I think most of you know that 2022 was a very difficult year for me. In February I was told I had cancer in my neck. After surgery, radiation, and chemo, Nancy and I moved into a home in Cabo San Lucas that we had built as part of what we described as our five-year vacation plan.

We were going along until I had emergency disc replacement surgery in my neck in July, followed by bacterial pneumonia that put me on a ventilator for five days, in the hospital two more weeks, losing 40 pounds and being brought to our Cabo home in an ambulance. We sold our home and moved to Fort Worth, where we now live.

I tell you all this because you might be wondering how I have time to write novels. I make the time because my health now limits what I can do. In this blog I want to tell you about one that has consumed me for the last few months.

After finishing my last novel, I was at a loss for what, if any, story could write. The Keys We Carry began with a question that came to me while daydreaming. What would my family’s life have been like if we had never left Roanoke?

Nancy and I settled in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1976. We moved from Roanoke to Richmond in 1987, and moved from Richmond to Dallas in 1996. I made each move to further my law career.

Around the same time as that daydream, I found myself thinking about Alan Jackson and his song Remember When. Like so many of his songs, it tells a story. In just a few minutes, he captures decades of marriage, family, children, and the passing of time. Every time I hear it, it reminds me how quickly one season of life becomes another.

I also found myself thinking about Neil Diamond’s I Am… I Said. It asks where we really belong and whether a place can ever completely leave us. Those questions became part of Claire Harlan’s journey as she tries to understand why her father never stopped talking about Knoxville and why the people he loved mattered more than the place itself.

Thinking back to when Nancy and I arrived in Roanoke, while the country was celebrating the 200th anniversary of the, Declaration of Independence, I wanted this novel to explore: how quickly the seasons of our lives pass, how our marriages and families change over time, and how easy it is to look back and wonder where the years went.

Rather than write a memoir, I decided to explore that question through fiction.

Roanoke became Knoxville.

Richmond became Nashville.

Dallas became Houston.

The people and events in this novel are entirely fictional, but the question that inspired the story is real.

Claire Harlan is one of Houston’s most successful construction lawyers. When her father, a retired trial lawyer struggling with dementia, asks to return to Knoxville one last time, she believes she is simply honoring his wish.

Instead, she begins discovering the lives her parents lived long before she was part of them.

As I wrote the novel, I realized I wasn’t really writing about Knoxville. I was writing about something much larger.

• How well do we really know our parents?

• What dreams did they set aside?

• What choices shaped the lives they eventually built?

• And what do we quietly lose while pursuing the success we once believed would make us happy?

The story gradually became as much about Claire’s mother, Margaret, as it did about her father. Claire begins the novel trying to understand why her father never stopped talking about Knoxville. She eventually discovers that what he missed most was never the city itself. He missed the people.

During my nineteen years coaching young lawyers, I encountered talented lawyers working very hard , often struggling to find more time for family, friendships, and the relationships that mattered most. You might recall, I wrote that you will never “find” the time. You have to “make” the time.

I am what’s called a “seat of the pants” writer meaning even when I outline, it’s still subject to change as a write. I wrote at least five or six complete versions of the story. When I finished I was never satisified. So, I’d start over.

At its heart, The Keys We Carry is not a novel about dementia or even about returning home. It is a story about family, marriage, ambition, belonging, and the quiet realization that the people closest to us often have lives we never fully understood.

I hope readers close the book thinking about their own parents, their own children, and the people who quietly shaped their lives. If the novel encourages someone to make one more phone call, visit an aging parent, invite friends to dinner, or simply spend a little more time with the people they love, then I will have accomplished exactly what I hoped this story would do.

A beta reader described my novel as family fiction about memory, relationships, and the choices that shape our lives. I hope that when it is published in a few weeks, you will give The Keys We Carry a try.

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Why I Wrote

Her Father’s Honor

Most legal thrillers begin with a crime.

Her Father’s Honor begins with a question.

What happens when a lawyer spends his entire career teaching his daughter to believe in the justice system, only to become the person standing trial?

For thirty-seven years I practiced construction law. During that time I worked with hundreds of lawyers, watched trials unfold, and learned something that rarely appears in fiction. Lawyers do not merely carry cases home with them. They carry expectations, reputations, and family legacies.

Children of lawyers often grow up seeing their parents as larger-than-life figures. They watch them command conference rooms, argue motions, and solve problems that seem impossible. It can take decades to realize that the people who taught us how to succeed may also have made choices they regret.

That idea became the foundation for Her Father’s Honor.

Roberto Sánchez is not simply a defendant accused of jury tampering. He is a father who spent a lifetime winning cases and shaping his daughter’s understanding of justice. Gabriela Sánchez is not simply his lawyer. She is a daughter trying to reconcile the man she admires with allegations that threaten everything he built.

I was interested in exploring questions that have no easy answers.

How much should adult children trust their parents?

Can loyalty coexist with a search for the truth?

If someone you love insists they are innocent, how much evidence would it take before you begin to doubt them?

The courtroom scenes in the novel are important, but they are not the heart of the story. The heart of the story is the relationship between Gabriela and Roberto. Every filing, deposition, and witness examination ultimately leads back to one question:

Does Gabriela truly know her father?

Readers who enjoy courtroom dramas will find a federal prosecution, trial strategy, and high-stakes testimony. I hope they will also find something more enduring: a story about family, aging, disappointment, forgiveness, and the difficult process of seeing our parents as human beings.

If you enjoy legal fiction that combines courtroom conflict with emotional stakes, I hope you will give Her Father’s Honor a try.

Has client development changed since I retired from coaching lawyers? That’s a question I think about.

When I was a lawyer and when I coached lawyers, after years of trying to figure out how I attracted clients and how lawyers I coached could attract clients.

I’m sure I wrote this in previous blog posts, but I don’t want to take the time to find those , so here goes:

1. You have to be visible, meaning clients know who you are.
2. You have to be credible, meaning clients believe you know your stuff.
3. That leads to weak tie relationships, meaning relationships with people who are not in your inner circle.
4. Those weak tie relationships lead to a much wider network of people and the weak ties recommend you.
5. That leads to a meeting with a potential client during which your potential client is evaluating you and during that meeting the quality of your questions and the quality of your listening leads to potentially being hired.

As you likely know, with all my health issues that brought us back to Texas from Mexico, I spend the majority of my time sitting at a computer writing stories that become novels. AI, including Chat GPT, Gemini, and others, makes it far easier, and more enjoyable. Let me give you a small example.

This morning on our way to church I plugged in my iPhone to Apple Car Play and started playing music from one of my lists. The music from The Mission came up. Some of you might recall the movie. Set in 18th-century South America, “The Mission” follows a Spanish Jesuit priest (Jeremy Irons) and a former slave trader (Robert De Niro) as they defend a remote jungle mission and its indigenous community from the threats of colonial powers. The film explores themes of faith, redemption, and the clash between conscience and authority in a visually stunning historical drama.

So for grins, since we were on our way to church and Nancy was driving I asked Gemini to write a 30 chapter outline with the themes of The Mission but set in the United States in 2025, and provide character sketches for each character. Before we parked, I was copying the outline to Word for future reference.

Let’s get back to client development and compare it to the marketing of my novels. So far, my novels have sold enough copies to produce an amount of royalties I could add for a month of coffee at Starbucks.

It could be that my novels are not very good. That is a distinct possibility. But, just for the sake of making a point let’s assume they are worth reading at least by lawyers who enjoy reading courtroom dramas.

I’ve done a really poor job of marketing my novels. In the meantime, I’ve been scammed by so-called marketing experts that I have paid, only to later learn I had been scammed in some cases by scammers claiming to be a company or organization that they weren’t. You’d think that as a lawyer I’d know better, but…

Even legitmate efforts have not produced readers.

I have an author website. Think of it as like your website bio. If you have a moment check it out. It has my novels, I have YouTube videos of my first three novels. It has links to my two interviews.

That’s all good right? Well, I might think it is wonderful, but if potential readers never find it, the website and the video clips are just something that I can see and play, but they aren’t bringing in readers.

Over the last year, I’ve published two more novels The one I’m most proud of is The Air Between Us. If you have a Kindle or Kindle app on your iPad you can read it for free.

The Air Between Us was born from desire write about the 60s, and 70s, the Vietnam War and to explore how the choices we make in our youth—under pressure from family, country, or ambition—shape the rest of our lives. Through Jake Walker, I wanted to capture what it meant to come of age in a turbulent time, to serve in a war that divided a generation, and to carry those burdens into manhood and ultimately, into a courtroom where justice becomes personal. I hope you’ll be interested enough to read it.

I recently finished two novels. The first title is: Shadow of Doubt. It is the fourth in my Gabriela Sanchez series. The third in my series concluded with her being elected to Congress, serving the Rio Grande Valley. I thought I was done with her as a character, but…

The one at the editor now is about the rise and fall of a law firm. I call it America’s Firm: The Rise, The Fall, The Reckoning. It will be published soon.

One thing I learned about writing stories is to ask the question: What if…? So, the novel I have recently started began with my question: What if Gabriela Sanchez is called upon to represent her father, Roberto, the famed Rio Grande Valley lawyer who is accused of bribing a juror.

How did I get the “what if…” idea? The most famous trial lawyer in the early 1900s was Clarence Darrow. He was accused of bribing a juror in Los Angeles and was defended by Earl Rogers, perhaps an even more brilliant trial lawyer than Darrow. The two didn’t get along. If you are interested in reading more about the trials, look here.

So, back to my question? How are potential new clients finding you?

Do you know what today is? I suspect that at least 90 plus percent of you don’t know what today is.

Yes, it’s a Monday. Yes, it’s April 21. Yes, it will be remembered as the day Pope Francis died. And, yes, it’s the Monday after Easter.

It’s the Monday after Easter celebration you won’t likely know. For, seventy years I didn’t know it. Today is Dyngus Day. I only learned about it nine years ago when we lived in Prosper, TX. I wrote about the experience here.

Celebrated the Monday after Easter, Dyngus Day is a Polish-American tradition filled with lighthearted rituals, drinking beer, sharing food, and enjoying community. At its heart, it’s a day to let loose, reset, and celebrate a fresh start after the solemnity of Lent.

But here’s the connection to your legal career: Dyngus Day is a day of transition.

It marks the beginning of something new. For young lawyers, every Monday is a kind of Dyngus Day. It’s an opportunity to reset, recommit, and most importantly, plan. For those of you I coached, you remember me saying you should have a goal and plan for five years, this year, this month and this week, and maybe even this day

When I was coaching lawyers too many talked about their goals. Some talked about making partner. Some talked about building a book of business, but many stopped there. And as the saying goes:

“A goal without a plan is just a dream.”

So, What’s Your Dyngus Plan?

If you’ve ever caught yourself saying:
• “I want to get more clients,”
• “I want to be a better blogger ,”
• “I want to write more articles or speak at conferences…”

Then ask yourself: What’s your plan?

Just like Dyngus Day rituals are intentional (and yes, a little goofy), career growth requires more than good intentions. It requires consistent actions.

Here’s a Simple Dyngus Day-Inspired Framework:
1. Shake things up-Take a hard look at your habits. What’s one thing you can do differently this week to move closer to your goal?
2. Feast on Ideas—Schedule 30 minutes to read something other than your usual legal texts, such as marketing, communication, negotiation, or client psychology.
3. Celebrate with Others – Connect with a mentor or colleague. Share your goals and ask about theirs. Accountability fuels execution.
4. Start the Week with Purpose – Use Monday to write down one thing you’ll do this week to move your career forward. Just one. Then do it.

Final Thought:

Dyngus Day reminds us that even serious professionals need moments of reflection, joy, and intention. But don’t stop at the celebration. Let it be the launchpad for action.

Because in the end, dreaming is easy. Planning, and doing is what sets great lawyers apart from the crowd of others.