Anthony Franze wrote legal briefs by day that wound up in the hands of U.S. Supreme Court justices and helped his law firm colleagues argue cases before the high court. By night, Franze was writing legal thrillers about the same court.
“I wasn’t one of those people who knew I wanted to be a writer at an early stage. I wasn’t a good student…I don’t know what got me to get into writing a novel. Maybe I was seeking a creative outlet since I was a musician when I was young playing in bands throughout high school and college, and I had given that up.”
But legal briefs paid the bills. He eventually published The Last Justice, through a small press and had modest success publishing subsequent thrillers based on the Supreme Court. The Last Justice focuses on the assassination of several Supreme Court Justices. It was published in 2012, in another era. Franze says he wouldn’t write it today because of the more hostile political environment in America. After individual justices have been stalked and threatened, he wonders if a publisher would even pick it up now.
Franze’s The Last Justice sold well enough and the reviews were good. He appeared headed for a midlist career with small publishers, so he decided to make a change. He switched agents and signed with Lisa Erbach Vance, with Aaron Priest Literary Agency. She signed him with a bigger house, St. Martins Publishing Group (a division of Macmillan), which offered him a two-book deal. The Advocate’s Daughter and The Outsider, both high court thrillers, sold better than their small press counterparts, but not enough to excite anyone.
When Franze handed Vance his next manuscript, she explained if he wanted to breakout as an author, he might consider writing thrillers with broader appeal. After all, he was writing a niche within the niche. “I was in a distinct category of thriller,” he admits. “Those things can box you in and dictate how publishers think of you—how readers think of you.”
Meanwhile his marketer at St. Martin’s, Joe Brosnan, wanted to break into editorial. Brosnan approached Franze at the bar at the International Thriller Writers annual ThrillerFest conference in New York and asked if he would be interested in working with him in writing something different. Franze was intrigued. Ultimately, after reading a partial manuscript Franze had worked on with guidance from Brosnan, the St. Martins powers-that-be agreed to try marketer Brosnan as editor Brosnan.
As part of the deal, Brosnan suggested Franze consider a complete rebrand, which would include a pen name. Alex Finlay was born. Franze likes his nom de plume because it carries his initials. But his wife still struggles with it. “My wife has a problem with people calling me Alex, as do my older friends. It was a business decision…I don’t think I found my voice until I was writing under a fake name.”
And it turned out to be a good one. With Vance’s guidance and Brosnan’s newly discovered editing prowess, Franze’s sales under his pseudonym took off. His last three novels became bestsellers and were translated into twenty-seven languages.
Vance and Brosnan, he says, “totally changed my career.”
While he’s still with Vance, he lost Brosnan when the marketing guru-turned-successful editor was hired by Grove Atlantic Press, to build its new crime fiction imprint, Atlantic Crime.
“Joe and I took a chance on each other, and it paid off,” Franze says. Since then, Franze has a new editor, Catherine Richards, and the marketing and PR teams at St. Martins have been aggressively promoting every one of his novels.
“What’s in a name?” the Bard once asked. “What’s in a genre?” asked his agent. Well, now you know.
“They all changed my life as a writer,” Franze says.
Or should we say Finlay?
I’m novelist Rick Pullen, former investigative reporter, magazine editor, and author of the best selling thriller Naked Ambition, its sequel Naked Truth, and a stand-alone thriller The Apprentice. I’m also a magazine columnist and feature writer. Look for my next book in early 2028.
Love this! I'm re-titling and revising my ms for the next round of queries and, in the process, have developed a deep respect for every single name choice.