{"id":929,"date":"2016-02-11T18:58:44","date_gmt":"2016-02-11T18:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/?p=929"},"modified":"2016-02-11T18:58:44","modified_gmt":"2016-02-11T18:58:44","slug":"with-new-novel-the-ramadi-affair-judge-barry-schaller-goes-from-fact-to-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/2016\/02\/11\/with-new-novel-the-ramadi-affair-judge-barry-schaller-goes-from-fact-to-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"With New Novel ‘The Ramadi Affair,’ Judge Barry Schaller Goes From Fact to Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Honorable Barry Schaller <\/a>\u2013 a visiting lecturer in public policy and law at Trinity College \u2013 has done a lot of writing in his career. He has penned opinions as an associate justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, from which he has retired, and continues to serve as a judge trial referee for the Connecticut Appellate Court. Schaller has written three books about law and contributes articles to publications including the Connecticut Law Tribune<\/em>. But these days, his writing is taking him in a very different direction as he explores a new passion for creating literary fiction.<\/p>\n

\"BRSfront<\/a>Schaller\u2019s first novel, The Ramadi Affair<\/em><\/a>, was published in January by Quid Pro Books in paperback, hardcover, and in electronic form. He sees the novel as a fictional continuation of the themes explored in his 2012 nonfiction book, Veterans on Trial: The Coming Court Battles over PTSD<\/em> (Potomac Books), addressing the consequences of war in the lives of veterans. The story in The Ramadi Affair<\/em> follows the post-Iraq life of Justice David Lawson, who may soon be the top candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some ways it is a culmination of all the writing I\u2019ve done,\u201d Schaller said of his novel. \u201cAfter I finished writing Veterans on Trial<\/em> and then giving talks about it, I felt that I hadn\u2019t really completed the subject. I needed to write more fully about the consequences of war, and I had always wanted to write a novel or two, but always postponed it for something else.\u201d<\/p>\n

To further explore the topics in which he was interested \u2013 like moral decision-making and post-traumatic stress disorder \u2013 Schaller decided to create fictional characters to heighten the issues and make them more intense. \u201cThat\u2019s what literature does,\u201d he said. \u201cIt takes real-life situations and makes them more engaging, more interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schaller was a literature major at Yale University \u2013 where he earned his B.A. and J.D. \u2013 and he said his favorite novels include The Brothers Karamazov<\/em> and War and Peace<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019ve loved literature all my life,\u201d he said, \u201cespecially literature that deals with characters in a very intense, precise way, but in a big landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

The plot of The Ramadi Affair<\/em> began to take shape in the summer of 2013 and Schaller wrapped up the writing in spring of 2015, with large breaks in between when work and teaching took up most of his time. \u201cI would keep writing whenever I had a few minutes and felt like it,\u201d he said. \u201cI was very determined.\u201d<\/p>\n

The process of writing fiction was something that came naturally to Schaller, even though he had never done it before. \u201cI have had mostly a left-brain career, and I really wanted to let my right brain run loose,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I sat down, I did not want to write the way you write a nonfiction book. I would just let the words flow in an intuitive way.\u201d<\/p>\n

He found this method freeing, but it did require a lot of editing. \u201cThe hard part was the rewriting and editing. Worst of all was the proof-reading,\u201d Schaller said. \u201cI didn\u2019t show it to anybody until I had a draft that satisfied me. A friend who was a combat veteran vetted it, to make sure I got technical details like ranks and military terms right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schaller so enjoyed writing fiction that he began work on a second novel as soon as he sent the first one to his publisher. The plot of the next novel is inspired, in part, by a course on public health issues that Schaller taught at Trinity last spring. \u201cI spent a section of the course on public health problems of people who are living in conflict or are displaced,\u201d he said. \u201cThat inspired me to get extremely interested in the problem of refugees. It\u2019s probably the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet, and it doesn\u2019t get the attention it deserves.\u201d<\/p>\n

The protagonist in Schaller\u2019s second novel is working with refugees and also is undergoing medical treatment for an illness. Schaller knows firsthand about the latter subject, having been diagnosed with leukemia in 2015. \u201cI wanted to incorporate my thoughts about what it\u2019s like to be told suddenly you have an illness, and have to deal with treatment, hospitals, and doctors,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m still working on that draft, but I\u2019ve probably got 225 pages or so.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he still plans to pen articles for law publications, Schaller said that he sees himself continuing to focus on writing novels in the future. \u201cI think another nonfiction book is too big an investment of time,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd fiction is too darn much fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Written by Andrew J. Concatelli<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Honorable Barry Schaller \u2013 a visiting lecturer in public policy and law at Trinity College \u2013 has done a lot of writing in his career. He has penned opinions as an associate justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court, from which he has retired, and continues to serve as a judge trial referee for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1424,"featured_media":931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[11,273,276,13,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1424"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":932,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions\/932"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}