Author Clark proves value of persistence

If you order a "Martin Clark" at your local library or bookstore, be prepared: It packs a wallop. This literary cocktail starts with hardscrabble Southern characters and provocative moral dilemmas, it includes a dash of drugs, a splash of alcohol and a dollop of humor all shaken vigorously in a fast-paced mystery.

It's so intoxicating that it doesn't dazzle just Clark's reviewers, it inspires them.

Not content to describe Clark's debut novel, "The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living" (2000), as "perhaps the funniest legal thriller ever written" the New York Times dubbed him "not only the thinking man's John Grisham but, maybe better, the drinking man's."

The Times was so impressed by his second novel, "Plain Heathen Mischief" (2004), it guessed he must have written it "jacked on Elmore Leonard, 'The Scarlet Letter' and a pile of John Prine albums."

In a rave review of Clark's third novel, "The Legal Limit" (2008), the Los Angeles Times advised: "Think Scott Turow with lots of crackling Southern dialogue and a plot wound as tightly as a watch."

Not bad for a 47-year-old circuit court judge from rural Virginia who began writing his first novel as an undergraduate at Davidson College and endured almost two decades of rejection before finding a publisher.

Funny, smart and Southern to the bone, Clark's new novel is the story of two brothers: Gates, a pathetic druggie who commits murder and Mason, a hardworking attorney who violates the law to save the brother who always protected him against their violent father.

Of course this act of conscience comes back to bite Mason big time. As Clark unspools this Cain and Abel saga with sensitivity and wit, the reader doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

In advance of his three local readings, we spoke with Clark about his writing life.

Q: Where did you get the idea for "The Legal Limit"?

A: It's loosely based on events that happened in Patrick County [Va.] where I live. As to the actual cases, I don't want to comment. ... But there are some clues embedded in the book and on the cover. There is one person who knows what I based it on and that person's real name appears in the book if anyone wants to play detective.

Q: Did you ever feel constrained by the facts?

A: No, not at all. My objective is to write a good story. Our paramount goal as writers is to entertain. I like curves and trap doors, telling people a story, taking them for a ride. I don't let the facts get in the way of that.

Q: You've enjoyed tremendous success these last eight years, but it didn't come easily?

A: I started writing my first novel while I was still in college at Davidson. For 18 years I had the title, characters and idea for ["Mobile Home Living"]. But I didn't have the discipline to get it done. Not knowing any better, I'd send out the few chapters I'd written blind and get back a rejection. The first rejection I got was in December 1982. I found out [mystery writer] Rita Mae Brown was living in Charlottesville. I left my manuscript with a bottle of bourbon in her mailbox. Amazingly she read it and wrote me a letter that said: "As to mixing law and literature you'll either be a half-ass writer or a half-ass lawyer. Literature is a full-time passion."

Q: Where does Tom Wolfe fit in?

A: In college, I entered a writing contest he was judging and he liked my work. He gave some advice that took years for me to really understand. He said, "Anyone can write but you have to be able to tell a story." Then, when I was in my second year of law school, he called me out of the blue asked, "Are you still writing?" In the mid-'90s he carted the six chapters I'd written of my first novel all over Manhattan. They said it was pretty good but they'd like to see the whole book. He showed it to Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone; I still have his rejection letter.

Q: How were you able to persevere through the rejection?

A: Truly, it was because I liked doing it. You can have talent, and you have to have some discipline to go along with it and I always thought I had a book in me. But most of all I loved writing.

Q: What turned things around for you?

A: As I was nearing my 40th birthday, one of my friends got published and I said, "If he can do it, so can I." Until then I wasn't focused, I wasn't disciplined. I never really got through the book, I never sat down to finish it. So I started getting up every morning at 6 and tried to write just one page. If you think about it, if you can do a page a day, you'll have a novel in a year. Pretty much by 7 or 7:30, I'd quit. I still do that everyday.

Q: Is it true that you owe some of your success to divine intervention?

A: After all the struggle, I vowed I would give all the money from the first book to my church, which I thought might come to $10,000. Well it turned out to be in the six figures. After you make that kind of deal, you best not go back on it. I don't want boils and pustules. There's a healthy dose of Old Testament fear in me. My Presbyterian church has done some great things with the money. When the movie rights were sold to my first book, I asked my minister what I should do; after all, I'd only promised the money from the book. Being a good Presbyterian he said, "just give the 10 percent and keep the rest."