From Lawyer to Film to Crime Novels by Arthur Coburn

MUSE MONDAY

Join me in welcoming Arthur Coburn. His is a fascinating story. 

Tell me, Arthur, how did you go from law to film to novels? You obviously found your Muse.

After graduating from Harvard Law School, I quit my law firm job the day I passed the bar. And worked in film in Seattle. I moved to Los Angeles and became a film editor. After working in various capacities in film, I found I could translate what I knew into writing fiction novels. I also learned the advantage of being willing to fail. I used to try lots of solutions, discarding the ones that didn't work and improving the ones that did. I learned to trim down scenes to a fighting weight. In Murder in Concrete, I used much of what I learned in film. This story takes place on a low budget zombie thriller movie set in Barstow, California.

Let's hear about your book, Murder in Concrete.

A small-town murder unravels a teenage girl’s life as she tries to discover who is responsible for killing her mother and learns that everything she thought she knew might be an illusion. 

Charlie Purdue was just another small-town teenage girl until she discovered her mother’s dead body at home after school. All signs point to her father, who has disappeared, but his cryptic final words to Charlie have always left her wondering. When she spots him in a film months later, she’s shaken to her core and dead set on going to Los Angeles to find him and unearth the truth of what really happened that horrible day. 

What follows is a gripping odyssey through the underbelly of LA’s film industry, where everything Charlie thought she knew about her life is suddenly, and shockingly, brought into question. 

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Arthur Coburn grew up in New Jersey, went to Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, passed the Washington bar, exam spent two years in the U.S. Infantry as a first Lieutenant, and survived a three-year law career, before bailing out and landing a job for King Screen Productions, a filmmaking Division of the KING Broadcasting Company in Seattle. His first assignment there was to make a chart of all the proposals for peace in Vietnam.  He progressed to directing commercials, industrials and documentaries; later to writing educational film scripts for the same company. When the division closed, he worked as a freelance writer doing environmental impact statements, and as a freelance still photographer. He has written five novels: Murder in Concrete (published in 2024) Murder in Madrona (currently in revision); and several awaiting care and review: Boys Will Be Boys, Mostly (general fiction),  Rough Cut (a thriller).

ARTHUR'S AUTHOR PAGE ON AMAZON