Clay Stafford talks with James Comey on “What Makes Stories Linger”

James Comey interviewed by Clay Stafford

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James Comey is a figure the world thinks it knows. Former FBI Director, lawyer, public servant. His name has been bound to history’s headlines. Yet away from the noise of politics, which is a world of fiction itself, Comey has quietly stepped into another role: novelist. His fiction, drawn from a lifetime inside courtrooms, investigations, and the corridors of power, isn’t about retelling the past but about exploring human dramas at its center. In his books, readers encounter prosecutors and investigators who feel like old friends with scenes that linger long after the page is turned. In this conversation, I speak with Comey not about politics, but about the art of writing. What makes stories endure? What gives characters their staying power? Why truth, even in fiction, may be the most compelling force of all. “James, let’s talk about writing stories that linger. My wife always asks me when I’m reading a book, ‘How’s this one?’ And I’ll say, ‘This one, when I lie down to go to sleep, I’m still thinking about the people in it, why they’re doing what they’re doing. I can get in their heads. It sticks with me.’ That’s why I wanted to ask you about writing stories that linger. When you’re writing, do you ever think about how a story might stay with readers after they finish? Or do you focus on the moment, and if it lingers, it lingers?”

“I think it’s the latter. I’m not intentionally trying to make a story linger. But in a way, I am. I’m drawing from my own experiences. The coolest things I've been a part of. The hardest. Back then, I’d wake up thinking about a witness, a case, a judge. They were challenging, fascinating, rewarding. I try to bring readers into that world, show them those characters. Most are composites, but they’re based on real people I found interesting. If I can tell a story that feels as vivid as what I experienced, then it’ll stick with readers the way it stuck with me. I don’t set out with that as a conscious goal, but now that you’ve asked, maybe it’s always been close to the surface.”

“As a reader, what’s the difference between a story you forget the moment you put the book down, and one that haunts you for days, weeks, even years?”

“First, it’s good writing that lets me enter the story. Bad writing, sentences that are too long, language that’s overly complex, or fancy words block my way. It’s like being in a theater behind a tall person who blocks the view. I don’t want my writing to be like that tall person. I want a clear view of the stage. Then, I like the action on that stage to make you forget you’re in a theater. You feel like you’re there, like a non-playing character onstage, caught up in the conflict. The way to do that is to make the characters real, memorable, the kind of people you’d want to sit next to and just listen. If I can give you a clear view, make you forget the theater, and make the conflict compelling, that’s the recipe for a story that sticks.”

“Just curious—not for this—how tall are you?”

“I’m 6'8".”

“Holy cow. I’m 6'3", and I’m still looking up to James Comey.”

“Normal-sized person.”

“Unless I’m blocking everyone else in the theater. I bet you were intimidating in a courtroom.”

“Yes. Except with my wife. Early in my career, I was practicing a jury address in our small living room. Patrice watched me pacing back and forth and said, ‘That’s great, but why are you moving around like that?’ I said, ‘That’s what lawyers do.’ She said, ‘You look like a giraffe in heat. You’re tall enough to frighten people. Don’t move, and step back from the jury.’ From then on, in every trial, I stood still. Because she was right, movement would distract. People might start thinking about my size, my clothes, my feet, instead of listening. I didn’t want those distractions.”

“When you’re crafting a scene or character, is there a technique you use to make them stick in the reader’s mind?”

“I try to lavishly picture the scene before writing. How would it play out in real life? I build a mental map, then write. Afterward, I reread and ask: Does this feel real? Can readers see it? If yes, it may stick. I want people drawn into the conversation. If my characters speak with unnecessary flourishes, use words readers can’t grasp, or talk in perfect, complete sentences, it pulls you out. I’ve now written three novels, and I think I’m better at slowing down before writing, taking walks, imagining: Benny’s talking to Nora, where are they? What does it feel like? That patience makes it real.”

“Is there a specific character or scene readers told you they couldn’t shake?”

“Yes. In all three books, people have mentioned scenes that have stayed with them because they sparked strong emotions or were simply unique. That’s what I want: for the scene to feel like it happened yesterday, real in your mind because of how I wrote it.”

“Did that feedback ever surprise you? Or did you smugly say, ‘Yep, that’s exactly what I intended’?”

“No smugness. That kind of feedback usually comes first from my five kids: ‘Dad, you screwed this up,’ or ‘This scene is chef’s kiss.’ They’ll send emojis. When readers later say something similar, I’ve usually already heard it from the kids. What makes me happiest is when readers say starting FDR Drive feels like being back with old friends, Benny and Nora returning. That’s exactly what I want.”

“Speaking of old friends, when you’re creating unforgettable characters, do you have any habits that help make them feel real?”

“For me, it’s easier. One key character, Benny Dugan, is based on my dear friend Ken McCabe, the greatest investigator I ever knew, who died in 2006. I try to honor him through Benny. Ken wore no socks, carried a revolver on his ankle, spoke with a Brooklyn accent, and was enormous. He called me Mr. Smooth; I called him Mr. Rough. He’d offer to ‘throw someone a beating,’ and I’d say, ‘No, Ken, please don’t.’ He once drove me to LaGuardia, siren blaring, shouting at people. By the time we arrived, I was sweating, but he just said, ‘Say hello home,’ as if nothing had happened. Painful as it is that he’s gone, writing about him gives me an advantage. I also base Nora Carlton partly on my daughter, a prosecutor in Manhattan, and blend in traits from my other kids. Early on, I struggled writing a protagonist until I realized it had to be a woman. That unlocked everything. Writing became a labor of love, being true to the composites of the people I care about. Characters come alive because they’re grounded in real people I know and love.”

“We talked about ambiguity, threads left open versus tied up. Is there a sweet spot?”

“I don’t know. I rely on Patrice. She’s ‘every reader.’ She’ll tell me, ‘End this thread,’ or ‘Leave this one open.’ Almost always, she’s right. I’m married to a test reader, and that’s how I figure it out.”

“Your novels explore the justice system in depth. How do you keep the narrative gripping without drowning readers in detail?”

“By worrying about it constantly. I know the system inside and out, but readers don’t want to hear all that. I always ask myself: Am I giving too much? For example, in my current espionage book, I went deep into paint analysis. Patrice read it and said, ‘Drown some of these puppies. Way too much paint.’ Tom Clancy was brilliant, but often went too far into submarines and torpedo tubes. I don’t want to overwhelm like that. My guardrails are constant self-check and Patrice’s honest feedback.”

“Have you always wanted to be a writer?”

“No. I loved writing. I thought I might be a journalist. I never imagined novels. I always wrote, though: speeches, emails to the FBI workforce. Writing was part of me. My agent once pitched me to co-write a novel with James Patterson. I said no, I wanted to write myself. My nonfiction editor later encouraged me to try fiction, saying it gives me the freedom to show readers the worlds I know. I resisted, but once I started, I was hooked. It’s harder than nonfiction. You’re not just checking facts; you’re building a world. But I like complicated things. And I don’t need to invent car chases or helicopter jumps to make it exciting. Reality is exciting if told truthfully.”

“And maybe that truth is what makes a story linger.”

“I hope so. That’s my goal, to draw people in and have the story stay with them. And no, I won’t be writing sex scenes. My kids made me promise. But believe it or not, there’s not much sex in counterterrorism or espionage.”

“But there is dancing.”

“Yes, there is.”

“And that’s just vertical.” As the conversation wound down, what lingered was not just the stature of James Comey, the public figure, but the voice of a writer intent on making his characters real, his stories truthful, and his readers compelled to stay a little longer in the world he’d created. For Comey, fiction is not an escape from his past, but a means of reshaping it, transforming experience into narrative and memory into meaning. Perhaps that is the mark of every story that endures: it refuses to be forgotten, echoing long after the book is closed.

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of the Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference, Killer Nashville Magazine, and the Killer Nashville University streaming service. Subscribe to his newsletter at https://claystafford.com/.

James Comey has been a prosecutor, defense lawyer, general counsel, teacher, writer, and leader. He most recently served in government as Director of the FBI. He has written two bestselling nonfiction books, A Higher Loyalty and Saving Justice, as well as three novels in his Nora Carleton crime fiction series.

https://jamescomeybooks.com/

Clay Stafford Interviews… Sara Paretsky: “Making A Difference”

Sara Paretsky interviewed by Clay Stafford

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Don Henley sang about wanting to get “to the heart of the matter.” In this interview, I did. Sara Paretsky is a legend in detective fiction but also a champion for the rights of those who don’t have a voice. I spoke with her and found her as compassionate and passionate as my impressions of her were before we met. What struck me the most before the interview was her concern for others. How people incorporate that concern to make the world truly a better place without the preachiness that sometimes comes from pedantic writing is what I sought to investigate with her.

“Sara, it's not difficult to read your work and see where you might stand on things. Do you think it is necessary or even an obligation for writers to include social issues in their work?”

“I think writers should write what is in them to write. I don't sit down wanting to tackle social issues.”

“They’re there, though, so they just come out?”

“It's just they inform my experience and how I think. And it's not even what I most want to read. I most want to read someone who writes a perfect English sentence with an exciting story. That's what I care about. You read things you're in the mood to read, which changes at different points in your life. When I was about ten, my parents gave me Mark Twain's recollections of Joan of Arc to read. My parents felt that I had too intense a personality and that I was always going to suffer in life unless I dialed it back. They wanted me to see the fate that awaited too fierce girls. They get burned at the stake. So, I read this book, and it did not make me wish to dial back my intensity. It made me wish I could have a vision worth being burned at the stake for. That is just my personality, and that's why these issues keep cropping up in my books.”

“I don't know if it's even true, but one of my favorite Joan of Arc stories is that she went to those in charge and wanted the army to go, and they said, ‘They won't follow you. You're a woman,’ and she said, ‘Well, I won't know because I won't be looking back.’”

“Oh, God! I love it!”

“I think that's incredible. And, of course, they still burned her at the stake. That was a fantastic way of looking at that vision, which sounds like what you were talking about.”

“I’ve got hearing aids, and I keep hoping to get messages. I hope St. Catherine and St. Michael will start telling me what to do.”

“Some people are putting tin foil over their heads to stop the messages from coming in. You're hoping they will arrive.”

“You heard it here first when you want to come see me in the locked ward.”

“You said you wanted to write your first book, if I've got this right, to change the way women are portrayed in detective literature, and the gamut of portrayal at the time ran from sex objects to victims of formidable forces, women who must be judged because of their moral bankruptcy, or those who needed to be rescued by Harrison Ford. Do you feel you achieved that regarding how women are portrayed today?”

“Oh, I think not. What I think changed is that the roles for women became much more diverse, reflecting how society was changing. When Sue Grafton and I started, we were on the crest of a wave of the world looking at women differently. Lillian O'Donnell was in a previous generation of women writers, and she had a woman who was a New York City transit police officer solving crimes. But she was writing at a time when people weren't ready to see women taking on these more public roles. I published my first book the year Chicago let women be regular police officers instead of just matrons at the Women's Lockup and the Juvie Lockup. People don't remember this, but there were not exactly riots, but wives of patrol officers were storming the precincts, demanding that women not be allowed in patrol cars with their husbands because they knew that either they would seduce their husbands, or they weren't strong enough to provide backup for their husbands. We don't remember that struggle because we take it for granted now. But I was publishing my first book when all those items were in the stew. Can women do this? Should women do this? And now, there's still a lot of pushback, but nobody questions whether a woman should be in the operating room, or on the Supreme Court, or doing these kinds of things. So, in that way, I was part of a change, for what I think is a change for good. At the same time, I can't speak to why, but I feel like there's a lot of contemporary crime fiction where people are almost in a one-downmanship struggle to use the most graphic, grotesque violence. I know it's unfair to pick on the dead rather than on the living: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I'm, of course, honored that Stieg Larsson considered me an influence on him. Still, every detail of the sexual assault and abuse committed on Lisbeth Salander is described in exquisite detail. Then, when she seeks revenge, all of that is described in exquisite detail. The use of violence has become almost pornographic. But also, you know, V.I. and Kinsey Millhone became detectives out of a sense of possibility, joy, and problem-solving. But there's a tremendous amount of victimization of women, and it's acceptable for them to take an active role in fighting back against being victims. But we're not seeing a lot of women going into this work just because they want to. There is always a reason, and it must be a victim reason, in way too much fiction as I'm reading it, and I find that depressing and disturbing.”

“But when you started writing, and tell me if I'm misquoting you, you said you wanted to change the narrative about women in fiction.”

“Right.”

“I noted you didn't say detective fiction, but you said, ‘I want to change the narrative about women in fiction,’ and some would say you did achieve that.”

“I think that does me more honor than I deserve. I was one of the voices that helped make that happen, and I think we did.”

“This is a difficult question and something I always tell my children. I was like, ‘Okay, to argue a point, you must be able to argue both sides equally well. And then you know the issues.’”

“Great advice. I wonder if I could do that?”

“It's worked well for the kids. But this is a difficult question for those with strong opinions. At this moment, we humans seem to be a bit divided. How do you feel about authors taking social stands on issues with the opposite allegiance to where you or I might stand?”

“I think they should be boiled and oiled and have their carcass– No.”

“I don't think that's true. I don't think you believe that at all.”

“I don’t believe it. I'm wading into controversial waters here, but I'm a Jew. Since October seventh, I feel like my brain has been split, not just in half, but maybe in six or seven pieces because I'm totally against the violence against Palestinians in Gaza. I'm totally against the relief and joy that some Americans expressed watching live streaming of Israeli women being raped and mutilated. I'm totally for some things and totally against some things, and there are like maybe eight different ways you could segment yourself on Israel, Hamas, Palestine, Gaza, West Bank Settlers, and U.S. policy. That's an issue where everyone has a strong opinion, except for someone like me, who is fragmented in the middle. And so, I'm listening to all of these, and I think writers who want to hold forth on this are bolder and braver than I am, but it also is an opportunity for me to get exposed to many different viewpoints. And in that sense, yeah. Great, everyone who feels they know enough to speak about it, or even if they don't know enough, is speaking about it. I know that I would not be a person who could write an empathic, believable story about someone who was opposed to women's access to reproductive health. But if that's where your head is, you should write it, and maybe you can create a sympathetic character that would help me understand why you have those views that are so repugnant to me.”

“Regardless of the perspective of one, literature is a powerful sword, as we know, and people read things and, maybe like your parents were talking about with your Joan of Arc, it's going to subdue you a bit. But no, it made you blossom. And so, you never know which way literature will lead you to look at something and then go, ‘Wait, let me think about this a little more.’ I think differing opinions do tend to do that.”

“Yes, and if you have one monolithic opinion, you are doomed. You need to hear many voices of a story. It's only tangentially connected to this, but Enrico Fermi, the giant physicist of the 20th century, was the person who brought my husband to the University of Chicago. My husband was quite a bit older than me, and he died five years ago, and I still miss him every day. But that's beside the point. When Fermi was dying, he died of esophageal cancer around 1955. A young intern came into his hospital room and tried to talk to him cheerfully about his prospects and the future. And Fermi said, ‘I'm dying, and what you need to learn as a young doctor is how to talk to people about the fact that they're dying.’ This is all in this doctor's memoir. This doctor published this six or seven years ago, at the end of his career, and he had asked Fermi how he could have such a stoical outlook. Fermi was reading Tolstoy's short stories, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” and other stories, and Fermi said, ‘You go home and read “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” and you will learn how to talk to your patients about death and dying.’ The doctor said, ‘Yes, I went and did that, and it was the most important part of my medical education.’”

“Literature is powerful. So why did you lead the charge – and I think I know this, but I'm asking – why did you lead the charge to create Sisters in Crime. How did that come about?”

“In March of 1986, Hunter College convened what I think was the first-ever conference on women in the mystery field: writers, readers, publishers, editors. I had published two books, and they asked me to speak, which was exciting. I was on panels with people I'd been reading for a long time, including Dorothy Salisbury Davis, who became a close friend. Because I lacked impulse control, I made some strong statements. These generated a lot of discussion, and I started hearing from other women around the country. Sue Grafton and I were fat, dumb, and happy. We published our books. We got a lot of great reviews. We didn't understand the industry, or I didn't. Maybe Sue did. She was smarter than me in many ways. But women who were being asked questions like, ‘What do you do when your kitty cat gets on your keyboard,’ or ‘Isn't it nice that you have a hobby so that you're not bothering your husband when he comes home from a hard day's work?’ You know, just lots of ugly stuff. The great civil rights lawyer, Flo Kennedy, said, ‘Don't agonize, organize.’ So, at the Bouchercon in Baltimore in October of 1986, I sent letters to everyone I had heard from and the women I knew, twenty-six people, to see if women wanted to get together to form an advocacy organization. I said, ‘If you do, we’ll work; if you don't, we'll shut up and stop crying about it.’ Everybody was on board with it, and our first project was our book review monitoring project because Sue and I were getting all these reviews. Most women were not getting reviewed at all. Sue and I were getting reviewed because we were doing something that was being perceived as male. We had privatized. We were doing something in that Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, John MacDonald tradition. And so, we connected with male readers and reviewers. But women who are doing things outside that: cops, so-called cozies, domestic crime. They were not getting reviewed. Our first project was to get numbers on that. Because if you're not getting reviewed, libraries will not buy you. And they were, in those days, the biggest buyer of midlist books. And bookstores don't know you exist. So, with the help of Jim Wang at the Jude Review, we got a list of 1,100 crime thriller mystery books published in 1986 and then worked hard. We looked at two hundred newspapers and magazines and looked at the reviews, and we found that a book by a man was seven times more likely to be reviewed than a book by a woman. We figured, ‘God. Maybe men write twice as well as we do, but not seven times as well.’ So, we started just going to bookstores and libraries. Sharon McCrumb, Carolyn Hart, and Linda Grant, I think it was, put together books in print by women writers. We didn't want to go headlong against the industry because we needed the industry. We wanted to educate people. Sisters grew out of that and has been essential as a place of support. Of course, some men belong, and it's been a template. Writers of Color—I don't have the exact name right—are advocating, so you're starting to see many more mysteries by writers of color than you would have seen ten years ago. This advocacy makes a difference, and it makes a difference not by being confrontational but by being educational and showing publishers, booksellers, and so on that there's a market for these characters. People want to read about them. We were going back to your previous question about regional characters. Now, we're down at the grassroots of where stories come from. And we see that a story speaks to people regardless of race, creed, or place of national origin. Some days, I feel so much despair I can hardly get out of bed, but when I think of the possibility that readers and writers have of exploring so many different voices and places, it's like, yeah, this is a brave new world.”

“What advice do you have for writers of today?”

“If you're writing for the market, you may hit it lucky, but the market is such a fickle place that by the time you finish your book, it will be interested in something else. You write what's in you to say and do it the best way you can. One thing I don't have that I wish I had in my own life is that I don't have a reading group, and I don't have a first reader now that my husband is gone. I have not found the right person, or maybe I haven't even looked. But you need a sounding board, even if it's just one person. Your head is an echo chamber, so get feedback but also stay true to your voice and vision. Balance the two. It's like you were saying, can you have a sympathetic voice opposite your position? You may love your prose so much that you don't want to alter one word. There's one important writer you're not allowed to edit today, and I'm like, ‘Oh, sweetheart, I'd read you more often if you'd let someone cut about 30% of that deathless prose.’”

“You've been called ‘the definition of perfection’ by the Washington Post.”

“Yeah, right.”

“And ‘a legend’ by people such as Harlan Coben, and for your work ‘the best on the beat’ by the Chicago Tribune and others, and the list goes on and on and on. How does that make you feel? How does it feel to be labeled as ‘perfection’?”

“That's an impossible bar to reach and go over.”

“But you have that reputation.”

“Yeah, well, you know…”

“And you've bumbled well into it, right? Let me ask you this. Other people think of you as a legend for numerous reasons. Whether it's Sisters in Crime, your advocacy in your personal life, your writing, or the influence your writing has had, what would Sarah Paretsky like to be remembered for?”

“I'd like to be remembered for telling stories that cheered people up.”

“That's a wonderful thing.”

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference. https://claystafford.com/

Sara Paretsky revolutionized the mystery world with her gritty detective V.I. Warshawski in Indemnity Only, followed by twenty V.I. novels, her memoir, two stand-alone novels, and short stories. She created Sisters in Crime, earning Ms. Magazine’s Woman of the Year. She received the British Crime Writers’ Cartier Diamond Dagger and Gold Dagger. https://saraparetsky.com/