I don't know how Neil Abramson does it. He is a partner at Proskauer Rose, a husband, father, and a certifiable animal lover (besides having a sizable menagerie at home, he's an advocate for animal rights).

Now, he's also a novelist. He just published his first book, Unsaid, which he wrote mostly during his commute to and from work. It is the emotionally wrenching story of a veterinarian and her lawyer-husband.

I'm only about 50 pages into your book, and it's quite absorbing. But this is not a lighthearted read. It's about death, guilt, and regrets. Why did you tackle this story?
I am married to a vet, and once we got married, we moved to a house with all these animals. It wasn't until my wife had a health scare [in 2002] that I realized that these are my animals too. At the time, we had 20 to 30 animals--dogs, cats, horses, rodents, pigs, fish--and we had a serious conversation about how I would deal with them if something happened to my wife.

So writing the book was meant to be cathartic?
I wanted to write about what I feared. And I wanted my wife to know that I knew how she felt about spending her life with animals. I worked on [writing the book] from 2002 or 2003 until 2008 when I handed her a draft.

She didn't know you were working on a book all those years?
She knew I was working on a project, and that I did animal rights work, but so much goes unsaid between husbands and wives.

But six years is a long time to finesse a message. Surely, there's a quicker way to communicate your feelings. Did you think of writing a letter or e-mailing her your thoughts?
(He laughs.) I wanted to give her something from the heart. I wanted to say these things I can't verbalize.

But why did you decide to use the voice of the dead wife?
Originally, I wrote it from David's [the lawyer's] point of view, but that perspective was limited. It was sterile . . . the emotional part didn't blossom until I put that perspective away.

And what did your wife say when you finally handed her the draft?
She looked at me and said, "What the hell is this?" Then she locked herself in a room for three days and read it, and cried for a long time. She then said, "You might be able to reach people who deal with the same issues."

So she was the one who proposed that you try to get it published. Had you published anything at that point?
I had not published anything beyond summary judgment motions.

But you were probably one of those secret fiction writers, no?
I'm just a labor/employment lawyer--not one of those lawyers who wanted to write a novel.

How in the world did you get your work published?
I sent out cold feelers. I knew that you need a literary agent, so I sent out e-mail queries. I sent it to Garth Stein's agent; [Stein] had written about relationships between humans and animals. The agent wrote back and asked me to send him the first five pages of the book; then he asked for the next 50 pages, then the next 150 pages, then the rest. He was one of the first agents I solicited.

That's amazing. I know a lot of people who'd be very jealous of you. What kinds of reaction are you getting from other lawyers?
Very supportive. People at the office want to talk about the book because they've lost someone or have relationships with animals. I've even had adversaries who came to my book signing at Barnes & Noble. People you wouldn't expect have told me they've been trying to write for years.

What advice do you have for those aspiring writers?
Find a story you love, close your eyes and envision what happens next. There's nothing exceptional about me, no special talent . . . it's just having a story to tell.

 Related post: The Poetry Man.

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