Nick Santora, A Writer I Love

Written by Neely Swanson | 22 April 2012

"The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don't have." -Woody Allen

I’ve loved Nick Santora’s writing for years and was devastated when “Law & Order” gobbled him up before we could get him on “Boston Legal.” Nick, who started life as a lawyer, got his first writing credit on “The Sopranos” and then went on to work on “The Guardian,” “Law & Order,” and “Prison Break,” with a short respite in there when he co-created the hilarious reality series “Beauty and the Geek.” Nick now works steadily on the show he co-created with Matt Olmstead, “The Breakout Kings,” a show not picked up by its intended network (FBC) that proved an afterlife can be found for compelling properties – especially if you have a very powerful producer behind you like Peter Chernin. I imagine that FBC regrets their decision.

Imagine my delight and surprise to learn that Nick is a novelist and a damn good one. His new novel, Fifteen Digits arrives soon and you should pre-order now! It’s a thriller and a page turner with heart-stopping tension and great characters to go with a great plot device and will have you questioning your own ethical values along the way.

Neely: When is the book scheduled to hit the shelves?

Nick: The book will hit the stores April 24, but it might actually appear in some stores before that.

Neely: It’s probably already on Amazon.

Nick: It is on Amazon and we’ve already pre-sold a lot of books. Fans of “Breakout Kings” and “Prison Break” have been very supportive of the book.

Neely: Do you have any book signings or speaking engagements lined up?

Nick: I have a book launch party at the Barnes and Noble at the Grove on April 25^th at 7 PM. Some of the people from the shows I’ve worked on will be there as well as other really great and talented people in the industry and friends. I’ve got family coming in from New York that I’m really excited about. Anyone can come so I hope whoever’s reading this will show up.

Neely: Excellent.

Little Brown is your publisher and, by the way, they publish three of my other favorite authors – Terry McDermott, who was the previous “Writer I Love,” Michael Connelley and Joseph Wambaugh. You’re in excellent company.

Nick: (laughing) Never heard of those guys. (Neely laughs loudly)  Michael Who? I would trade my book sales for Michael Connelley’s.

Neely: How is your publisher planning to roll this out?

Nick: They’ve been great and have been putting a lot of support behind the book. They’ve been doing a lot of press and I have other book events that will be scheduled and put up on my website (http://www.nicksantora.com/). They’re trying to push it as a crime-thriller.

Neely: How would you synopsize the story? Give me a logline.

Nick: How can it be insider trading, when you’ve been an outsider all your life?

I can’t take credit for that. One of the junior editors at Little Brown came up with it and I stole it.

Neely: That’s really really good. What was your inspiration for this story?

Nick: Fifteen Digits and my first novel Slip & Fall, are kind of autobiographical in the sense that they’re about blue collar guys in the white collar world realizing that they don’t fit in. The desperation you feel when you don’t know the rules of the game and you need to be successful.

My favorite part of Slip & Fall was when I wrote about the working man’s curse. It’s kind of what my father did (and my mother). My dad was a construction worker, a carpenter; very talented and he busted his tail so that I could be the first man in the family to go to college. My mother worked really hard too.

Then I went on to law school, which was such an exciting thing for my parents. I had no desire to be a lawyer, but they had just spent a fortune sending me to my alma mater (and yours) Washington University in St. Louis. That tuition in 1988 was 20 grand a year and that’s 1988 money; it was really expensive. They sent me there and made all these sacrifices for me to get an education, so I felt I had to do something real with that degree and be a grownup. But all I wanted to be was a writer. I didn’t think you could make a living doing that, so I didn’t even attempt it.

Anyway, the working man’s curse is that you do everything you can to give your kid this sheepskin to hang on his wall so he could say he’s an educated man. Then you send him out into a world he’s not familiar with. I went out and worked at the top, fanciest, biggest law firm in the world – Sullivan and Cromwell. Very nice people there, very talented and hardworking lawyers, and most of them were from a world I didn’t even know about.

They would talk about where they went skiing as kids. I remember at one dinner they passed around a box, a humidor, for everyone who wanted cigars. I didn’t know what was in the box. I didn’t even know what a humidor was and I called it a cubidor. And I was so embarrassed when I got it wrong. I was 25 years old. No one in my family smoked, let alone smoked cigars. How the hell was I supposed to know what a humidor was?