Susan Schaab Pens High-Tech Legal Thrillers While Pursuing LL.M. By Nick Crounse
Susan Schaab has long had a passion for writing, though her efforts to put pen to paper were delayed as she pursued two demanding careers in technology and the law. Ultimately, however, Schaab focused on her writing, resulting in the high-tech legal thriller Wearing the Spider, her first published work, in 2007. She is currently working on her second novel while finishing an LL.M. at Albany Law School. “I was hiking with my husband while on vacation, and we stopped short in front of a large spider web,” said Schaab. “I thought, if someone walked through that web, they would end up wearing the spider.” “I wrote down that idea on a trail map and stuck it in my pocket,” she recalled, noting that one of the characters in Wearing the Spider tells a version of the anecdote. “It turned out to be an interesting metaphor for what happens in the plot.” Wearing the Spider is the story of Evie Sullivan, a rising attorney at a prominent New York City law firm, who finds herself on the run after her identity is hijacked by a rogue partner who uses email impersonation and electronic forgery, implicating her as the orchestrator of an illegal scheme that ultimately leads to murder. With her reputation within the firm in a political vise and the FBI on her heels, she must solve the mys-
tery herself to clear her name. Schaab is an attorney who spent more than eight years practicing technology and intellectual property law with various firms and as in-house counsel in New York City, Dallas and Los Angeles. Prior to earning her law degree, she worked in software development as a systems programmer,
her rework the manuscript while giving her an in-depth education about novel writing in general. While Schaab maintains her licenses to practice in New York, Texas, California and Washington, D.C., she has several more book ideas resonating in the back of her mind. At Albany Law School,
designer and consultant in Dallas. The first iteration of Schaab’s debut novel emerged during her time as an attorney. She attended a workshop for lawyers writing legal fiction in 2002 to help hone her craft and continued to polish her novel through subsequent revisions. After completing the first draft of Wearing the Spider and sending it through its initial round of rejections, Schaab hired a former Doubleday editor who helped
she is pursuing an LL.M. path that departs from her prior legal career in the corporate world. She is focused on criminal practice, a natural companion to crafting thrillers. Wearing the Spider won several awards, including first place in Genre Fiction from Writer’s Digest and a Best New Fiction National Indie Excellence Award. It was shortlisted in 2008 for the coveted Debut Dagger by the British Crime Writer’s Association, favorably reviewed by The American Library Association’s Booklist Magazine among others, and was recently released in a Kindle version.
While He’s Written, Lyons’ Heart Is in the Publishing Tony Lyons ’93 opened the doors of Skyhorse Publishing five years ago. Today, with more than 1,600 books in print, 612 planned for next year, and five imprints—some recently acquired—Lyons prides himself on his freewheeling, eclectic approach to book publishing. Called the fastest growing independent publisher in 2010 by Publisher’s Weekly, the New York City-based company offers a more personal experience for authors than the larger publishing houses. Lyons, Skyhorse’s president and general counsel, said he receives thousands of unsolicited manuscripts a year, and another few hundred from agents, but he still loves looking through the daily submissions. He has written or compiled his own collection of books, including The Writer’s Legal Guide and the The Quotable Lawyer, as well as parenting books on autism—his daughter suffers from autism—like Cutting Edge Therapies for Autism and 1,001 Tips for the Parents of Autistic Girls. Despite these projects, he’s quick to tell you his real affinity: “I love publishing books and can’t imagine doing anything else.”
Spring 2011 Albany Law Magazine
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