by Russell Little

Today, Houston-based author and attorney Russell G. Little joins us for an interview about his newest crime thriller novel, Murder by Storm.

Thanks for joining us, Russell. Were you born and raised in Houston?

I was born in Amarillo, Texas. Amarillo is in the Panhandle. It’s flat as far as you can see, windy, and covered with mesquite. The federal government builds bombs there. After graduating from law school, I married a Houston girl, who promptly announced we were moving to Houston. It was the best thing she could have done for me. I practiced law in Houston for forty years, raised three kids, and I’m still married to that same woman. People are usually quite surprised about that since one of my most successful areas of law is family law, as well as divorce and criminal law.

Your crime thriller novel, Murder for Me, features an attorney from Houston. That sounds familiar! I’m sure decades in the business provided plenty of ideas for a story like this. But I’m curious, how did you come up with the plot?

My career was populated by colorful characters and wild cases that eventually fed my imagination. I’m required to say that it’s all fiction, but I can assure you that the people I met and the situations I encountered for that career are in my soul, and my soul is in my story.

Why did you decide to write a novel?

I decided to write the first novel a very, very long time ago. As I raised a family and practiced law, I must have started the novel twenty times, but it wasn’t until my youngest son graduated from high school and left for college that I decided it was time to finish. He said to me, “Dad, you’re over fifty, you need to finish that book. You’re running out of time.” And with those loving words, I was spurred to finish.

You also write children’s books with your wife, Melinda. Can you tell us about them?

The children’s stories were written by us because they were inspired by my first granddaughter, Vivi. One day during Grandparents’ Day at her school, she brought me a stuffed elephant and told me she loved it. I’ve always loved the large fauna of Africa, and this inspired my wife and I to write children’s stories about elephants and rhinos that would encourage the young readers to care for these animals and want to protect them. Also, my granddaughter likes those kinds of stories, so we get a hug from her when she reads them.

What’s an interesting fact that not many people know about you?

An interesting fact is that I practiced law for forty years, I tried over one hundred jury trials—hundreds more to a judge. Along the way, I came across some unbelievable situations. While not all can be told, they can feed my stories, and I can write those.

Do you find time to write on a regular basis?

I write on a regular basis, but I’m not always productive. Some days I get up and erase the whole day’s previous work because I wake up and realize that unlike the night before, now I think it’s garbage. My oldest son gives me grief about that.

Who are your favorite authors? Did any of them influence your writing in Murder for Me?

My favorite authors are not modern. I read Proust, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov. When I have writer’s block, I read Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. The chapters about sitting in a Paris café always get me back to the keyboard. The love of writing is what I got from those authors.

What should we look for next from you?

Murder by Storm comes out in October. It’s the continuation of the battle between the two main characters during a hurricane. Houston during a hurricane. Every reader should want to experience that through someone else’s eyes. And with a great story to go along with it, it’s perfect.

Russell G. Little is a writer and practicing divorce attorney. Murder for Me is a fictionalized compilation of the many people he’s encountered over his lifetime and thirty-two-year career.

He lives in Houston, Texas, with his wife of thirty-two years, Melinda.