Pairs Well With… Finding the Next Chapter: Brooks Eason’s Life Beyond the Law

The hosts, Serena and Sheila, begin this episode discussing a spark that starts with a simple shift: stop dressing for approval and start dressing for yourself. From a vintage bandana that feels like armor to a chaotic morning that ends with a mailbox carving a new line into a new car, we unpack why confidence, planning, and self-expression matter more than perfection. Holiday talk follows—less pressure on a single day, more joy across a month—plus a disarming fix for the online shopping spiral that keeps our carts full and our closets confused.

Then the hosts engage in a rich conversation with Brooks Eason, a retired lawyer turned author. They delve into his latest book, 'I Remember Everything,' which intricately weaves a story of lifelong friendship, tragedy, and adventure. Brooks shares insights into his writing process, the transition from a high-stress legal career to a fulfilling post-retirement life, and the pivotal moments that shaped his journey. The discussion also touches upon the importance of friendships and personal fulfillment outside traditional career roles. Eason highlights the joys of hosting house concerts, the creative inspirations behind his characters, and the discipline carried over from law to writing. 

You’ll also get a candid look at the writing life—how to start with a gripping hook, build a middle that moves, and honor the people who make the story worth telling. If you’re navigating career shifts, craving more real connection, or ready to let style reflect the person you’ve become, this conversation has layers you’ll want to revisit.

You can find out more about Brooks Eason and buy inscribed copies of his newest book, I Remember Everything, (as well as his other books) at https://brookseason.com/

The book is also available on Amazon (with 5 star reviews): https://tinyurl.com/4c4rm9sr

If this episode hits home, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review. Your notes help us keep the conversations honest, useful, and alive.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Introduction and Family Anecdotes

00:27 Fashion and Personal Style

02:26 Morning Routines and Mishaps

03:53 Holiday Shopping and Party Plans

08:24 Flexible Holiday Celebrations

13:17 Interview with Brooks Eason

25:34 The Hook and the Middle

26:01 Outdoor Adventures and Inspirations

27:01 A Tragic Twist

29:14 Developing Characters and Personal Reflections

33:47 Transitioning from Law to Writing

47:21 Friendships and House Concerts

54:00 Reflections on Retirement and Creativity

56:32 Rapid Fire and Final Thoughts

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Disclaimer:
The content of this podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. Although your hosts are attorneys, Pairs Well With… does not provide legal, medical, financial, or professional advice. Listening to this podcast does not create an attorney-client relationship. Always seek the advice of qualified professionals regarding any specific questions or concerns you may have.

Transcript

Style As Self-Expression

SPEAKER_00 0:08

So I bet your is it your aunt was Ophelia? My great grandmother. Your great great grandmother. Okay. I bet she didn't put a lace bodysuit and silver necklace under her under her ovaries while she was beating the fish.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Or her sparkly needles. There you go. But that's what part of the green butterfly is about. Thinking outside of the norm for your wardrobe and incorporating modern pieces, which this is a modern piece with old pieces. And I heard it said recently that when you quit dressing for men, you find your style. And I thought that was a very profound statement. I do. And I think it's unfortunate that women don't start doing that until much later in life. They get over themselves and trying to impress other people, and particularly men or, you know, people of the opposite sex. And so they don't dress how they feel on the inside. They dress for somebody else. And so I love when people come in the green butterfly and I help them find what is your style. And it might not be anything in the green butterfly, but at least it makes them start thinking a different way about clothing and being a self-expression. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Well, and caring about what they look like. Yeah. And maybe not for men, but for themselves, in that it makes them feel more confident because they have developed their own sense of style.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

I mean, you can't walk out of the house looking like this if you're a not confident person. That's true. And you know, bandanas are my signature mark. And I came across this vintage Whiting and Davis, which you're probably familiar with the Whiting and Davis mesh handbags. They made gold bandana scarves and silver bandana scarves, like in the 60s and 70s. And so I came across this recently. And it's too good to take it to the store.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

So I love it. I love it. That should be a staple in your holiday wardrobe.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Well, I think it will be. Today's the first day I've had it on. So and actually, I didn't even have it on when I left the house this morning. It came in my mailbox last night. And so I was pulling out this morning and opened the mailbox and got it out. And I was like, oh yay, it's perfect. Cause I was gonna look for something at the store flashy, something blingy to go on with this. And I was like, perfect. That's exactly what I needed.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

And then as I'm pulling away, the door to my mailbox fell open and did a like massive deep scratch all the way down my six-month-old vehicle.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

No. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Oh, I hate that. Now I've got to figure out how to get that buffed out.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

You know, it seems like you get to this point where you say, okay, I'm checking all the boxes. Like I've got my new car now, and I don't have an older car. I'm not gonna have any problems. I got my mail out of the mailbox, everything's fine. I actually am gonna get to work on time, and that's gonna be great. And then your mailbox falls on your car. Yeah. You know, it's like my purple nova story. And so I think it's just it's one of those things. So you always are gonna be behind. I think that's the moral of the story.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Well, and the lesson to me is I I am so bad about trying to do way too many things in the morning before I leave the house. I go sit at the computer, I want to work out, you know, then it takes me time to try to figure out what I'm gonna wear. And then I feed the cat, I do a load of laundry. My ADD takes over like massively between 6 a.m. and 9 45 when I need to leave the house. And so if I wasn't in a hurry and I planned my routine better in the morning, I wouldn't be pulling out on two wheels, running late, and I would have noticed the mailbox door being open. So lesson learned.

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Lesson learned. Well, my mailbox is pretty much broken from all of the boxes being delivered every day. Just massive amounts of online shopping. I've done a lot of local shopping too. Can't say I've left them out, but the boxes and boxes that it's just it's crazy. It's taken over my life, and I have to stop.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

And then you have to return.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

And then I have to return about 50% of it.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

I do think you had a great idea for our girls' Christmas party that share that with her.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Yeah, I thought it would be a great idea for our theme for our Dirty Santa party was everybody bring the items from Amazon that they haven't returned on time. Because how many do we all have? I think it's I have a garage full of boxes that are gonna go be donated unless we incorporate that into our party. I mean, things I've ordered two of that didn't even like the first time, and I reordered them. So it's silly. It's really gonna be, I hate to even call it a resolution in next year, but I've got to do something because it's a terrible habit. I will say that I probably inherited it from my mother, who was a very bad online shopper. And it's just the bane of my existence right now. But we'll help you clear them out for Dirty Santa. Because I'm sure you have some amazing things in your garage right now. Some are good and some are just, you know, it's that instant gratification you get from Instagram now, and you've got that Apple Pay, and it's like, oh, that looks fabulous. And you all you have to do is double click and it's yours, and it's like everything's autophil. It's so easy to do. I've got to figure out a way for double click for the green butterfly. Oh, you do. I mean, I know that businesses had to go up because of how easy they can make it.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

And saving your card on file and all that.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

I mean, I'm sure there's data questions about that, and or privacy questions rather about protection of the data. But I mean, so many businesses do that now. So I don't know why we're not doing that. That's a light bulb moment I just had for the store. Yeah. We need to do that for people.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

I think you have to connect it to Apple Pay. Okay. Are you connected to Apple Pay?

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Because that's how I do it. It just connects on my phone. I mean, I don't know about our Android phone friends, how they do it. I'm sure there's a similar type button. Yeah. But it really does make it. It makes it too easy, really. I mean they always mess up our group text. Those Android users don't tell them that. You put it here on the record now. They're very sensitive about their phones. They're very sensitive that then they don't care that they come out green on our phones.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

And it kicks uh kicks photos out all the time, and we'll have these great post-party picks that we're all trying to share. I know. And it gets rejected.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Oh well. They're not going to change. They have their reasons.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Yeah, you're correct about that.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

I'm excited about getting ready for our dirty Santa party. It's coming up soon. Next Friday. Next Friday. A week from today. I know, I know. A week from today. Have you gotten your present?

SPEAKER_01 6:17

I have my present ready.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

Okay, good. Yes. I'm excited about it too. Well, this will come out after, so we'll have to regroup after the holidays and see how everybody did. But I thought I would do, I thought we would do potluck again this year because

Morning Chaos And The Mailbox Mishap

SPEAKER_00 6:30

that's fun when everybody gets to bring something, see what everybody signs up for.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

And you put so much effort into the witches one tasting, which was incredible. And I know our our folks saw that online. Yeah. Yeah. We'll take a little burden off of you for the first time.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

You know what? It's not even a burden. It's really fun. I got all my Christmas put up this week, and I was kind of a load-off. I'm covered in glitter still. It's kind of everywhere, but that's, you know, the hazards of Christmas. It's not too bad to be sparkly. Been trying to get my holiday wardrobe together. And we were talking before we started about going to this little bar in Fondron area of Jackson called Apothecary, which I would love to give them a plug because they have gone all out for Christmas. I know the decorations and they're so great at Christmas time. Fun. And all the cute cups that they have to serve the drinks in, and all the drinks are named fun names. The little Christmas drinks. Yes. You posted a cute little social of you and your sisters there. Oh, yeah. Weren't you forgotten? Yeah, it was cute.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

I forgot we did that. Because we did that for your birthday. And my mom commented, I need a picture of this. Well, mom, you can print one, you know. It's pretty easy, but I guess I'm gonna print out some for her for Christmas. So I'll take care of you for you. And I thought it'd be fun to print like the different ones, like the still photo, and then the ones where we're laughing and the ones where we're talking and do like a little, you know, like a multi- yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah, I think I I love that kind of gift. You know. Last year we had taken a trip, Ellie and my dad and me to Normandy for his 80th birthday. And so I've got to make a big photo book of that. And we didn't take a trip this year. I'm trying to think. I haven't made a book, so hopefully we didn't. But I do have all of Ellie's graduation photo books that I made for her. And so that was fun.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Cheney doesn't have any of those.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Cheney's mom's been busy.

SPEAKER_01 8:21

Well, and Chaney, you know, being number three. She didn't she doesn't have a lot of things that my older two have as far as scrapbooks and photo albums and I was her visit home for Thanksgiving. It was great. It was great. She stayed molded up in her little den upstairs pretty much the entire time. And I can't believe she's only been back at school for a week and she'll be home again this coming week. And she is going to work during the holidays. She told me she wanted to work because she needed to earn some funds to have some play money for next semester.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

So I'd like to sign Ellie up to work, and she would work for free. I'm saying that on the record. She'd love to spend some time on her.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

And so we'll have lots of tasks that they can do. New tagging, getting ready to bring out the spring merchandise.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

So that's great. I think you know, Ellie is a little concerned about how she's going to spend the month. We thought about taking her skiing just to do something during that month. And then I couldn't really get a lot of traction on that. I think she wants to come home and she loves being in her bed and visiting and seeing her boyfriend and other friends. So I'm not going to force it. We're just going to try to enjoy the holiday. And you know, there's always cooking to do and baking and gifts to make. And we'll be down in New Orleans several times, seeing our cousins and family. So it'll go by.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

You have all your plans laid out already. I I don't know what I'm doing Christmas Eve or Christmas Day yet. I know we're going to the hunting camp on the 27th and staying through the new year, but beyond that, I don't have any idea what our Christmas plans are. I do know that one of our kids is coming home from Orlando the 23rd through the 26th. The one in Chicago is not coming home at all. He was here for Thanksgiving. The college freshman both will be home next week. And then the two that are local, I don't we'll see them the 24th or 25th, maybe at some point. So we'll feel you know.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

I mean, with all your moving parts, Serena, you kind of need a Venn diagram to figure out who's gonna be where at the same place at the same time, if at all.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

But you know, that's that's just part of having a big blended family. This that's chaos, but we called it control chaos in our house. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

You know, I've always thought that the holiday season gives you a solid month to celebrate.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Yeah. It really does.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Like I don't have this big, I'm not married to it being just Christmas Day, and we have different folks we want to visit with, and especially because it's usually just Ellie and me and and my dad. And you know, we don't have a huge family. We have a lot of friends we like to visit with, you know, that we count on certain, like my Supper Club group and our girls' group and my cousin group. You know, there's just different groups that we want to do with celebrate with, but I like to do it the whole month long, and that way you're not really pigeonholed into like having to do it December 25th.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

I want to put that pressure on any of the kids to feel like they have to pick or choose. And so I've I've always said I want to be the most flexible person during the holidays for y'all because I never want you to feel like you have to choose between one set of grandparents or another set of grandparents or one set of parents or the other set of parents. And in my, you know, several of them only one officially has in-laws right now, but we've got two weddings this upcoming year, so that'll add another layer of things, you know.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

And so I've just always well, you'll be the favorite because that's the most I mean, that's the most important thing is to be flexible when you have, I think, having been a kid and having to navigate different relationships and other people that you have to see and obligations and being able to be flexible with your kids is really important to them. And knowing that it just it's not just that day that you're celebrating, you know, you're celebrating more than that. And plus it's fun, I think, to extend the time, more opportunities to wear shiny sparkly things and eat good food and we play really silly games at my house too.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

I have a new card game and it's 80s and 90s song lyrics. Oh, fun and it's like a trivia game for the song lyrics, so that's gonna be our fun game this year.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Oh, I like that. Well, look, we're getting ready to welcome our next guest, Brooks Easton. And so I'm glad we had a chance to catch up before we show our audience our interview with Brooks. And I hope that people give his book out for uh for Christmas. For Christmas, yeah. I remember everything. Yeah, he did a great job for us. It was a it was a great read. Yeah, he had a couple of he's

Online Shopping Habits And Party Plans

SPEAKER_00 12:45

had a couple of live readings at Lemuria and a place up in Chipelo, and so I hope his book is getting some traction during this holiday season.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Very inspirational person to pivot from his legal career to writing and publishing books.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Yeah, he's a great storyteller. Well, good. All right, we'll see Brooks soon, and you and I will catch up real soon ourselves. Sounds good. Take care. Bye. Good afternoon, Brooks. How are you today?

SPEAKER_03 13:18

I'm good. I'm good. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

We appreciate you being here with us. Serena and I have both had an opportunity to read your new book. I remember everything, and we both were moved by it so much, and we're so excited to be able to have you on the podcast today and learn more about you and your life and your work. And so we appreciate the time you're giving us, and we want to hear more about your book and just what got you to where you are. First off, I mean, how does it feel to have the book in your hands?

SPEAKER_03 13:49

You know, I tell people, of course, I've had it now for what, six weeks, I guess, eight weeks, something. Anyway, but I tell people, you know, when you come up with an idea for a book and then you write a draft and then another draft and another draft and find a publisher and pick out a title, and then the first shipment arrives, and you open that box and pull it out, it's uh it's like the coolest thing ever.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

I bet. I bet. It's like Christmas Day.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Yes. Very much.

SPEAKER_00 14:18

Excellent. Well, do you remember the moment that you came up with this particular story?

SPEAKER_03 14:26

No, the moment, no. I had the idea for the way the book begins and and the way it ends. I didn't have anything in the middle. You know, I knew it was gonna be about two best friends. Then it starts with a tragedy, as you know, but the whole development of their friendship part, I didn't have any of that when I first thought about it. And when I initially wrote it on my first draft, I made one chapter in the present and one in the past, and I alternated all the way through. Then I decided that was a little too forced, and so now it's the present and then a lot of past, and then back to the present. Somebody asked me, but how long did it take? I don't know that either.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

This was how many books for you? But how many books does this make?

SPEAKER_03 15:13

Seven.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Seven.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

Seven with an asterisk, because bedtime with Buster, my book of conversations with my dog. I had illustrations done for it by a guy named Bob Fugate from Atlanta. I grew up here, but he lives in Atlanta, and he did these magnificent illustrations. You know, I can't brag about me, but I can brag about him. And he would send them to me and he'd talk about Christmas morning. He would send them to me by email, and sometimes we would be out at dinner, and I would just hand my phone around so everybody could see the illustrations of Buster. You know, Buster, a mixed-breed dog, and there are more than 30 portraits of it. The illustrations were so great that I wrote a children's verse. Bedtime with Buster Conversation with My Dog is an adult book. It's not inappropriate, but it's an adult book. But I did a much shorter you know, it took a year to write Bedtime with Buster and a weekend to write Bedtime with Buster Children's Edition.

SPEAKER_00 16:05

So when was the first book written?

SPEAKER_03 16:08

When it was written, it would span a long time.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

So my first book, Travels with Bobby, is about hiking trips in the mountains of the west with my best friend. He and I are going hiking in North Carolina next week. And I was a very full-time lawyer. And he and I started going on these trips out west in 1996. First year we went to Yosemite, I was kind of on a lark. The very first night that we camped together, we stayed in Washoe Lake State Park in western Nevada, and we were attacked in the middle of the night by the State Park sprinkler system. And so Bobby's like the funniest guy in the world. And we went to uh Glacier National Park, and then we went to you know, we went to so the the book is about our first five trips. Six trips, five trips, it's been a long time. So I I would come back and that would be my you know, that would be my I would talk about it. I didn't have to think about anything else for cocktail parties. I just here, let me tell you about because we had all these funny things happen to us and we saw these magnificent places, and you know, one year Bobby fell and busted his head open in the middle of the trail, and we had a doctor with us, and the doctor sewed him up. He had a suture kit, but no anesthesia. And so Bobby drank some of my scotch and got sewed up on a picnic table. So we had stuff like that every year. And so after about three years, I decided I wanted to write it. And but the writing of it took a long time and covered a time in my life when I changed law firms and changed spouses. And so it wasn't I started writing it in '98 or '99, and it was published in 2015. So that was my first one.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

So you had about 40 years you practiced law, and so there had to be a lot of ideas in your law practice that probably resurfaced in your writing as well.

SPEAKER_03 18:08

I wrote this book about stories from my legal career, and I like to write, you know, as as a litigator, I wrote a million briefs. And and you know, being a litigator, what you do is tell stories, whether you're writing a brief or or trying a case, you're telling a story. And sometimes I would I would teach younger lawyers how to write better briefs, and one of the things I would tell them is it doesn't have to be boring. Just because it's a legal brief that's going to the court, it doesn't have to be boring. You can actually make it interesting. And so I think I'm I probably got better at writing through all of that. I didn't do much creative writing until I wrote Travels with Bobby. I wrote short stories for my parents when I was in law school and too poor to buy them Christmas presents. I gave them short stories for Christmas.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

That's an amazing gift there.

SPEAKER_03 18:58

Yeah, you know, and I've I think I still have one of them, but the other one I lost. Who knows where it is?

SPEAKER_01 19:03

So would you say the creativity is a parallel in your legal writing and now your creative writing? But you because you were able to weave some creativity or tried to teach younger lawyers how to weave creativity into their legal briefs. Or do you see any other parallels between legal writing and creative writing?

SPEAKER_03 19:19

I think probably I mean a lot of lawyers they're not very creative, and I think they can do better if they are. I would do like a lunchtime seminar about writing briefs to these young lawyers, and I would tell them Imagine that you're a clerk for a federal judge, and imagine that you just spent the weekend at Bonnaroot, and imagine that you're not feeling that great, and you pick up a brief to read it, and I would give them two different briefs, and one would start out the way a lot of lawyers start them out, start out briefs, you know, first page of saying absolutely nothing, and then one that catches your attention from the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:56

And I said, Which which one? And so I don't know. If that answers your question at all.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

Yeah, yeah. What about your courtroom work? Did you do you see any parallels where you're able to bring that into your writing? With the exception of the one book where you did just focus basically on your legal career?

SPEAKER_03 20:12

You know, probably, but I can't name, you know, I mean, I had lots of fascinating cases along the way that had an opportunity to be creative.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Well, in law practice it was more about persuasion. And in in the creative writing that you're doing now, it's more about storytelling. But there's got to be, you know, a little bit of oath.

Holidays, Flexibility, And Family Logistics

SPEAKER_03 20:30

I think so. I mean, I think a good story is persuasive. And, you know, some people, when they tell me about my books, they say they're very easy to read. They're not, you know, I don't use big words. I don't know many big words. You know, Carrie, my wife, because of her family situation, she couldn't go to college. But when I come across a word that I've never seen before, I say, what does this mean? And she always knows. She knows that. She always knows. Yeah. She is highly self-educated.

SPEAKER_02 20:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:57

But you know, I I think there is a degree of of when I was writing briefs, I felt the same way. I don't want it to be hard to understand. I want to make sure that this is clear. And I think, you know, my books are I'm not going to say they're good or bad, but I think they're they're not hard to read. I mean, y'all have just read some that's not, it's not like Faulkner, where you get to the end of the paragraph and you feel like you have to start over.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Brooks, we touched on a few minutes ago about your transition from full-time serious lawyer to maybe not so full-time serious lawyer. What spurred that on?

SPEAKER_03 21:31

I had a stroke almost exactly 10 years ago. It'll be 10 years at the end of January. They thought I had a brain tumor, which is something that'll get your attention. The doctor showed me this slide on the MRIs, and it was some big, big something in my brain. And I said, What's that? And in his poor bedside German manner, he said, you know, a likelihood is either cancer or infection. Cancer is much more common and you have no sign of infection. So I was at University Hospital and they did all these tests, and I didn't have a brain tumor, and I recovered from the stroke, but uh not long after that negotiated a deal with my law firm to make less and work less and started writing more.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

And how long had you been practicing at that point?

SPEAKER_03 22:20

Let's see. That was 10 years ago, so 33 years.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Before you had your stroke, had you thought about an end game as far as your legal career was concerned?

SPEAKER_03 22:32

I knew that if could afford it, didn't want to keep working at the same pace that I had been for a long time. I was a litigator, it's very consuming. It's extreme, you know, it can be exhilarating, but it's extremely stressful. And the older I got, the more the stress bothered me. And there's really nothing at all stressful about writing a book, at least so far. I mean, figuring out what the next thing to say is, but that's not as bad as losing a lawsuit.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

So when you were writing the first book that took you some period of time to write, were you writing it with the intention of it being a book that you would publish one day?

SPEAKER_03 23:13

Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, from the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Okay. And did you know how to go about doing that? How did you know how to write a book or how to go about getting it published?

SPEAKER_03 23:22

Not at all. And it's completely changed since then. You know how long ago it was that I started writing that book? I went to the Eudora Wealthy Library to do research.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_03 23:32

Imagine. I named two hamsters in the book Laverne and Shirley. And I thought, well, they can't be Laverne and Shirley unless Laverne and Shirley were already on TV then. I looked it up and they were. That's who they are. Interesting. Before our third trip, I was already thinking about writing it. And I took a portable dictaphone. So I already had that in mind. And when I started writing about it, I had a book in mind. Knowing how to get a book published, I knew absolutely nothing about that. And my first book was self-published through a company called Lulu Press. And then I found this small independent publisher in Nashville, and they have done all but one of my books since then. My book that's a novel based on my grandfather's life. My grandfather, who was a Methodist preacher and district superintendent in the second half of his life, and I discovered, which led to me writing this book, that in the first half of his life he was a felon and a fugitive and served time in the state penitentiary in Pittsburgh and lied about his age by 14 years. He was an interesting man. And I thought it had real potential, so I got a bigger New York publisher for that. It turned out it really didn't have bigger potential.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

You mentioned something about you took a dictaphone to record some stories. Do you use that when you write now? And is that something you carry over from legal practice? Or do you sit down and actually write it out?

SPEAKER_03 24:55

I write it. And I can't type. I type on my books and I never learn to type.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

You one finger type?

SPEAKER_03 25:01

Yeah. Well, two. But I don't know that it if I could type like the wind, I don't know that I would write any faster because I'm, you know, I'm doing the thinking at the same time. And I'm pretty good with two fingers.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

Yeah, that's probably the adrenaline from the creativity comes out.

SPEAKER_03 25:22

I mean, my my books are not all that long. The new book's the shortest one, but my books in total are more than half a million words. And I think that's a lot of words to type with.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

Yeah. So on the recent book, it comes out with kind of a gut punch in the very beginning of it. The hook. It totally caught me off guard with the ending. But when you sat down a while ago, you said you knew the beginning and you knew the ending, but you didn't know what the middle was going to be. Tell us about how maybe the first book travels with Bobby to I see some resonance maybe in the middle part of I Remember Everything.

SPEAKER_03 25:55

Oh, yeah. And most of the places, so a lot of the middle of this book involves outdoor adventures that the two main characters take. Sam and Jeff grow up in Jackson, born in 1960, and they become best friends the day they meet. The summer they turn eight. I stole that story from a good friend of mine who met his lifelong best friend the day after his family moved to Waco, Texas, when he was six years old, and his mother kicked him out of the house and said, said, go find somebody to play with. And he rang the right doorbell. And so that's how Sam and Jeff meet in the book. And so the middle of the book is a lot of outdoor adventures. They go on two great road trips, one when they're 18, and one, I guess about 30 years later, they take their teenage sons on. And nearly everywhere that they go, I've been. And a lot of the places I've been with

Games, Gatherings, And Guest Tease

SPEAKER_03 26:50

my friend Bobby and some with other people too. So um that's how the middle of the book came together.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

I don't want to tell the listeners the the real story because it's such a interesting weave of facts and getting you to the end result. But the premise of the book and the character, Jeff's character, what happened to him, was that something that you were familiar with before you read the book, or was that a story that you stole from somebody else? Or how did you come up with that twist?

SPEAKER_03 27:27

Well, you know, the you got spoiler alerts and not uh and this is not really much of a spoiler because it happens in the very beginning of the book. So I don't mind sharing that. You were kind of dancing around it. I won't. I did anyway.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

It's up to you. It's your book. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:44

Yeah, we debated about that. So in the first chapter of the book, Sam Thompson, upstanding guy, newly elected president of the Mississippi Bar, gives a speech at his investiture banquet, drives home, he's on the unlit Natchez Trace with his wife, Evelyn, and uh hits and kills a man on a bicycle. He's not drunk, but he's had a couple of drinks. Evelyn persuades him to leave the scene. He's very anguished about it because he's a stand-up guy, but she says there's nothing we can do to help that poor man. But if you stick around, it could be terrible for you. Pretty good argument. He leaves. And then the next afternoon he learns that the man he killed was his best friend, Jeff Freeman. So that all happens at the beginning, so that it's I'm not spoiling too much. It's not in the marketing materials because we my publisher, yeah, don't do it. But so he would he would be against this, but he's not here. Anyway, uh there's a man here in town. I've got two good friends, Roy Adell, Tommy Lewis, they're my music camping, hiking, campfire buddies, along with Bobby. And they're both lawyers at Wells Marble, and they had a law partner who was killed on a bicycle at night in a hit and run accident a few years ago. Somebody's Bob Walker. That gave me the idea for the story.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

When you began ruminating about the story, I want to ask you about how you how you come about those ruminations, how how you begin to figure out that you've got a story to tell in a book. Did you know what the end was gonna be at the time?

SPEAKER_03 29:26

Yeah, not not precisely, not not all the details, but I knew, you know, the gist of why Jeff was on the on the trace riding his bike at night. So I had that. And then

Introducing Author Brooks Easton

SPEAKER_03 29:40

you know, the beginning of the book, I mean the middle of the book, I wanted to make that, you know, these are two great guys who love each other. And they're stories spanning from 1968, you know, for uh 55 years, from the day they meet until the day Jeff dies is 55 years. One of the stories is that Sam's in trial on the coast, and uh his wife Evelyn goes into his wife Evelyn goes into labor six, seven weeks early. And he's in trial with his phone off, and his buddy Jeff has to step in and you know, threatens to name the child something terrible while Sam's speeding home on Highway 49. So that's I didn't have that. I just it was fun to make up.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Yeah. The judge down on the coast that was trying that case. Is that a judge we all know?

SPEAKER_03 30:30

I don't know if you know him. I certainly do.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

I think I did.

SPEAKER_03 30:33

Well, the late Walter Jax, I I had a whole bunch of cases. You know, I represented Engels Shipyard. I practiced law far more on the coast than I did up here in my career. Represented them for 30-something years.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

So in the book when Sam has to deliver Jeff's eulogy, is that something you've experienced personally already?

SPEAKER_03 30:54

Complete creation.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

But you probably envision at some point in your life you may be able or not be able to, but you may be called upon to do that for a dear friend. And so maybe at the this age in life, we're all kind of thinking about that and what the end is going to be like, who's gonna stand up and speak for us? And so maybe that's kind of where some of that came from.

SPEAKER_03 31:15

Yeah, I've never given one and don't know if I could. I mean, I I'd get too emotional. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Even with all your years of courtroom experience, you don't think you could stand up? That's different.

SPEAKER_03 31:28

You know, that's kind of different. One of my best friends from law school gave this wonderful eulogy for his father, who was the president of UNC Chapel Hill and a fine, fine man. And I mean, it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful thing. I've shared it with a whole bunch of people because it's on YouTube. And I just told him, How did you how did you do that? I mean, I couldn't a million years get up and talk about my daddy like that without having a breakdown. But he did.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

When you undertake took to write this book and you were getting

Holding The Finished Book

SPEAKER_00 32:00

into the characters and developing the Sam character and the Jeff character, how does that process work for you with works of fiction where you completely have to come up with a character profile for each one of these men whose lifespan's, you know, 55 years? How does that work for you? What's that process like?

SPEAKER_03 32:20

Well, you know, this is my first true novel. The book about my grandfather had to be a novel because he died in 1942 and I had to make up a bunch of stuff. But I had the core story. But, you know, how I developed these guys, and so I you know, I've asked a couple people, who do you think I'm more like? You know, I'm I'm more like Sam, more like Jeff, and I don't know which one I I'm kind of a mixture of it. Yeah, I'm kinda in between. But I knew I wanted Sam to be like focused type A. I mean, great guy and a fun guy, but workaholic, and you know, Jeff chews him out in the book a couple times for being a workaholic. And he deserved it. And he he knew he deserved it. But I wanted Jeff to be the, you know, everything comes easy to him. He's happy go lucky, he's the ladies' man, he's but a great, great guy. I mean, they're the only villain in the book, and he's just a cameo villain, is the funeral director.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:22

One of the things I wrote in the book about the the villainous funeral director was that he in his office at the funeral home, he had return checks on the bulletin board. And I went to a funeral home and saw that. And I thought, man, that if if that's not salt in the wound, you know, mama died and your check bounced and we're gonna show the world.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Oh, man. Did you think that when you were leaving the practice of law? I know that you had the stroke and that's what instigated your transition. Did you think that being an author or writer or exploring that as a new career would be in your future?

SPEAKER_03 34:01

I knew I would write more. I had I knew I wanted to write a book about my adoption. Because it's a remarkable story. And I knew I wanted to write that. Well, here's here's so I learned all. So I was adopted as an infant from New Orleans in 1957 and always knew I was adopted. I had the best parents there were. Never looked, never would have. And then these lawyers came looking for me because I was a potential heir to my great my biological great-grandfather's fortune. And I just would have gotten a piece of it, but even a piece of it I think was gonna be a lot. He had oil and gas properties all over the country, and he owned the only facility in the Western Hemisphere that made fluoride for toothpaste. A lot of teeth. So so I knew I wanted to write that book. Beyond that, I didn't have any plans, you know, I wasn't thinking this will be this will be my encore career. But I like it. I like it a lot. And so I don't know. I've started one book which would be a comic novel set in South Louisiana. Maybe I'll do that. I thought about writing this horrifying true story about a friend of mine, one of my hiking buddies, who was murdered in um 2020, the week before the pandemic curtain came down. He was a chiropractor in northern Idaho, and he was about 20 years younger than I am. And he was on the phone with his wife at

Writing Process And Early Works

SPEAKER_03 35:40

the end of the day, and all of a sudden you see a owl. I think I've been shot, and he fell over dead. And for a time they didn't know anything. And you know, I wondered if it could have been a hunter, you know, that but but he was on the ground floor office, and there was a building right across the street, so it had to have been somebody right there. A few months later, the other chiropractor in town confessed.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 36:08

No kidding. Killed the competition.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

Wow. Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 36:13

He said he was just trying to scare him, but shot him in the back and died instantly.

SPEAKER_01 36:18

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 36:20

Four kids. And I think it's been on dateline. And I thought about I mean, I know them all. And I thought about writing a book about it, but I just I don't want to be sad.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Well, in this book, you uh have a lot of musical references, and I know your lovers are. Do you listen to music when you write?

SPEAKER_03 36:40

No.

SPEAKER_01 36:41

No, you write in silence.

SPEAKER_03 36:43

Yeah. When we bought the house, you've been to our house. When we bought that house, there's a den, there's a desk in the den. That was gonna be the place. That was gonna be the place. And I haven't written a single word at that desk in the den. If the temperature is between 55 and 85, I'm on the screen porch. And if it's below 55 or above 85, I'm on the kitchen counter. So I often don't write in silence because I've got birds, but uh, I don't listen to music.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

Do you have a particular schedule or what keeps you disciplined to get the book done?

SPEAKER_03 37:17

That assumes that I'm disciplined. I guess I do. I rarely write in the morning. In the morning I'm sitting having my coffee and read the news and get depressed, and then walk the dogs three miles every day. And some days I'll work four hours, and some days I'll work none. Just depends. But it's almost always after lunch.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

Was that how you were in your practice? Were you more of an afternoon, nighttime lawyer, or were you the early bird and worked hard at morning hours and up through lunch?

SPEAKER_03 37:52

I was always at my best early, but I was usually asleep then. When I was in trial, I I would get up at five and I could do a lot more between five and nine than I could do between five and nine the night before.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

Yeah. Yeah. How did your, I know many of your former law partners, and and I know that you've remained friends with many of them, and I enjoyed the tales that you told in your in your book triggered.

SPEAKER_03 38:17

Warnings.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

Trigger warning. That's right. That makes a lot of sense, even given the nature of the book. How did you feel your efforts to write books were received by your former colleagues?

SPEAKER_03 38:32

You know, I don't know how many of them have read them. Some have.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Sometimes I feel like family and friends who are close to you when you're going through a transition in your life, they may or may not be as receptive to it as maybe strangers might be because they've sort of got an idea of how you fit into their life. And so by doing something different, it kind of has a different impact on them. They may not be as supportive as you might think because they're family and friends. I I don't know whether or not you felt one way or another that you got a lot of support from your family and your friends to make a transition in your life from active lawyer to not so active lawyer.

SPEAKER_03 39:20

Well, I certainly got a lot of support from Carrie, my wife. Sure. I mean, the others, they were fine, but I wasn't, you know, I wasn't asking their opinion.

SPEAKER_01 39:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:30

I'm old enough to decide, so I did it.

SPEAKER_01 39:33

Well, there's a freedom in that. And there's a freedom in stepping away that you don't have when you're remaining. So embracing that and trusting that it's going to be different and be unknown, but also allows you to have more more space to be who you are and who you want to become.

SPEAKER_03 39:50

Yeah. It would be, you know, I say that writing books is not stressful. But if I had to depend on this to eat, that would be a whole different thing.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_03 40:00

You know, after I had a stroke, I I talked to the guy who managed my retirement money and I said, I'm thinking about going part-time. Can we afford that? And he said, Yeah, you can afford to do that. And I said, if you're wrong, we're gonna move in with y'all. So maybe you want to run the numbers again. Yeah. But it's a crapshoot. If you're gonna make any money, I mean I haven't made money to speak of on any of my books. And sometimes I'll read a book and I'll think, golly, mine's better than that.

SPEAKER_01 40:32

But that's not why you're doing this. I mean, you're doing this to explore your own desire to put something creative out in the world, is how I've interpreted what you've said. I'm doing the translation.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

I'm just just fun.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 40:44

I do it, I can do it to amuse myself, and hopefully it amuses other people too.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

Other than the financial part of retiring or cutting back on your full-time active practice of law, were you worried at all about sort of your status to the world and your ego in being a trial lawyer and being a litigator and dressing up in a suit every day, and sort of that what would happen to that persona?

SPEAKER_03 41:12

No. No, not at all. I started one, you know, I went part-time and then the pandemic came and I just kind of trailed off into nothing. I mean, one of the things that I put in the trigger warning was, you know, am I retired? I'm really not sure. So it was a very gradual thing. I wasn't wrapped up in the whole persona. I mean, I was very driven when I was working hard and more like Sam than like Jeff. I worked hard. But it wasn't and I think a lot of people, especially men who are married to their careers, they're afraid to retire.

SPEAKER_02 41:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:53

I see these guys who couldn't possibly need the money and they're still going at it. I liked

Lawyering, Storytelling, And Craft

SPEAKER_03 42:00

being a lawyer because it's so stressful and I don't miss it. I miss some of the people, but I'm glad I'm not doing it now.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

It's such a big part of anybody's career, not just being a lawyer, but the identity that you develop in your career that you spend all this time getting an education for and trained for and learn and become proficient at doing, and then all of a sudden you don't have it anymore. So many people find that it get depressed because that really was their identity. And making that transition, whether you have to do it because of health reasons or you just choose to do it because it's become so stressful, or financially, you don't have to go do that anymore. I feel like a lot of people get lost in that transition. You know, I've been practicing law now for 35 years, and a big part of my life has been devoted to practicing law and getting dressed up.

SPEAKER_03 42:59

But you told me you were only 39 years old.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

Well, I was I was a child prodigy. They let me go to law school super early. But you know, a lot of the hesitation, not just for me and for Serena, but friends of ours who are also sort of at this stage of our life and thinking about the future, is what do we do with that part of us that we are so closely identified with being a professional, being out there in the world and having some respect at what we do? How do we fill our time and our lives without that? And I mean, obviously, you've been able to fill your life with some wonderfully creative things and things that you just enjoy doing, walking your dog and being with your wife and having your house concerts and those types of things. So that's wonderful. And it's wonderful that you don't miss it because I think I kind of wonder like, will will I miss it if it's not there anymore? I kind of think I won't.

SPEAKER_03 43:59

It's hard to know, isn't it? It's hard to know till you're on the other side. Yeah, I've thought I thought maybe I should come out of retirement to teach a seminar on how to be retired. Because I'm really good at it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

That's excellent. You have that line in the book, lawyering was about control, but writing is about surrender. Were you afraid of surrendering and losing control? Or did you welcome that?

SPEAKER_03 44:22

Uh I would say I welcomed that.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

And surrendering to the unknown, what it's going to be like when you're no longer this persona that gets dressed up and is required to bill hours and answer to somebody else, a client or other partners and all. It can be a little scary.

SPEAKER_03 44:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:38

Because it's a significant change.

SPEAKER_03 44:39

And I I think it scares a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 44:41

And it scares a lot of people so much that they don't ever do it, which is unfortunate.

SPEAKER_03 44:45

Yeah, I've got I graduated from Duke Law School in 1982, and I've got about a dozen buddies, and we go on a golf trip every year. The last three or four trips, I got a bad shoulder. I ain't even played. I just go and walk the course and don't hit a bad shot or a good one and just have fun with my friends. But this year, a guy who's a very accomplished litigator in Atlanta, he's just succeeded in getting a guy off of death row in Louisiana because he was innocent. Yeah. Anyway, great guy, very fine lawyer, very accomplished. And he's not retired. He's my age, he's 68. But he wanted to meet with several of us when on our golf trip who are retired to talk about it. It can be scary.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

If that's how you've lived for so long, and then you have this leisure time, you don't really, you know, it's like stepping away from the billable timesheet. Have I been productive today if I don't have this timesheet to show for it? I think a lot of people struggle with that. I know I did when I left the billable world to do something different. It took me a while to make that transition and realize at the end of the workday, yeah, I did actually accomplish something, even though I don't have this sheet that shows I accomplished something. I think that's hard for a lot of people in our profession.

SPEAKER_00 46:09

When I filled out my last timesheet, I did not have any regrets whatsoever about the There was there was no looking back after I filled out that last time sheet. That was one of the reasons I left it.

SPEAKER_03 46:24

What percentage of your income would you be willing to give up not to have to record your time? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:30

Yeah. I was I was ready to I was ready to leave that behind and roll the dice on that one. Like that worked out okay. But it seems, Brooks, like your close friendships. You seem to have many of them, and you talk about them in your books, and even today you've been sharing some friendship stories with us. Do you think having those friendships in your life during this transition phase helped sort of ease any kind of reticence you may have had about the retiring?

SPEAKER_03 47:00

Not a lot, because a lot of this was going on during the pandemic. I was hanging out with my wife and my dogs. But it was it was good for me. It wasn't hard. I didn't need to be, you know, mentored along. I've always kind of had a lazy streak. And it was this has played into it nicely.

SPEAKER_00 47:18

What about the role of friendships in your life? I mean, you clearly had some long friendships in your life. How do you think that that has sustained you in your 68 years?

SPEAKER_03 47:30

Oh gosh. You know them. I do. I've got wonderful friends. And I I think that's probably why I decided to write this book because, you know, this book's about a terrible tragedy and it's about great adventures, and it's about the music of John Prime, my favorite songwriter. But it's more than anything, it's about a friendship. And these two guys who are totally devoted to each other, and they give each other trouble, as you hopefully you do to your best friends. And and I've got, you know, I have wonderful friends. Some of them have changed over time. You know, I got a divorce and then I remarried and changed law firms and moved to a different house in a different neighborhood. But, you know, we love our friends and spending time with them. My buddy Bobby, who's my best friend, and lives in Southern Virginia now, he's still has property on the coast, and he's got to go there the end of next week.

Stroke, Slowdown, And Career Pivot

SPEAKER_03 48:20

And so he's driving, he and his dog, and I'm gonna fly to Asheville, and we're gonna spend four nights. We're not camping, staying in a cabin. Staying in a cabin. I can still stay in a tent, I do. But we're staying in the cabin. We'll go hiking and have campfires, which are one of my favorite things. So it'll be good.

SPEAKER_00 48:38

Do you think that many men have the kind of relationships that you've had with your best friends as well as what Jeff and Sam experienced in your book?

SPEAKER_03 48:48

I think I'm more blessed in that than the average person. And I do think that one of the problems we have in America now is that there's not as much of that as there used to be. People spend their days buried in their screens and don't have the sorts of relationships. You know, a lot of these crazy murderer guys, I think they are more than anything else, they're just detached. They don't have good friends, they're not members of clubs, they don't go to church, they're not in organizations, they don't have buddies, they're not going camping. There needs to be more of that.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

One area that I applaud you and Carrie for is the house concerts that y'all do. I mean, y'all are proactive in engaging in relationships and friendships and providing an atmosphere that fosters that. I mean, that's how you and I met. I was invited by one of the lawyers at one of your firms at one time who's a dear friend of mine.

SPEAKER_03 49:44

Who was that? Laverne. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 49:46

Yeah, yeah, that's how I met you. Okay. Came to one of your house concerts by invitation through Laverne. And then was thankful to stay on the list and have been back when it was, you know, a good time for me. And so I appreciate that. But I want y'all because y'all invest in people, y'all invest in relationships about doing things like that.

SPEAKER_03 50:05

Yeah, we love those house concerts.

SPEAKER_00 50:07

So, what was the genesis of the house concerts? And if you could just tell the listeners what what we mean by that when we're Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:14

Sometimes sometimes I tell people we host house concerts, and they say, What does that mean? I said, Well, it's pretty self-explanatory. So Carrie and I have gone a bunch of times on a music cruise called Kamo, C-A-Y-A-M-O, and it's Americana music, the kind of music we like, and it's great. We we went every year until the year that Carrie got seasick, and that was that was the end of that. But we heard from other people on there who were music nuts about hosting house concerts. And we just talked about it and said, you know, that might be a fun thing to do. We were empty nesters, we weren't in this house, but we were in a house with a open floor plan and room, and might be a fun thing to do. And then one night we went to Underground 119 downtown. This was in its former life, and uh saw this folk duo there, Clay Parker and Juggy James from Baton Rouge. And Carrie did a little too much wine. And they took a break, and Carrie said to them, We want y'all to come play at our house for our friends. And I said, Well, I guess we must. And so they came ten years ago and it was great fun. And I sent an email around to the people who'd come and said we might do this on a fairly regular basis. Who's in? And about half those people have moved away now, but they all said they were in. And so the one we had Saturday night was our 53rd. Sometimes the artists hear about us and I get inquiries from them. More often, it's just somebody I like, and I send an email, hey, want to come. They almost always stay with us, and Carrie's the hostess with the most us and a spectacular cook. So she feeds them well, and we've gotten to be good friends with a bunch of them. And seriously, you know, I tell people, if you love music and you want to do something, it's a great thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

And once you get accustomed to seeing music that way, it's very hard to go to big shows.

SPEAKER_03 52:19

Oh God, yeah, we're totally spoiled. You know, going to a bar now and being there where they're yelling at the foot somebody's yelling at the football game on the TV screen above the bar, it's you know, it's all about the music and it's it is great fun. I told somebody I'm with the other night before I read this excerpt from the book, I said, you know, when I get to the Pearley Gates, I'm not gonna say I won a few lawsuits. I'm gonna say I hosted house concerts. Because it really is. Every time we have a show, I try to make a point of looking around at all the faces. And we've had so many great people. That's fun.

SPEAKER_00 52:53

I enjoyed the one that I went to. It was a great experience, and it was kind of in my era of saying yes to things that I may not have made time to do before. So now I'm glad that I'm on the email list. So I hope to ten more of them. So now that you've got this book in your hands, you've opened up the box of books and you got your Christmas present. What's calling to you now? What's next?

SPEAKER_03 53:17

I don't like marketing. I like writing. And I like revised. Some lawyers don't like I like I like taking taking something that's okay and making it good and then making it better, and then the epilogue

Publishing Paths And True Novel

SPEAKER_03 53:31

I bet I tweaked 30 times. Oh wow. You know, people say well that it looks like it comes easy. It's not that easy. So I have in the past I've been bad to have a book finished, published, do a few little things, start writing another one. And I'm trying to not do that this time. I'm trying to focus on this book and doing things like this.

SPEAKER_01 53:57

What would you say is the biggest lesson you learned in practicing law that you carry over into writing books?

SPEAKER_03 54:05

I think probably just having the discipline to work hard to to realize there's always room for improvement to the beginning of the book. So I think just looking at it one more time, looking at the brief one more time, looking at the manuscript one more time.

SPEAKER_00 54:25

If you could go back, this is a question we like to ask, if you could go back in time and talk to your younger self, maybe when you were in your late thirties, early forties, and been practicing law for a while in the courtroom. What would you go back and tell that Brooks about what really matters in life?

SPEAKER_03 54:45

I probably would tell him not to work so hard and tell him to take more time to do other things. So my publisher asked for a quote to put in the press release about what you would hope that people would would take away from the book and and the thing I the quote I made up. I get to make up quotes for me. So the quote I made up was that people would spend more time doing things they enjoy with their friends and less time staring at screens. Which is something I need to tell myself because I'm terrible. You know, that iPhone, I can't imagine what life was like before.

SPEAKER_01 55:19

That's a beautiful quote, and you just answered the question I was about to ask you.

SPEAKER_00 55:25

I really wanted to read your book. I remember before we even scheduled this, I told you we were Facebook friends and I saw that it was coming out. And so when I sat down to read it, it was almost like homework getting ready for our podcast, but it was a nice vacation from my phone, a vacation from my computer. I always find that now, and I have to constantly tell myself, I've got to get off the phone, I want to hold a book, I want to read a book, and I always enjoy it. And I do agree with you. I think we as a society, we are just glued our phones in the instant gratification of whatever is new on the screen, and it just takes up so much time. And holding a book and reading a book, it brings such pleasure. So I appreciate you putting this out there and allowing us to share in the pleasure you had in writing it and know that we enjoyed it and got pleasure out of holding it and reading it.

SPEAKER_03 56:25

Well, thank you. It was fun for me. I'm glad you liked it.

SPEAKER_00 56:28

We do.

SPEAKER_01 56:29

We have one final segment and we call this rapid fire. And so we will give you a phrase and your immediate thought of what that pairs well with should be your response.

SPEAKER_03 56:41

I'm ready.

SPEAKER_01 56:42

All right. So John Prine on the radio pairs well with.

SPEAKER_03 56:46

A handsome Johnny. Okay. I can see you don't know what that is. You don't have a very good poker face. Handsome Johnny, I think, is a drink that he invented.

SPEAKER_01 57:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 57:01

I think. But it was certainly his favorite drink, and it's vodka and ginger ale with a sliver of lime. And I started drinking handsome Johnny's. I had a few at the house concert.

SPEAKER_01 57:15

Sounds like a good pool drink.

SPEAKER_03 57:16

Probably both kinds of pool. Shooting or lying beside.

SPEAKER_00 57:20

Yes. A blank page pairs well with.

SPEAKER_03 57:26

An active imagination.

SPEAKER_01 57:28

How about a long day in court pairs well with?

SPEAKER_03 57:31

A handsome Johnny.

SPEAKER_00 57:34

That's gonna be our answer, probably.

SPEAKER_03 57:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:36

All right, I'm gonna give you one that might not pair so well with that. But maybe it will. I don't know. Mississippi mornings pair well with.

SPEAKER_03 57:44

Walking the dogs. We have three dogs. Two of them get to go. The old one could still go physically, but his manners are poor. But I have my spot on the screen porch and I have my coffee. And then Teddy, the big one. At some point he loses his patience and he comes out and it's dark. And I surrender and off we go.

SPEAKER_01 58:07

How about finishing? I remember everything pairs well with.

SPEAKER_03 58:12

Stop thinking about your friend.

SPEAKER_00 58:14

What about friendship that lasts a lifetime? What does that pair well with?

SPEAKER_03 58:19

A life well lived, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 58:22

This has been a really fun way to get to know you better and to learn more about the book. I think that we all can learn a lot from the characters in the book. And at least I could see myself sort of in each character, even though they were men, but I could certainly see myself feeling like Sam at certain times and understand that my career's been a little bit like his. But also the fun loving Jeff side of things, too. I could sort of see myself in that role as well. And I think most people reading the book will probably feel that. So it's been a good exploration for us. And that's one of the reasons we were excited to have you on the podcast, just because we're exploring these kind of things together at this time in our life.

SPEAKER_01 59:08

Everyone pick up a copy of I Remember Everything. It's unforgettable and beautiful. You will remember this one.

SPEAKER_00 59:15

And in our show notes, we're going to have links to Brooke's website. We're going to have some links to ways to purchase the book and then his other books that you'll also enjoy reading for a lifetime. Thanks very much.

SPEAKER_01 59:29

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