Q&A with Author David O. Stewart
David’s latest work, “The Lincoln Deception,” is an historical mystery about the John Wilkes Booth Conspiracy. It was released in late August 2013 to praise from Publishers Weekly, which called it an “impressive debut novel.” His first book, “The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution,” was a Washington Post bestseller and won the Washington Writing Award as Best Book of 2007. His book, “American Emperor: Aaron Burr’s Challenge to Jefferson’s America,” which is an examination of Burr’s Western expedition, served as the basis for the Society of the Cincinnati’s decision to award David the 2013 Cincinnati History Prize. David also is president of the Washington Independent Review of Books, an online book review.
What’s the funniest/scariest/best interaction you’ve had with a fan?
My most recent book, “The Lincoln Deception,” is a novel dealing with the John Wilkes Booth Conspiracy to kill Abraham Lincoln. At one presentation about the book, a gentleman in the back row began to call out questions as I reached the end of my talk. After I responded, he announced that he was in a plaintiff in a lawsuit that seeks to exhume Booth’s corpse so it can be DNA tested, because this gentleman is convinced that Booth escaped capture after the assassination and is not buried in Baltimore’s Greenmount Cemetery. I tried to take questions from other people in the audience, but this fellow continued to be disruptive. Realizing I was in the presence of someone who was close to a fanatic on the subject, I invited the other audience members to approach me directly with their questions and moved on to the book-signing stage of the evening. It’s remarkable to find that sort of passion about something that happened 150 years ago!
Do/did you have a day job? What was it and how did it influence your writing?
I practiced trial and appellate law full-time for many years, and still practice law to a small extent. That experience certainly has influenced my choice of book subjects. My first three books involved legal topics: the writing of the Constitution, the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, and the treason trial of Aaron Burr. Legal training also provides great research skills, as well as experience marshaling evidence and telling a story – at trials and in appellate briefs, you often are creating a narrative for the judge or jury. Finally, the adversarial system teaches great discipline. When your opponent will pounce on any mistake you make about the facts of a case, you learn to be very careful about what you say.
Choose one book you’ve written. Who would you case to play the leading role(s)?
American Emperor features Aaron Burr, who was the bad boy of America’s founding era: He maintained an active romantic life while taking a jaundiced view of the talents of many of his contemporaries, and killed Alexander Hamilton in their legendary duel. I see Johnny Depp as the perfect Burr – though I have found that a number of other authors also see Mr. Depp as the perfect actor to portray the central characters in their books!
Share one of your rejection stories.
Why?
[EDITOR’S NOTE: Because it makes aspiring authors feel better when they hear about the challenges of now-published authors.]
Why should people come listen to you talk about your book?
I take a lot of pleasure in speaking about my books – I sometimes feel like I best understand what a book is about when I have to talk about it in public for 30 minutes. I learned from a book talk given by Doris Kearns Goodwin that you shouldn’t “tease” the audience and hold back key information. Rather, you want to share your best material with the audience to get them intrigued with the story. I try to do that.
Why write?
When I write fiction, I’m basically daydreaming for a living, which is pretty good work. And when I write non-fiction, I am exploring lives and times that are fascinating and which illuminate (for me) the broad experience of this peculiar life on earth that we all share.
Where do you go to find your ideas?
Sometimes they come from my own experiences. I became interested in President Johnson’s impeachment trial because I defended an impeachment case in the United States Senate myself. Research for one book can lead to another one. While studying the Johnson impeachment trial, I stumbled upon an episode concerning the Booth Conspiracy that nagged at me for a couple of years before I finally decided it could be the basis for a novel. My current project – a book about James Madison – grows out of my first book about the Constitutional Convention (“The Summer of 1787”). It seemed to me that I hadn’t really figured out Madison very well and that he is an under-appreciated character in our history, so I wanted to take a try at figuring him out.