Legal Lapdances

What the heck is a legal lapdance and where can you get one in Albuquerque at three o'clock on a Thursday afternoon? This is the "Blogging at Dawn" column, but you might have noticed some "bonus" blogs in the late afternoon. Don't I claim to have a real job during the day? Well, those bonus blogs are from the "Legal Lapdances" collection, and they busting a move onto the national scene.

I started writing about my life a long time ago back when I was unemployed in Washington, DC. My first professionally published story was called "I fought the law" and was published in Washington City Paper, the DC equivalent of the Village Voice or Albuquerque's Weekly Alibi. It was about looking for a job in Washington and became such a hit that I was interviewed by Georgetown's Law School's newspaper. I had been waitlisted at Georgetown. I found it ironic that the only way I could get in there was by writing about failure. At that moment, I was hooked.

After I got my job in DC, I started writing some silly stories for the DC Young Lawyer, which led me to get stories in the National Young Lawyer publications. I even made the back page of the ABA Journal where 200,000 people read about my computer being stolen. When I moved back to New Mexico, I then wrote some stories for the young lawyer magazine back here. In between, I wrote the stories about laws and loves. My book, Rattlesnake Lawyer was going up and down the Hollywood food chain, so I had my Hollywood adventures as well.

I returned to New Mexico and resumed practicing law. I was representing an exotic dancer on a DWI, and she said something very profound. "What you do as a lawyer is kinda what I do as a dancer-- you get paid, it's intense for a few minutes, and then you leave...kinda like a lapdance." Talk about a great metaphor for law and literature. I liked the title, Legal Lapdances as I am a sucker for alliteration. No, alliteration is not a dirty word.

I did NOT get a dance from her by the way.

A few years later, I compiled all  my short non-fiction, published and unpublished and called them "Legal Lapdances." I submitted the best four to the Southwest Writers contest in the non-fiction book category. I won. I kept writing, and then I submitted some excerpts from a new collection and I took second. I put both collections together and now have about 90,000 words on my computer.

I can upload a 3,000 word story up to my computer in a matter of seconds.

With the advent of e-publishing, I can get the collection published in a matter of minutes. I hope to do so by the end of the year. It's probably going to be called "Laws and Loves."

So look for a bonus blog here and there, and then look for an e-book coming soon.