For criminal lawyer Calvin Coleman, writing is not a relaxing hobby.
“Writing is pure misery,” Coleman said. “I’ve written all my life ... just for myself. It’s painful, because nothing you write is good enough. A paragraph is never finished. A sentence is never finished.”
This year, he decided to publish a novel and let people read the words he has agonized over.
“Skipping Breakfast” is available in digital format from Amazon. Coleman writes under the pseudonym of JJ Crozz. Currently, four chapters are available for free download.
Coleman’s law office has been in Shelby for 20 years, but he mostly practices in surrounding counties. He is married to Debbie, who likes to read, but will not proofread his manuscript. His oldest daughter helps with that. He served in the Air Force before going to college at Winston-Salem State, Florida A&M and UNC-Chapel Hill law school. He’s met some interesting people through the years and he’s used some of them as a basis for the characters in his book.
“Everywhere you go, if you are a writer, you see something that you will inevitably use in what you write,” he said.
The fictional story, which begins with the main character on his way to the electric chair, is one Coleman wrote first in his mind. Before he puts words on paper, he thinks through the story in his mind whenever he has a free moment. It could be while he’s driving to work or walking the short distance from his desk to the waiting room in his office. He said he’s like an observer, writing down the actions of the characters.
The book opens in the execution room of a Maine prison, and the following chapters describe how the main character ended up there.
“It’s about his journey from home and how difficult it is to get back home,” Coleman said. “It all started with a trip to the grocery store to buy eggs. It could happen to anybody. It’s about decisions that the protagonist makes and could have been made differently, but he made bad choices.”
He wrote the book in a way that lets the reader choose the ending, and he’s not sure himself of the ending.
“Writing is like standing in a circle and recording everything that is going on around you, but sometimes it’s going on behind you,” Coleman said. “I’ve read it again and I still can’t conclude what really happens. You can’t read it when you write it, because you are interpreting what you see.”
The book has received good reviews from New York and other places, Coleman said. He’s almost finished writing his second novel.
“You have to write a novel in order to write a novel,” he said. “The one I’m writing now, I’m not in as much pain.”