Did you always know you wanted to be a writer, even at Yale and while studying law?

I always found history interesting to study, majoring in that at both Yale and Cambridge universities.  I worked for professors who were writing books, and thereby learned to research and write my own papers— ultimately theses— on topics which engaged my imagination.  At Yale College, that was a senior thesis on Indian captivity narratives.  At Yale Law School, these included the history of student protest at American colleges in the late nineteen-sixties, and the history of a New York City zoning technique.  From there, an 800-page bibliography of Rudyard Kipling, and an 800-page history of the Yale secret societies were merely extensions over time (in years instead of semesters) and space (in scope and pages), from those initial student efforts.  Love of history was the itch, writing was the scratch.

What is your writing process? Do you outline your books ahead of time?

I’ve found topics have an inherent structure: for legal subjects, first the law, then the practice; for histories, begin at the beginning, after you find the beginning.  But beyond that, I’ve never had more than a sketchy mental outline about how to proceed when I begin.  With the Kipling books on his works and writing career, the narrative had to be chronological, and the same held for the senior society book.  But you don’t know what you may find in the research in disparate sources, and some sub-topics must be slipped into the narrative, even if not strictly chronological.  It makes better sense to do it there than in some later section or chapter where the antecedent may have been forgotten by the reader.  Having an outline, whether mental or written down, beyond the barest superstructure could inhibit that play of mind. 

Where do you write? Do you have any special writing rituals?

I write at night, and on weekends.  I need a block of hours to develop themes, edit the session’s work product to smooth it out, and then stop when my energy and enthusiasm have waned for the time being, as they always do.  That schedule was forced on me, of course, by my working as a big-firm New York City lawyer for ten or more hours a day including the train commuting. But I also found that doing something different in the evening and Sundays—feeding my passion rather than laboring at my professional trade—was restorative.  Writing at night was the vacation to practicing law intensively by day.

What is the hardest part of being an author?  What is your favorite part about being an author?

The hardest part for the historian is the sheer digging that it takes—the ploughing through multiple records and books that turn out not to be helpful toward achieving answers to your research questions—because that seems all lost time.  Still, it’s not lost time, as an historian must eliminate possible sources even if they don’t pan out.  The best part is discovering an anecdote, which is verifiable and footnotable, which illustrates some feature in your narrative arc that requires highlighting for the reader, who absorbs anecdotes better than dry dates.

Did you offend Skull and Bones by writing such detailed accounts of their history and traditions?  Are they mad at you?

I sought the permission of the corporate parent of the society, the Russell Trust Association, before starting the project (which of course was a history of the whole society system, not just Skull and Bones).  I also volunteered up front that I would print only what I could footnote, what had been already published elsewhere, recognizing that some of that material might be uncomfortable for traditionalists to have surfaced again.  That corporate permission was granted, and that personal promise was kept.  No unpublished revelations of oogy-boogy about Bones, or any other society’s traditions and history.  And I haven’t received pushback from any source in any of the societies.