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Bestselling Author D. W. Buffa Rob Holden: D.W. Buffa, welcome to ReadersRoom.com. It's a pleasure to chat with you today! D.W. BUFFA: Thank you for having me. Rob Holden: I would like to start this off with your latest -- and VERY topical -- novel Breach of Trust. Can you tell our readers a bit about it? D.W. BUFFA: Breach of Trust is a novel that is as much a political as it is a legal thriller. Joseph Antonelli is asked by his law school roommate, who is now vice-president of the United States, to defend someone charged with a murder. The vice-president is convinced that his political enemies, including the president, want to destroy him by linking him to this murder. Rob Holden: I suppose the first question I need to ask about that is ....what kind of research into inner White House workings were you able to do to make the novel as realistic as it is? D.W. BUFFA: A friend of mine, Morley Winograd, with whom I wrote a book on public policy, spent the last three years of the Clinton administration working as Al Gore's senior policy advisor. Morley gave me a lot of information about the way the White House works, including the computer system, and about the vice-president's residence where, as you know, some of the action takes place. Some of the other material, specifically about Phil Hart, for whom one of the Senate office buildings is named, is drawn from my own experience. I worked for Senator Hart during the last three years of his life.

Rob Holden: The novel, while definitely a "legal thriller" IS very political in nature at a time when many writers seem to be shying away from politics. Did you meet any resistance from your publishers, or the reading public?

D.W. BUFFA: I haven't met any resistance from the reading public; but there was some slight resistance at times from the publisher on two grounds. First, that there might be too much about politics and that this might deprive the novel of some of the needed tension, and, second, because there were places in which I was a little too overt about certain issues. Some of it was toned down a bit, but most of what I had wanted to put into it was left. My own view of these things is that you need to have the characters say the kind of thing that, given their particular point of view, they would most likely say. It is almost always a mistake to assume that what a character says is what the author thinks.

Rob Holden: Since you brought it up, reading the book left very little doubt as to where you stand on the current administration. Has there been any backlash at all from that?

D.W. BUFFA: No, but then I have an unlisted number and I don't give out my address. Frankly, I wish there would be some backlash. I would enjoy the controversy. For those who have not yet read Breach, I should probably tell them that at one point the vice-president describes the president and those who support him as being mainly motivated by "God and greed." The vice-president, Thomas Browning, has a much different point of view.

Rob Holden: This is your fifth Joseph Antonelli novel, I believe, and I would like to discuss his character a bit. Can you tell our readers a bit about who he is?

D.W. BUFFA: Actually, this is the sixth Antonelli novel. Joseph Antonelli is a lawyer who grew up in Oregon, went to the University of Michigan as an undergraduate and to law school at Harvard. Unlike most people who go to Harvard law, he wanted to be a criminal defense lawyer and came back to Oregon to set up his own practice. He gradually became enormously successful, and at the beginning of the fourth novel, The Legacy, is so well known that he is considered one of the best lawyers in the country. He is hired to take a high-profile case in San Francisco, and ends up staying there. Antonelli is a kind of anti-hero, constantly caught in the tension that exists between what the law allows and what the rules of ethics and morality require.

Rob Holden: How much -- if any -- of his character is based on your own time as a lawyer?

D.W. BUFFA: Antonelli is famous and wealthy; I was neither. But the things he does in a courtroom are things that I learned while I was a practicing attorney. I should quickly point out that some of the things Antonelli does in court are things I only wish I had had the guts to do.

Rob Holden: I would like to move back a novel now to Star Witness, just out in paperback. Could you tell our readers a bit about that book?

D.W. BUFFA: Star Witness is all about the movies and the people who make them; all about the way movies change the way we view the world. Stanley Roth, who is one of my favorite characters, is the most powerful man in Hollywood, a famous producer and director. His wife, the famous actress Mary Margaret Flanders, is found floating naked in the pool; Roth is charged with her murder. Sounds trashy, doesn't it? Antonelli becomes intrigued by Roth, by the way that Roth views everything, including his own trial for murder, from the perspective of how it would look on camera. During the trial, Roth is still working; it turns out on a movie all about the trial. I can't tell you too much more without giving away the plot. Let us leave it with the question: what would happen if someone was charged with murder and had the power to make a movie that showed everyone that it had happened a different way. Or did it?

Rob Holden: I personally think that Roth is probably the most fascinating character you've created to date. I am wondering if he is based on anyone -- and what kind of studying you did to get him so right?

D.W. BUFFA: Roth isn't based on anyone; just an idea I had. The only studying I did was to watch Citizen Kane six or seven times to get a sense of how what some call the best movie was made. You may recall that Roth is tortured by the knowledge that Orson Wells was only twenty-six when he made Kane and that he, Roth, is in his early fifties and has not yet done anything as good. It seemed to me that one of the things that would happen to someone who became enormously successful is that he would start to disparage his own success, convinced that he had given up something important to get that commercial success. Roth is driven by a sense of failure that no one else knows he has.

Rob Holden: D.W. -- since we announced this chat, we have had a number of questions from our readers. Would you answer a few of them for us now?

D.W. BUFFA: Sure.

Natalie R. Collins: Sandra T., Dayton, OH: I discovered your books one summer when I tapped into the Bookreporter.com's reading list for the summer. What do you read when you are on holiday or just for relaxation?

D.W. BUFFA: I am now in serious trouble. I read next to nothing of contemporary fiction; in part because I have not yet read all the things written by famous authors of the past. This last summer, I read, or rather re-read, Fitzgerald and Faulkner. Sometimes I am asked about my favorite "crime" novel. No one quite believes me when I tell them The Great Gatsby, which, remember, ends in a murder.

Natalie R. Collins: Michael J., Circleville, UT: There is a claim that lawyers become good writers because of the years of discipline and writing they must do in law school. Do you think this is true, and did you learn anything in law school that has helped you with your writing?

D.W. BUFFA: No, I think this is not true, at least the part about writing. Most legal opinions, which is most of what a law student reads, are anything but literary. I have a very old fashioned view about writing. The best way to learn to write is to read things written by great writers.

Natalie R. Collins: Emmett M., Nauvoo, ILL: I have read that you live in Napa. Does living in such a beautiful, productive part of the country bring you relaxation or inspiration?

D.W. BUFFA: I grew up in Napa and after a long time, which included a number of years in Chicago, came back. It is certainly more relaxing here, and it also provides the kind of solitude that makes writing possible.

Rob Holden: And our final reader question ....

Natalie R. Collins: Ann Marie R., Santa Fe., NM: How long does it take you to complete a book (including outline, etc.)? What is the first thing you do when it is 100% complete?

D.W. BUFFA: This is a great question. I never know what it means when I hear someone say it took a year, or ten years, to write a book. Does it mean that they wrote every day, all day? Does it mean they worked on it for a few days, put it aside for months and came back to it? The only clear explanation I ever read was from the British novelist Anthony Trollope, who wrote every day for exactly two hours, and wrote exactly 250 words every fifteen minutes. Astonishing. And when you read a couple of his novels you begin to get the sense of someone writing like that. In my case, I try to write every day first thing, for at least two hours. It takes about four months to complete the first draft of a novel. I am incapable of writing an outline in advance, so I start with an idea and see where it goes. When I finish with a novel, I start the very next day on the next one, if only because I am afraid that if I don't I will forget how. The truth of it is, I enjoy the work; I like writing and when I am finished with something, I want to start again.

Rob Holden: Thank you for answering those. Now I'd like to talk a bit about your non-fiction collaboration. Could you tell us a bit about that?

D.W. BUFFA: It was back in l996. I co-authored, along with Morley Winograd, a book called Taking Control: Politics in the Information Age. The book achieved a certain notoriety after a story appeared in one of the national news magazines that Bill Clinton was using some of it as the basis for the domestic policy agenda for his second term. It was because of that book that Morley Winograd became Al Gore's policy advisor.

Rob Holden: If I could go back to Breach for a moment -- you have a number of VERY interesting stories about the Clinton Administration. Are they all true, and could you tell us which one surprised you the most?

D.W. BUFFA: Did you think I would lie? Of course they are all true. I don't know if it surprised me, but the one I found most fascinating was the story of how Clinton, breaking with tradition, kept the picture of Theodore Roosevelt instead of bringing back the one of Franklin Roosevelt in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, but then, to start a tradition of his own, put a bust of Eleanor Roosevelt just below it.

Rob Holden: So ... what is next for D.W. Buffa and Joseph Antonelli?

D.W. BUFFA: The next Antonelli novel, Trial by Fire, comes out in April. This one is about the power of television and how an innocent man can be convicted when all those talking heads insist he is guilty. In a certain sense, the book is The Count of Monte Cristo in the television age. It is set in San Francisco, as well as in San Quentin.

Rob Holden: And readers can find out more about it as the date approaches at your website, www.dwbuffa.com .

D.W. BUFFA: They can also learn about the release of the paperback of Breach of Trust sometime in March.

Rob Holden: Before we wrap this up, I would like to thank your publicist Ann Binney of Binney Associates for all her help in putting this together. Finally, is there anything you would like to say to your fans who might read this at ReadersRoom.com?

D.W. BUFFA: I want to thank everyone who has read Breach of Trust, and I want to thank you for the chance to participate in ReadersRoom.com.

Rob Holden: D.W. Buffa, thanks for joining us here today -- and best of luck with all your coming projects!




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