Thank you so much for taking time for this interview! Before we dig in, our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
My main career was as a corporate lawyer and executive, and I’d also done a lot of advisory work for governments. All the while, I’d enjoyed writing—law review articles and newspaper articles on legal and public policy issues. That was where I was at when I retired and was looking for something to do with all the time on my hands. In the end, I backed into creative writing! It started with my trying to make something of an unpublished novel my grandfather had written in the 1920’s about Prohibition and rum-running from Saskatchewan down to Chicago. I tried editing it or turning it into a treatment for a film but was unsuccessful. However, in the end, I was inspired to try my hand at writing a different story of Prohibition which turned into my first novel, “Bean Fate.” When that was completed, I realized how much I enjoyed writing historical fiction, so I decided to try one more.
Congratulations on the Monmouth Manifesto, Can you tell us more about the book and why you wrote it?
When trying to think of an historical event that could be interesting, I remembered a bare mention of a New Jersey Loyalist, Richard Lippincott, who’d fought in the American Revolution and who ended up here in Toronto where we live. I did a little research and found his was quite an interesting story mentioned in histories of the Revolutionary War and biographies of George Washington. And I stumbled on the well-documented story of another New Jersey Loyalist, James Moody, who’d also fought in that war and that they had both been members of a Loyalist regiment in the British Army, the New Jersey Volunteers. The fact is, the American Revolution was America’s first Civil War. Some people were Patriots in favour of the rebellion and some were Loyalists opposed to it and were loyal to the British Crown’s colonial government. So, the New Jersey Volunteers were fighting their ex-friends and neighbors and it got very nasty, as civil wars do. Indeed, both Lippincott and Moody both managed to incur the wrath of General George Washington himself! With their stories I was able to create a novel based on real events where Lippincott—portrayed as a modest Quaker—and Moody—portrayed as charismatic Anglican Tory—become unlikely friends and see all kinds of action against the Patriots, all the way from pitched battles and guerrilla warfare to hijackings and kidnappings. And their were Reprisals—retaliation—like extra-judicial hangings on both sides. Nasty business. In the end, their loved ones suffer too, as Lippincott and Moody come to pay the price for their courage on the wrong side of history—loss of their farms, broken homes, brutal prison confinements, a murder trial and ultimate refugeedom.
What do you want your readers to walk away with after reading your book?
Mainly, a feeling that it’s been a good read. But also, a realization that there is more than one side to any story.
What is the most interesting story that happened to you as a lawyer and/or CEO?
When I was starting out in life…in 1961 I was a law student in Winnipeg, Manitoba and got a little scholarship to attend a one-week conference at Lake Couchiching some 100 miles north of Toronto. The deal was that I had to help out by driving foreign guest speakers to and/or from the Toronto airport. I was asked to drive back to the airport for one of the guest speakers—a young Harvard professor whom, frankly, I’d never heard of before named Henry Kissinger. He got in the car and the first thing he said was, “I understand they’ve devalued the Canadian dollar.” I knew that fact but nothing more so we didn’t start on a great note. It got worse.
The thing was, I didn’t know the territory and I couldn’t figure out how to get onto the highway to go back to Toronto and had to stop at a gas station to find out. I could tell poor Henry was slightly agitated but he didn’t castigate me and we made it in time. I was so impressed with Kissinger that when I went to Harvard I took his Defense Policy course. He didn’t recognize me and I didn’t allude to our earlier meeting!
Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
For my writing career, I had an early mentor to whom I’m grateful. His name is Noel Baker, a Toronto-based screenwriter. When I got to the point of trying to write a treatment for my grandfather’s story, I realized I needed some assistance. I contacted the head of the Canadian Film Centre, with whom I was acquainted, and he very kindly put me in touch with Baker, who took one look and said it wasn’t very interesting. But he did suggest I persevere with the genre of stories about Prohibition in Western Canada and I soon came across the unsolved murder of a member of the famous Bronfman family. Interesting!
So, with Baker’s coaching, I developed a treatment of a story where my protagonist solves the murder. It was pretty good but, when showing it around the Canadian film industry, I found no takers. I was very disappointed because I’d put a lot of work into it. Then Baker suggested I turn into a novel. I was initially dumbfounded at his suggestion but he encouraged me and, as I started writing, he assisted for the first year or so as a developmental editor. Looking back, I don’t think I would ever have become a novelist without his advice and, even more important, his encouragement.
From your experience, what are a few ideas that we can use to effectively offer support to others who want to work in this industry?
Mentoring is very important for beginners in any industry, but harder to come by for a novelist which is a solitary endeavor. So, programs like the Canadian Film Centre has for mentoring can be very supportive for aspiring writers.
You have a very funny and talented son, what was it like growing up in the Arnett household?
Well, you’d really have to ask him. And he’s spoken about it many times. He was not your average kid, he was a hoot, very bright and funny, constantly amusing his family and friends. But he didn’t fit easily into an organized environment like a classroom or with an authority figure trying to run an ordinary classroom, He’s talked about that himself. Fortunately, in high school he was admitted into a less-structured program offered by the Toronto District School Board so that he could do some acting and that was helpful. He’d told us early on he didn’t want to be a lawyer or banker or in any office job. He wanted to be an actor and my wife and I supported that. So he went to the Lee Strasberg acting school in NYC and the rest is history.
What is next for you? What are you working on now?
What I’m working on now is marketing my book. I also believe that it would make a good series and that Bean Fate would make a good film and, when I get time, I’ll go to work on that.
Where can everyone buy the book?
You can find me on my website and I share information about my books and where to purchase them. The book is published by FriesenPress and available online at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Blackwell’s to name a few, and in bookstores nationwide beginning mid-October.
Photos are provided by James Arnett
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