Interview with L.M. Weeks, author of Bottled Lightning

Today it gives the Indie Crime Scene great pleasure to interview L.M. Weeks, whose novel Bottled Lightning has its debut on June 14.

After working for many years as a lawyer, what inspired you to write a novel?

When I was in what Americans call grammar or grade school, I won two creative writing contests and was a runner up in a third. I also “produced,” directed, and acted in two plays based on the novels Dracula and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Ever since then, I have wanted to write a novel, but I got sidetracked with my career and life. However, the urge to write strengthened over the years, and I started keeping notes about a story percolating in my head. Finally, in 2017, I decided it was now or never if I were ever going to pen a novel. So I committed to myself that I would write a complete manuscript by no later than the end of 2018. I gave myself two years because I was still practicing law full time and had no idea how long it would take to get to “THE END.”

Your first novel, Bottled Lightning, debuts on June 14. Can you tell us something about the plot?

Sure. At base, it’s about a smart and successful lawyer, Tornait “Torn” Sagara, with myriad personal problems who, when the chips are down, gets his act together and finds a way to protect those he cares about most. In a nutshell, Torn’s brilliant and beautiful tech client, Saya Brooks, invented a lightning-on-demand generation and energy storage system that will make all existing energy sources obsolete and solve the climate change problem. Unfortunately for them, entrenched forces want to bury her technology and both of them with it.

Your protagonist, Torn Sagara, is an international lawyer who specialises in cutting edge technology. But he finds himself having to deal with an unusual client, scientist Saya Brooks. What can you tell us about Torn and Saya and how they meet?

A founder of an offshore floating wind farm company referred Saya to Torn for legal advice in connection with a VC firm’s investment in Saya’s start-up, Raijin Clean, Inc. The founder of the floating wind farm company was also a client of Torn’s. Over time, Saya and Raijin Clean started sending all of their legal work, including patent work, to Torn. Torn has a strict code of non-fraternization with clients and colleagues, but his resolve begins to waver as he gets to know Saya.

Saya has developed a new technology based on lightning. What gave you the idea for this process and how did you research it?

I wanted to write about a cutting edge technology, but I didn’t know what technology to fictionalize or even the industry. It turned out that I was surrounded by people in an industry that is ripe for disruption because our law firm does a lot of both conventional (read, oil and gas) and clean energy (read, renewables) work. So even though I’m not an energy lawyer, I have worked on deals in the energy space and have had a fair amount of exposure to it. One day, while discussing an offshore floating wind farm project in Japan with a colleague, I thought renewable energy might be interesting to write about because of its potential for ameliorating the climate change problem. We also do a lot of technology start-up work. So writing about a tech lawyer working with an inventor of a bleeding edge energy invention seemed an easy way to go, but I didn’t know what technology to focus on since all of the interesting energy ideas already seemed to be in the public domain. The only thing I knew was that whatever idea I came up with had to be revolutionary. Then, one day while cowering on the bottom of a flat skiff in shark-infested waters contemplating the end of my life as thunderous lightning bolts dropped all around us it hit me (pardon the pun) that it would be very cool if we could generate lightning at will. 

After surviving that terrifying experience and doing a lot of research on how lightning is generated and how its energy could be stored, I decided to go with lightning because it’s dynamic, can generate up to five times more heat than the sun, and scientists aren’t 100% sure exactly how lightning is formed, which provided me with a gap in human knowledge in which to create lighting on demand. Saya, the inventor in Bottled Lightning, solved the problems of not only how exactly lightning is generated but also how to replicate that process at any time and how to store the energy. 

As an added bonus, Raijin, a Japanese deity in Shinto’s panoply of gods, is the god of lightning, thunder, and storms, which is why I named Saya’s company Raijin Clean. 

Several people have asked me if the technology is real, which always makes me smile. It’s great that people reading my description of Saya’s invention might actually think it works!

Both Saya and Torn in turn find themselves in mortal peril from ruthless individuals who want to seize the technology. What can you tell us about these antagonists?

The global energy market is massive and almost everyone in the world is a customer or both a producer and a customer. Any disruptive technology, particularly a new technology that could produce reliable clean energy and replace fossil fuels, nuclear power, and all other sources of renewable energy would destroy, at least in the short term, the economies of many nations and the businesses of numerous companies and individuals. Think about, for example, what electricity did to the kerosene lamp industry or automobiles did to horse buggies, trains, and trolleys. So there are many possible suspects when you consider everyone who might be adversely affected. But who would know about a technology developed by a privately owned start-up? An invention has not been widely publicized yet? And who would be so ruthless as to resort to potentially killing people to bury a threatening technology? And don’t most investors just jump on the bandwagon of the new technology instead of trying to suppress it? Those questions are what led me to the antagonists in Bottled Lightning.

 

You yourself have lived and worked in Tokyo as well as New York, and speak fluent Japanese. How has your knowledge of place and language affected Bottled Lightning?

I can give you several examples of how that knowledge helped with the world building in Bottled Lightning. First, my son is biracial, and I have many friends with biracial children. So I know to a certain extent how people of mixed race (at least people who have American and Japanese parents – and in the case of one friend, French and Japanese parents) in both Japan and the US feel and the advantages and disadvantages of being biracial, bilingual, and bicultural. And I was able to benefit from their feedback when I had them read the manuscript.

Second, I have done a lot of motorcycle riding in Japan since the 1980s. It’s a wonderful place to ride. The streets are well maintained, car drivers are taught to look out for motorcycles, and the winding mountain roads and views in Japan are to die for. I even used to street race, which is really stupid, and I don’t recommend that anyone try it at home. (laughing) 

Third, I know police, prosecutors, and lawyers in Japan. A former Japanese prosecutor and a former judge both practice in our Tokyo office. I have been to several criminal and civil legal proceedings in Japan and have helped American citizens arrested in Japan. I have also studied Japanese criminal law and procedure. Moreover, I was in Japan when Carlos Ghosn, the former CEO of Nissan and Renault, spectacularly escaped to Lebanon from house arrest in Tokyo while awaiting trial, and I know a judge involved in that case. 

Fourth, I have lived in Japan long enough to have attended funerals there. They are very different from funerals in the US. For better or for worse, I have lived long enough to have attended funerals in both countries, which makes comparison easy. The experience in Japan is much more visceral, in your face, and less antiseptic and distant than they generally are in the US. 

Fifth, I have lived through numerous earthquakes and their aftermaths in Japan, including the big one in 2011 that caused the giant tsunami and Fukushima meltdown. 

All of these things influenced what to write about and how.

Generally speaking, my knowledge of, and experiences living in, Japan and the US have helped me describe more clearly the differences between Japan and the US and Japanese and Americans and also the world of biracial people caught in between.

I have had a 44-year relationship with Japan and have lived more than half of my adult life in Japan. But I am still an outsider and always will be. Unlike the US, where anyone can become an American, because of Japan’s history and culture, I don’t believe it is possible for a non-Japanese person to become truly Japanese. To take an extreme example, even if you’re an American whose ancestors are from Japan, aka, a Japanese-American, you’ll never be fully Japanese in Japan. That is not a criticism of a country I adore. It’s merely an observation. 

Being an outsider has its advantages, however. It makes you more observant and objective about the country and culture in which you're living and the language you’re speaking. It’s also a great point of comparison for thinking about the United States specifically and the West generally because Japan’s history, language, and culture are so different from that of the US, where I was born and raised, and the western world. 

For example, Japan is not a Judeo-Christian nation. The spiritual foundations of Japan are Shintoism, a polytheistic religion at the heart of which is ancestor worship, and Buddhism, which at base is more of a philosophy than a religion, although different sects have turned it into a religion. Also, there was very little nexus between Japan and the western world until the mid-19th century. Much of Japanese history and culture developed independently of the West. For example, the traditional holidays are all very different from those in the West and arise out of a very different history and way of thinking not influenced by Judeo-Christian or Greek philosophy and thought. 

Living and working in Japan and speaking Japanese has made me more objective about the strengths and shortcomings of both Japan and the US and helps me to appreciate more the wonderful things about both countries. My experience living in Japan also fundamentally broadened and deepened my palate. I can eat anything! And it has made me more analytical and objective when thinking about religion and philosophy. I hope that this objectivity has resulted in a picture of Japan and the characters in the book that has depth and is multifaceted.

Bottled Lightning is described as a legal thriller, but Torn has to go much further in trying to bring down the people who threaten his life and more. How does he handle it?

Not particularly well, at first. It reminds me of those Saturday Night Live skits, Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer: “I’m just a caveman…” (laughing) When I think of Torn, I think of someone who is just a lawyer and not an action hero. Torn is basically a tech nerd who became a legal geek. He has an impressive technology background (PhD and masters), is a dual-barred lawyer, is independently wealthy, has sophisticated corporate clients, handles complicated IP and corporate matters, is someone who uses his brain instead of brawn (except when absolutely necessary for him to take direct physical action), is bilingual and bicultural, has a mother who is a retired lawyer, is an excellent motorcyclist, runs the successful Tokyo office of a global law firm, etc. He’s used to working with smart scientist types. He’s thoughtful and sensitive. Too sensitive in some ways. Yes, he was raised in Alaska, can survive in the wilderness, and is athletic and outdoorsy, but he’s not an action hero. He’s not Jack Reacher, 007 (for example, Bond goes through women like toilet paper without a second thought for most of them and runs headlong into harm’s way whereas Torn agonizes over his women issues and is actually frightened when in danger), or Nicholai Hel, the superhuman emotionless assassin in Shibumi. 

Nevertheless, despite being in over his head when things start to go south, Torn rises to the challenge.

The themes of ecology and the safety of the planet run through the book. Why is that important to you?

I have always loved, and recreated in, the great outdoors and have been a passionate conservationist of wild habitat, including fisheries strongholds—meaning entire watersheds—and endangered species to preserve biodiversity since a very young age. This is why for many years I have supported, both financially and through my pro bono legal work, various conservation organizations, including The Wilderness Society, Captains for Clean Water, The Wild Salmon Center, Ocean Outcomes, the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust, etc.

There is now an initiative in the US and around the world to preserve at least 30% by 2030—"30 by 30,” it’s called— of our wild and open spaces, and create corridors connecting them for animal migration. Open spaces provide clean air and clean water, support biodiversity, and are spaces we can all enjoy to regain our sanity in a busy never unplugged world. They also have a very positive impact from a climate change perspective. The trees and other plants, forests, jungles, and peat bogs found in wild habitat act as CO2 sinks that lower the carbon in the atmosphere. 

As well as your work as a corporate lawyer, you have also conducted pro bono work. To what extent has this experience influenced your writing and the theme of your story?

I have done pro bono work my entire career, and our firm does thousands of hours of pro bono work around the world each year. Our work ranges from representing those seeking asylum to helping not-for-profits incorporate to representing those on death row in their appeals. I’m a strong believer that everyone, particularly those of us blessed with successful and fulfilling careers, needs to give back, and not just by making virtue signalling or guilt assuaging donations here and there, but by bringing our strongest skill set to bear to help solve problems for people who can’t afford the help they need and/or for the broader benefit of mankind. I also have a problem with authority, particularly when I believe it’s being used in an unfair or unjust way, and lawyers can be the great equalizers between the powerful and the powerless.

You are also a keen angler and love fly-fishing for tarpon. Tell us something about that.

Yeah, I love to fly fish for tarpon. I wanted to work it into Bottled Lightning but couldn’t find a way to do it without making it sound completely contrived, which is ironic since the entire book is fiction. (laughing)

I will fly fish for any fish, but tarpon have infected my soul. Tarpon get quite large (averaging 70-80 pounds and reaching close to 300), live in a wide variety of environments, swim in shallow water, and take to the air when hooked. Fly fishing for tarpon is also quite technical from the first cast to grabbing them boat side. It has often been said that if a fly angler knowing nothing about tarpon were asked to design the ideal flyrod gamefish, they would invent tarpon. They aren’t called the silver king for nothing. 

Tarpon also live in places where other wildlife abounds. I routinely see manatees, dolphins, sharks, including giant hammerhead sharks, osprey, pelicans, cormorants, saltwater crocodiles, and numerous other animals while chasing tarpon.

I have spent several years pursuing them and competing in tarpon fly fishing tournaments in the Florida Keys, winning two of them (the Don Hawley Invitational Tarpon Fly Fishing Tournament and the HLM Tarpon Cup). I have travelled as far as Gabon, a country in West Africa, to catch giant tarpon. There is a very real possibility that tarpon will be the thing I’m thinking about when I take my last breath. (laughter)

Will there be a sequel to Bottled Lightning?

I was not thinking about creating a sequel or a series when writing Bottled Lightning, although I have since learned that writing a series is a business model many authors follow a la the Jack Reacher series because with each successive book their fan base grows, and new fans buy all of the previous books as well as the latest book. 

But I didn’t have a business plan in mind when I sat down to write. I just wanted to write something I found fun and hoped others would too. In fact, the novel I’m working on now is not even a thriller or set in Japan. It’s a contemporary story set in a fictional land. But I have to admit that Bottled Lightning ended in a way that lends itself to a sequel, although that was not by design. 

A recent Kirkus review opined that Bottled Lightning would “make a stirring start to a series,” and authors are always happy with any positive feedback they can get! Also, if my publicist has anything to do with it there will be a sequel. (laughing)

In the Law, the importance of words and the interpretation of their meaning is crucial. How do you deal with the difference when you come to write creatively?

Good question!

One of the biggest challenges for me as a neophyte fiction writer was unlearning everything I had learned to become good at legal writing. The goals of good legal writing are just the opposite of writing fiction. For example, in legal writing, you want to give the conclusions upfront. A good legal memorandum contains the issue or issues and conclusion at the top, followed by a recitation of the facts, and then the analysis when applying the law to the facts. Many clients read only the conclusion without reading the rest of the memo. Fiction is just the reverse; you want to hide the ball until the end to keep the reader turning the page. Having said that, you do need something up front, a hook in the first sentence, paragraph, and/or chapter, that grabs the reader to keep them from putting the book down. That is similar to the issue or issues stated at the beginning of a legal memo but the conclusion in a novel is saved for the end.

Another difference is that in legal writing you want to be crystal clear when describing the relevant facts, the law, how the law applies to the facts, and your advice. You don’t want to be vague or leave anything to the client’s imagination. Again, writing fiction is just the opposite. You want to incite the reader’s imagination to conjure up the world you’re writing about. You want to give the reader just enough information for them to understand what is relevant to the story and fill in the blank spaces, somewhat automatically or at least effortlessly, with their imaginations.

A third difference is that in legal writing you don’t want to trigger an emotional response. “Just the facts, Ma’am,” like in the old Dragnet TV shows. (The exception to this is when advocating. For example, when writing a legal brief to convince a judge to rule in the client’s favor.) When writing fiction, however, you want to be triggering emotional responses all the way through the book! If you’re not, what’s the point! It’s fiction. The reader is not reading your novel to obtain valuable information. They’re reading it to relax and escape to a far away, and perhaps dangerous and/or confusing and thought-provoking place to experience all of the emotion actually being there would cause but without the danger, hard work, and ennui of actually living it. A really good novel might teach a broader moral or life lesson in a subtle way, but putting Christian fiction aside, they’re not generally meant to be biblical stories, at least in my humble opinion.

A fourth difference is that accuracy, precision, and conciseness are three of the highest valued attributes of good legal writing. Another is analytical skills, but we’ll set that aside for purposes of this discussion. Lawyers don’t like to guess or write anything that is not supported by a source or established fact. No lawyer worth their salt wants to be accused of not knowing what they’re talking about. And for the sake of precision, a lawyer will use words with very specific meanings lest their statements be misinterpreted. For example, a lawyer may use the word corporation instead of company when they wish to differentiate a corporation from a limited liability company and/or a partnership even though laypeople colloquially use company interchangeably to describe all three entities. And lawyers often define words and/or use the same word over and over to prevent confusion. Since accuracy, precision, and conciseness are three of the highest values in legal writing, lawyers rarely consider the poetic or lyrical nature or “sound” of their writing.  This can lead to stilted, mechanical, and mind-numbingly boring prose, although it may be brilliant legal writing. (Again, the exception is when writing to advocate a position.) 

As a fiction writer, I had to consider the rhythm and cadence of my words and length of my sentences, all of which can affect the reader’s enjoyment of your prose. I also had to learn the importance of assonance and alliteration. These, aesthetically important aspects of fiction writing were completely foreign to me. I had to develop these aesthetic muscles over time.

On the other hand, if you’re good at writing fiction, I think that can make you a better legal writer because of your sensitivity to words and their usage. For example, I know a Japanese lawyer in Japan who is both a famous poet and a famous lawyer. His legal writing, in both Japanese and English, is exquisite. He just has that sixth sense that enables him to write in a way that reads naturally and is never stilted or awkward, even when describing complicated legal concepts.

In most crime novels, themes of justice have an important role to play. What are your views on this subject?

I’m reminded of when I worked on a pro bono project for a client who had been convicted of armed robbery. While working on an appeal of his conviction, I read the transcript of the trial at which he was found guilty. It seemed to me that the evidence, including testimony from unreliable witnesses who had identified the black defendant from across a badly lit street at night, was weak and the public defender had done a terrible job. (At one point during the trial, the judge even said to the defense attorney, “Are you chewing gum? Very professional.”) I also visited our client at the correctional facility in upstate New York where he had been incarcerated for eight or nine years. Since I had no money or car at the time, I rode the bus from the South Bronx that families of inmates often took to visit their relatives in prison. I spoke to some of them and heard their pain. After arriving, I was horrified by what I heard, saw, and smelled at the penitentiary (which was what correctional facilities used to be called) and was on a crusade to overturn the travesty of justice that had befallen my client. 

A few days before we were to file our brief, however, I received the client’s rap sheet from the prosecutor’s office. It showed four prior convictions for the same crime of armed robbery! Well, all five juries couldn’t be wrong! I thought. (laughing) Deflated, I asked the seasoned criminal defense attorney overseeing my work what was the point of “zealously” representing such a reprobate. His response was that we do it to keep the criminal justice system honest; to make sure the police and prosecutors follow the proper procedures. He said that criminal defense attorneys are the only people standing between the constitutional rights of the accused and the police and the prosecutors, who have the vast resources of the state behind them, and the court of public opinion, as represented by what is reported in the press. That’s when I learned the importance of the rights of the accused no matter how guilty they may seem to be, even to their attorney. 

And it’s just as true today, if not even more so, as it was then. Without the right to counsel and the work of criminal defense attorneys, the state and the press, through ambitious and sometimes lazy, sloppy, and/or nefarious police officers, prosecutors, and reporters would run roughshod over the rights of the accused, and it wouldn’t matter what the constitution or law said about their rights. A lot of criminal defense work is about protecting the rights of the accused from the banality of evil represented by an imperfect state.

Years after this first pro bono case, I watched the Tokyo war crimes trials and saw how hard the US and Japan defense lawyers worked to defend their clients accused of war crimes. Many people thought the trials were just show trials or kangaroo courts. But if you watch the trials you can see how seriously the defense attorneys took their jobs notwithstanding that at the time they were taking great personal risks to mount their defenses and make the unpopular assertions they were making, including that if their clients were going to be put on trial for war crimes, then so should Harry Truman for authorizing the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Japanese emperor, who had been granted immunity and was being protected by General MacArthur. It’s a very impressive example of defense attorneys doing their jobs in the face of extreme political and social pressure to just go through the motions.

What books and authors do you enjoy reading?

I tend to gravitate to Jack London-type adventurer authors. But a book I still think about a lot is The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. This brilliant novel has the advantage of being a wonderfully layered story coupled with beautiful writing. 

Another book written by an Indian author I really enjoyed, and which also is very thought provoking, is The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga.

I like Ernest Hemingway, particularly his short stories such as The Killers (the 1946 movie is great too!), The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, and The Snows of Kilimanjaro. The Old Man and the Sea is one of my favorite books. 

I’m a Zane Grey fan, particularly of his books on fishing such as Angler’s Eldorado, Fishing Virgin Seas, and Tahitian Waters. In addition to being a best selling novelist, if you read his biography, it’s obvious that he lived the rock star life even before there was such a thing. He was also an avid and innovative angler. Interestingly, Grey challenged Hemingway, another huge angler, to a fishing competition and Hemingway supposedly blew him off. (laughing)

I also like Wilbur Smith (another angler – are you sensing a common theme?). I believe his books are best appreciated if read in order, starting with When the Lion Feeds.

When it comes to nonfiction, one of my favorite books is Where the Sea Breaks Its Back: The Epic Story of Early Naturalist Georg Steller and the Russian Exploration of Alaska by Corey Ford. This is an intense and amazing story of expedition and adventure that most of us know little about. The Bering Sea is actually named after the Dutch captain of the ship on which Steller, a German, was hired as the naturalist. 

One of my other favorite nonfiction books is Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd by Richard Zacks. The entire book is wonderful, but the description of the trial in London is fascinating and chilling. It’s a brilliantly researched book.

Preorder Bottled Lightning on Amazon!

About L.M. Weeks:

L. M. (Mark) Weeks is a Senior Counsel and former Partner in the global law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. He has practiced law in New York and Tokyo for more than 30 years and served as Managing Partner of Orrick’s Tokyo office from 2007-17. He concentrates his practice on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, clean technology, life sciences, IT and telecommunications asset transfers, strategic investments, and general corporate representation for US, Japanese, and European companies. Mark speaks, reads and writes fluent Japanese. In addition to his work at Orrick, Mark has done pro bono work with young HIV+ parents, indigent criminal defendants, and fisheries conservation organizations. Mark’s passion is tournament fly fishing for tarpon and record chasing. A traveling angler, he has fished all over the world. He was born in Anchorage, Alaska, and raised in Nampa, Idaho. Bottled Lightning is his debut novel.

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