LibraryThing is pleased to sit down this month with author and attorney Lori B. Duff, who had a thirty-year career as a lawyer and municipal court judge before turning to writing. A blogger and columnist as well, she has served as president of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. Her humorous essays have appeared in newspapers, on blogs, and in published collections such as The Armadillo, the Pickaxe, and the Laundry Basket (2015), You Know I Love You Because You’re Still Alive: Confessions of a Middle Aged Working Mom (2016) and If You Did What I Asked in the First Place (2019). She has now turned to fiction writing, and her debut novel, the courtroom drama Devil’s Defense, was published last month by She Writes Press. Duff sat down with Abigail to answer some questions about this new book.

Devil’s Defense follows a small-town lawyer who finds herself drawn into a case representing a client she doesn’t particularly admire. How did the idea for the story first come to you? Were there specific social or legal themes you wanted to explore, or did they develop naturally?

I was watching the confirmation hearings of a politician who shall remain nameless. This guy was an arrogant, entitled guy with only a passing understanding of consent. Several thoughts struck me at once while I was watching this, including— 1) I was tired of arrogant, entitled guys like that getting positions of leadership and I wanted to understand why; 2) Probably this guy had handlers who had prepped him for this hearing and he was too egotistical to follow their advice. I pictured them watching this at home cussing him up and down and I thought of how many times I’d coached a client and they refused to listen to my advice to their own detriment; 3) What goes on in the head of these guys? What makes them tick? So the character of Coach stood in for this guy, and Jessica is the one trying to make heads or tails of him. In addition to exploring those issues, I wanted to portray what happens behind the scenes in these situations. How you can’t necessarily blame the lawyer for what they’re being paid to say, and how the system only works when everyone has adequate representation.

Your career in the law must have been an influence when writing the story. Were there any incidents or aspects of the story taken from real life? Was there anything that was new to you, or that you had to research for the book?

If the adage “write what you know” is true, then that’s exactly what I did. My career was obviously an influence. I know what happens when clients and lawyers interact and clash. I know what happens in a courtroom. I did not use any of my clients’ stories in the book—I want everyone I’ve ever represented to know that I will always maintain their
confidentiality. That said, when you’ve been practicing law for 30+ years like I have, there are going to be things you say and hear all the time. I did have to research the back child support issue. I’ve never had a legitimation case where the child was that old, so I didn’t know how the law would handle it. The cases Jessica cites are real cases. I also looked up some things like the weather on particular dates, and what songs were in the top 40 at a particular moment in time.

Your heroine lives in a small Georgia town, just as you do. What realities about small-town life in Georgia does your story reflect? Do you feel the story would be the same, if set in a different part of the country?

Absolutely not. The fictional Ashton, Georgia is just as much a character in the book as any of the people. There’s a particular way that southerners talk and view the world, there are southern foods and places. I had to argue a lot of it with my editors, who weren’t southern. For example, a number of scenes take place in a Waffle House, which has its own culture. Apparently, the dictionary and style manuals say that fried shredded potatoes are written “hash browns”. But the Waffle House menu has it at one word—hashbrowns. So I insisted that we spell it the southern, Waffle House way. But there’s more to it than spelling. The weather affects the way people act. The expectations that you will speak kindly to people you can’t stand. The way a majority of the population looks at everything through a religious lens.

Devil’s Defense was your first novel, but not your first book. Were there differences between writing a novel, when compared to writing essays or other shorter works? Were there specific challenges, or things you particularly enjoyed about it?

I enjoy a good challenge, so there’s a good bit of overlap between the challenges and what I enjoyed about the process. I can dash off an 800 word essay and be done with it. But a novel requires not only more time but keeping more balls in the air. You’ve got to remember everyone’s height and eye color. You’ve got to remember how many days pass between one event and another. And who knows what and when and how they figured it out. In writing dialogue, you have to keep everyone’s voice and vocal quirks straight. This one cusses a blue streak, this one never would—he always uses slang, her language is more formal. The best thing about it, though, is that you really get to explore a topic. I started out wanting to know what made this kind of arrogant, entitled guy tick, and by the end I understood him. I had to understand him in order to make him three-dimensional. One of Jessica’s big faults is that she sees the world the way she wants to see it instead of the way it is, and it was fun to watch her open her eyes a little.

Tell us a little bit about your writing process. Do you write in a particular place, or at certain times? Do you map out your story ahead of time, or let it develop organically?

The first productive half hour of every day is spent writing. Usually that’s at my desk in my home office (formerly known as my son’s room) or my law office. Sometimes that’s the only writing I get done, and sometimes I manage to sneak in a little more. I type 100 words a minute, so I can get a lot done in a half hour. I ‘write’ a lot while driving or in the shower or standing on line, so by the time I get to my laptop I’m simply transcribing what’s already in my head. I don’t outline. I generally have a broad idea of where I want to go, but the details get filled in as I go. I’ve been a trial attorney for thirty some-odd years, and I think there’s a huge link between the way you tell a story in a courtroom for a jury and the way you tell a story in a novel. I’ve learned in trial work that if I write out my questions, inevitably the witness will answer one in a way I didn’t/couldn’t predict and then the next question on my list makes no sense. So I have a general idea of what I want to get out of a particular witness, but if they make a left turn, I follow them and try to nudge them in the direction I want them to go a different way than I’d planned. A good trial attorney has to be able to think on her feet. Writing is similar. I start out thinking, I want this character in this scene to do X. But if I’ve done a good job in creating the character, they are a person unto themselves and I can hear their voice in my head. When it comes to actually writing the scene, something may happen or someone may say something that provokes them to answer or respond in a way I wouldn’t have planned. So I have to adjust accordingly. Sometimes writing feels like I’m simply transcribing what the voices in my head say.

What can we look forward to next from you? Devil’s Defense is described on the cover as a “Fischer at Law” novel—will there be sequels?

Yes, there will be sequels. The second, Devil’s Hand, is slated for release on October 7, 2025. In it, Jessica represents the abused wife of a county commissioner. She has to deal with the backlash from representing someone who is accusing a muckety-muck of wrongdoing, and also try to understand the values of the religious community around her, which are in great contrast to her own. In the meantime, her estranged father comes for a visit and she has to deal with her own domestic issues.

Tell us about your library. What’s on your own shelves?

What isn’t on my shelves? I think that’s a shorter list. Nothing is more attractive to me than a well- organized bookshelf, and I have them all over my house, organized by genre, then author, then chronologically. I know there’s a trend now to organize books by color, and while that looks nice, I don’t know how you’d ever find a book again. I am a voracious reader. I keep track of what I read, and I just finished my 111th book of the year (I’m writing this on November 19th). I refuse to be pigeonholed by genre. I’ll read anything that is interesting and well-written. Fiction, non-fiction, biography/memoir, science fiction, fantasy, romance, literary fiction, horror, young adult, you name it. I also try to make sure I read authors who fit into categories I don’t fit into, whether that’s race or religion or culture or sexual orientation or neurodiversity or anything else. One of the greatest things about reading is that it can help you understand the world around you. If I’m only reading things by people who have the same perspective I do, then I haven’t learned much. I also love a good series. There’s nothing better than falling in love with a character and/or a world and then being able to visit them again.

What have you been reading lately, and what would you recommend to other readers?

I just started reading Eleanore of Avignon by Elizabeth DeLozier. That’s my ‘bedtime book’ that I keep on my nightstand. I’ve got an advance reader’s copy of What is Wrong with You by Paul Rudnick open on my Kindle. And my audiobook du jour belongs to a series I’m re-reading—the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris, which is one of my favorite pieces of mind candy, and I’m going through it this time for craft purposes, because I’m learning how she picks up story lines from past books without being tedious. The book I’m up to is Dead Reckoning which I think is the 11th in the series. Anyway, all three of those books are great, which is nice. I don’t always get the trifecta. As for recommendations, lately I’ve been recommending The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton and the Emily Wilde series by Heather Fawcett to everyone. Love those books.

LibraryThing is pleased to sit down this month with author Andrea Jo DeWerd, who, in addition to her career in publishing and as an independent book marketer, recently saw her debut novel, What We Sacrifice for Magic, released by Alcove Press. DeWerd worked for more than a decade in the marketing and publicity departments of a number of Big 5 publishers, including Crown, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and most recently, the Harvest imprint of HarperCollins. In 2022 she launched her own marketing and publishing consulting agency, the future of agency LLC. Her authorial debut, published in late September, is a fantastical coming-of-age story following three generations of Minnesota witches during the 1960s. DeWerd sat down with Abigail to answer some questions about this new book.

How did the idea for What We Sacrifice for Magic first come to you, and how did the story develop? Did your heroine Elisabeth come first? Was it always a multi-generational family story in your mind, always a witchy tale?

I was trying to write a very different book about the American Dream, and my own family’s experience with it. My grandfather’s family were Dutch immigrants in Minnesota. My great-grandfather and his cousin operated several feed mills and fish hatcheries. The next generation, my grandfather and his brothers, all became doctors. I was fascinated by this story, and by what happens after the American Dream is achieved—what happens to the next generation? But it was too close to home for me to write in the years after my grandfather passed away.

What We Sacrifice for Magic grew out of the question: what were the women doing while the men were building their empire? I started to imagine a world in which the men ostensibly held the power, but beneath the surface, it was really the women pulling the strings; a world in which the women could be running a full-on witchcraft operation out of the side door of the kitchen while the men were off fighting their wars and building their supposed influence.

Elisabeth’s voice came to me first. I started to hear her voice, and the first thing I knew about her was that she was ruled by water. From there, I explored how she would’ve come to be that way, who would’ve taught her about her power, and Magda, her grandmother, her teacher, emerged pretty quickly.

Your book addresses themes of familial history, obligation and conflict, and the individual’s struggle to both belong to and be independent of the family circle. How does the witchy element in your story add to or complicate those themes? How different would your story be if the Watry-Ridder women weren’t witches?

In many books with magic, the magic acts as the deus ex machina that lifts the characters out of their unfortunate situations. Magic breaks oppressive forces in many ways. For Elisabeth, magic is what is holding her back, her burden. Aside from that magical burden, Elisabeth would still need her coming-of-age journey. I believe that even without magic, Elisabeth would’ve always felt separate from her family. She needed to learn who she is on her own, away from the reputation of her family and the name she was born to.

Without magic, this story becomes a much more familiar one. Anyone who has ever dealt with the pressures of a family business knows what it feels like to be torn between wanting to forge your own path and getting pulled back into the family responsibility. Adult children who take care of their aging parents know that tug-of-war as well. I think we all feel family pressure in some way or another in our lives, and beneath the magic, that is what I wanted to explore in this book.

What We Sacrifice for Magic is set in your own home state of Minnesota, and opens in 1968. What significance do the setting and time period have to your story?

The setting came to me first. Elisabeth, ruled by water, was always going to be from a small lakeside town in Minnesota. The town of Friedrich was inspired by my own beloved Spicer, Minnesota, where my family has had a cabin on Green Lake since 1938. The lake felt so integral to this story and this community that the Watry-Ridder family serves.

Moreso, this family had to come from a place that was rural enough for them to fly under the radar, a pastoral community that just accepted their local eccentrics, and even came to depend on them. I was also fascinated by the sort of gossip that happens in a small town. In a closeknit community, it’s impossible to walk down the street without everybody knowing everything about you, who you’re dating, etc. I wanted to see Elisabeth and her younger sister, Mary, engage with that gossip, and it certainly shapes them as they’re growing up in Friedrich with the sometimes unwanted attention.

More broadly, 1968 was a time when many young women were starting to have more choices in their education and the opportunity for careers outside of the home, in many parts due to contraception. Those choices were not available to Elisabeth—she is stuck in this small town, tied to her community, as she watches her high school classmates going off to their next chapters.

What influence has your career in publishing and book marketing had on your storytelling? Have you been inspired by any of the authors whose books you have promoted?

I started writing this book when I was working full-time as a book marketer at Random House. I had been a creative writing minor in college, but I wasn’t really writing in my first 8 years in New York while I was in grad school and volunteering and focused on other things. I was inspired to start writing again in earnest when I would be in meetings with these amazing authors like Catherine Banner and Emma Cline, who were both a few years younger than me. I thought if they found time to do it, why couldn’t I? On the flip side, I was working with Helen Simonson at the time, who said that she didn’t really get to start writing until her kids were grown and out of the house, and I thought, “I’m single, I don’t have kids, what am I waiting for?”

I was also greatly inspired by Laura Lynne Jackson’s books The Light Between Us and Signs. Her first-person account of how close we are to the spirits on the other side very much influenced my own personal spiritual beliefs, some of which are woven into Elisabeth’s outlook and her experiences with her guide from the other side, Great-Grandma Dorothy, and the energy healing work that the family does.

Tell us about your writing process. Do you have a particular place you prefer to write, a specific way of mapping out your story? Did you know from the beginning what the conclusion would be?

I wrote at least 50% of this book long-hand in a journal. I write in the morning in bed before the rest of the world comes crashing in, i.e. before I look at my phone or email. My phone stays in the kitchen until after I’m done writing for the day. Once I got further into the story, though, I switched to drafting on my laptop when I was really building momentum.

I don’t believe you have to write every day. I have a day job! I write maybe a few days a week, and this book came together 100 words at a time. I would write a single paragraph in the morning before hopping in the shower and heading into Random House. My writing group talks often about setting realistic goals because the minute you set a lofty goal and miss that first day of “write every day,” it makes it that much harder to get back on track.

I barely outlined this book. This was very much a discovery writing project, but when I got into revision, I reverse-outlined what had happened so far in the book so that I could confidently write my way through to the end. I didn’t know the exact ending of the book until I was about ⅓ of the way through. I remember emailing my writing group one day to say, “I think I just wrote the last line of my book.”

For revision, the book Dreyer’s English by friend and former Random House colleague Benjamin Dreyer was essential to me. It was very helpful to read books like his as I was enmeshed in the revision process.

What can we look forward to next from you? Do you have other writing projects in the offing?

I am working on something completely different next! I am finishing a first draft this fall of my second novel, a contemporary Christmas rom-com set in southern Minnesota. There’s Christmas cookies, a local hottie, and a girl home from the big city. I’m approaching this book a little differently—starting with an outline!

Tell us about your library. What’s on your own shelves?

I am very much a mood reader and I read just about every genre out there. I love sci fi and fantasy or romance for a quick vacation read. I try to keep up with the new, big literary novels. I have my section of craft books, like Big Magic and Bird by Bird. I have sections of series that I’m hoping to finish one day, like Outlander. I’m always reading our clients’ books for work. I have a celebrity chef’s memoir and a performance and productivity expert to read next for work. But truthfully, my shelves are full of books I haven’t read that have come with me from job to job. I have classics, I have the hot releases dating back to 2010, I have signed copies of books I’ve worked on, like Educated and Born a Crime. I also have an amazing cookbook collection from my time working in lifestyle books, lots of Mark Bittman and Jacques Pépin and Dominique Ansel.

What have you been reading lately, and what would you recommend to other readers?

I just finished the new Louise Erdrich novel, The Mighty Red. She’s my favorite author and as a contemporary Minnesotan author, she has had a huge impact on me as a reader and a writer. I think Erdrich most accurately captures contemporary women—and the myriad ways the world disappoints us—like no one else I’ve ever read. I make a point to buy the new books by Louise Erdrich and William Kent Krueger, another Minnesotan author, in hardcover from indie bookstores when I’m back in MN. If you haven’t read Louise Erdrich before, one of my favorite books is The Round House. I recommend that book to everyone.