says. “I wanted to see if I could add a lot of depth and substance — make it real — so that a reader will say, ‘Oh my God, what would I do?’”
