Interview with Amanda DuBois – S. 11, Ep. 9

My guest interview this week on the Crime Cafe podcast is with legal thriller author Amanda DuBois. Among other things, we talk about how telling true stories persuasively can make you a better fiction writer. For a PDF copy of the interview, just click here. It's there, somewhere. :) Debbi (00:54): Hi everyone. My guest this week is the founder and managing partner of DuBois Levias Law Group, one of Washington State's longest standing woman-owned law firms before becoming a family law attorney, a field I learned to avoid like the plague, frankly, she was a labor and delivery nurse. She uses her medical and legal knowledge to address inequities in the legal system as an author of the Camille Delaney Mystery series, an award-winning book series. Her third and latest book is called Unshackled. She also founded an organization that helps formerly incarcerated people to reenter society. What a laudable goal. And I just finished reading the script for The Shawshank Redemption. What interesting timing. Anyway, I'm pleased to have with me today the author Amanda DuBois. Hi, Amanda. How are you doing? Amanda (01:57): I'm doing awesome. I want a copy of that script. How interesting that would be. Debbi (02:01): Oh, I can probably send you the link to where it was found. Or even a copy. Amanda (02:05): Oh, fantastic. I didn't know you were reading that. Debbi (02:09): Oh, it, it's kind of cool to read it, and I didn't have a chance to actually watch the movie. We were doing a discussion on it, and I hadn't had a chance to see it in a long time, but it seemed like there were scenes in there that might not have made it into the movie, which was interesting. Amanda (02:24): Yeah, that's exactly right. Debbi (02:26): It was very interesting to read, but I'm always pleased to have a lawyer on who has written crime fiction. I'm just pleased to see lawyers writing fiction, frankly, in general. And you have done some remarkable work starting your own law firm. How long have you had your own law firm? Amanda (02:49): So I'm just this year celebrating 30 years. Debbi (02:52): 30 years. Amanda (02:53): And so that makes us one of Seattle's longest-standing women owned law firms. Debbi (02:58): That's really awesome. Amanda (02:59): We've been celebrating all year. We have a little pontoon boat outside our office. Our office is on a lake, and we just did this champagne thing. You cork the champagne off and yeah, we've been having a good time celebrating. Debbi (03:11): That's awesome. That's fantastic. I think I can hazard a guess as to what led you from delivering babies to law, perhaps the absolutely broken healthcare system in this country that had something to do with it? Amanda (03:26): Well, a little bit. Yeah. Mostly I just wanted to do something different and was, here's a really funny story. How I ended up in law is I wanted to get out of nursing and I thought I'd go to medical school. So I went, took all the super hard science classes and then I decided I didn't really like ... I took like two years of biochemistry and all that stuff. And then I thought, well, maybe I'll go get an MBA. And so I went to buy the MBA study guide book at the bookstore, and right next to that was the law school book. And I thought, well, I'll buy that. I'd never thought about law school. So I went home and I was doing the MBA study book, and it was all this math and calculus and it was really hard, and I thought, this is awful. So I got a beer and sat down and did the law school study book, and I'm like, oh, this is much easier. (04:09): So my husband came home and I said, I'm going to go to law school. And he goes, what? I said, well, I'm not good at this MBA stuff. It's too much math, and I'm really good at this law school, so they must have a better idea about what would make a good lawyer. So I was totally the accidental lawyer. I had no interest really in being a lawyer at all, but I thought I had the aptitude. So anyway,