{"id":2413,"date":"2023-09-27T19:10:30","date_gmt":"2023-09-27T19:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/?p=2413"},"modified":"2024-09-10T20:46:56","modified_gmt":"2024-09-10T20:46:56","slug":"ubalt-law-alumni-making-a-literary-splash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/ubalt-law-alumni-making-a-literary-splash\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni Authors Write About What They Know"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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By Adam Stone<\/span><\/span><\/h4>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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There\u2019s a fresh corpse in an office building, and now someone\u2019s got to get rid of it \u2014 discreetly. Naturally, hijinks ensue.<\/span> \"\"<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThere’s a lot of duct tape and trash bags, stumbling over the office chair and how to avoid getting blood on the clothing,\u201d says <\/span>Paul Rieger, J.D. \u201988<\/span><\/b>, who as J.P Rieger has published the darkly comedic detective novel <\/span>Clonk!<\/span><\/i><\/p>

And he\u2019s not the only one who has leveraged his law school experience to branch out in literary directions. In fiction and non-fiction, UBalt Law alumni are finding success in the publishing world.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

\u2018Survival skills\u2019<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

With books like <\/span>Scavenger: A Mystery<\/span><\/i> (Three Rooms Press: 2020)\u202fand <\/span>Standalone <\/span><\/i>(Three Rooms Press: 2022), <\/span>Christopher Chambers, J.D. \u201990<\/span><\/b>, gives us a detective series starring Dickie Cornish, a Washington, D.C., homeless man turned investigator. Cornish is \u201cdrugged out and on the street, and he\u2019s using some of those survival skills to do what he has to do to find the truth,\u201d Chambers says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\"\"The idea for the series ignited when Chambers talked to best-selling crime novelist George Pelecanos, also D.C.-based, about the difficulty in telling a gritty story about a capital city that\u2019s increasingly gentrified. \u201cHe said: <\/span>Well, you’re going to have to dig really low.<\/span><\/i> And I said: <\/span>How low?<\/span><\/i>\u201d Chambers recalls. \u201cSo I used the homeless man as a hook, and that’s how I got into the Dickie Cornish novels.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

With tough, realistic language, \u201cChambers makes the smell and harrowing vibe of the mean streets of the nation\u2019s capital come alive,\u201d according to a <\/span>Publishers Weekly<\/span><\/i> review.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

In addition to serving as vice president and counsel for <\/span>Student Housing of America, Chambers is also <\/span>a communications and culture professor at Georgetown University, currently on sabbatical. He said his legal training prepared him well for the rigors of the writing life.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

As a lawyer, \u201cyou don’t mind other people going over your work and editing it,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of people really take it personally when somebody takes a red pen to their stuff, but as a lawyer, you’re used to that.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Amber ambitions<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

As an active-duty military lawyer, a professor teaching the law of armed conflict at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, and a serious American-whiskey drinker, <\/span>John C. Tramazzo, J.D. \u201910<\/span><\/b>, noticed a funny thing: Soldiers and whiskey tend to keep close company.<\/span> \"\"<\/span><\/p>

That led him to write <\/span>Bourbon and Bullets: True Stories of Whiskey, War, and Military Service<\/span><\/i> (Potomac Books: 2018)<\/span>. <\/span><\/i>The book dives into the relationship between military service and some of the nation\u2019s most notable distillers of the amber liquid.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThe most sought-after whiskeys \u2014 the most expensive, super-premium, single-barrel American whiskeys \u2014 are all either named for a combat veteran, or were developed by men who served in the U.S. military,\u201d Tramazzo says.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cThere\u2019s a bourbon named for William LaRue Weller,\u201d who served in the Louisville Brigade in the 1840s, he says. \u201cThose bottles can go for $6,000 to $7,000 \u2014 if you can find them.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

At UBalt Law, the professors helped set him up for success, he says. There were several who \u201cgave me a great deal of confidence in my ability to write,\u201d he adds. \u201cThey really pushed me to refine my writing and helped launch me into a career in the JAG Corps, where writing is valued.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

A \u2018very Baltimore\u2019 book<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Rieger worked for years as in-house counsel to a title insurance company and is now in solo practice. His legal background helped bring to life the darkly comical characters and situations that populate his new novel <\/span>Clonk! <\/span><\/i>(Apprentice House: 2023).<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

\u201cIt’s a very Baltimore-based book,\u201d he says. \u201cA big chunk of the story is based on property flipping that went on in Baltimore in the mid-\u201990s. Fraudsters came in and bought up property very cheaply, and then induced lenders to lend way more money than these homes were worth, leaving the consumers and banks in the lurch.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

In the book, our protagonist recognizes the lawyers who are representing the crooks. \u201cHe\u2019s thinking back to their gleaming white veneers and orange tanning-salon tans, staring back at him from various transit-bus placards,\u201d Rieger says.<\/span> \u201cSo there’s a lot of legal stuff.”<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Adam Stone<\/strong> is a writer based in Annapolis.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Adam Stone There\u2019s a fresh corpse in an office building, and now someone\u2019s got to get rid of it \u2014 discreetly. Naturally, hijinks ensue. \u201cThere’s a lot of duct tape and trash bags, stumbling over the office chair and how to avoid getting blood on the clothing,\u201d says Paul Rieger, J.D. \u201988, who as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3596,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2413"}],"version-history":[{"count":44,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3329,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2413\/revisions\/3329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubalt.edu\/lawmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}