Still, my avoid-being-a-lawyer-at-all-costs strategy was just getting started. I went to the London School of Economics for a year to get another degree. Ten days after being called to the Bar back here in Ontario, I was on a plane to Paris, where I worked for more than a year as a magazine editor and learned to cut copy. Came back to Toronto and started my own magazine - T.O. The Magazine of Toronto - which I edited and published for six years. Spent a year as a film executive (don't ask) and a year as a documentary radio producer. Ended up at age thirty seven, broke, with our first child on the way and no job.
That was nineteen years ago last week. I rented a tiny office with no windows, hung up my posters from Paris and my magazine, took a $3,000.00 advance on my visa and started practicing criminal law. That day, I also started my first novel. Made sense. We had a baby, were both working full time, I was spending about 100 hours a week trying to start my practice.
Okay, if I was going to be a lawyer, at least I sure wasn't going to write about them. Spent ten years on the first novel. Lucky me, Douglas Preston, the great American writer, is an even greater friend. I started reading and editing his stuff, and eventually he said: "You must be writing something, let me see it." When I did, he told me to stop practising law and write full time. That was in 1999. The book was good enough to get me a lovely agent in New York.
The day she told me she couldn't sell it, I sat down and wrote: "Much to the shock of his family, Mr. Singh rather enjoyed delivering newspapers." That's the opening line of Old City Hall. I put a dead body in chapter one and have never looked back.
So...and you'll hate me because the cheesy song will be ringing in your ears all day... I fought the law, and the law won.
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