Legal Limelight: Timothy Sansone

Summary

• Timothy Sansone leads Sandberg Phoenix appellate and complex litigation team
• Sansone published a debut novel “Trusting All I Want,” set in Chicago
• Writing process took four and a half years from 2014 to 2019
• Sansone emphasizes storytelling importance in appellate law and fiction

Timothy Sansone’s name is a familiar one in Missouri’s appellate courts as well as this publication.

Sansone leads Sandberg Phoenix’s Appellate and Complex Litigation Team and is chair of the firm’s professional development. He also regularly contributes to Missouri Lawyers’ appellate matters column.

His name may also be on your bookshelf.

In his spare time Sansone has published his debut novel “Trusting All I Want,” a contemporary story set in Chicago; And he wrote a trilogy set around the same cast of characters, combining two of the books into “The Space Between Choices,” which he is querying now.

When did you start writing and what inspired you?

I started writing “Trusting All I Want,” around 2014. At that time, my children were in high school and more independent, so I found that I had more time on my hands. I’ve always loved writing, and I’ve always wanted to write a book, so I found that to be a good time to start.

Overall, what was the writing process like for that initial book? And were you more of a plotter or a pantser?

Definitely a plodder, P-L-O-D-D-E-R.  I am not one generally to use outlines in my writing, because I find that when I’m engaged in the creative process, I come up with ideas as I go along, and I feel I would be too constrained if I had to live by an outline.

For someone who has never heard of your book, what’s the elevator pitch? What is it about?

I would say that it’s about four different individuals from very different backgrounds who sort of collide in the city of Chicago unintentionally and have to figure out what to do when each person has different perspectives and life experiences and is at different places in their lives.

Was there anything that inspired that story in particular or drew you to it?

I noticed in my experiences, both at work and outside of work, that there can be some sharp generational differences when it comes to people’s experiences and expectations, and I thought it would be interesting to develop some characters who come from different generations and see how they may look at the world differently and how they might react to each other differently.

What can you tell me about each of these four characters?

The protagonist in the book Jill Nguyen is a Vietnamese American immigrant. She is a software engineer and is dating an attorney named Tom Edwards. They have a conflict when a younger woman by the name of Lana Delacroix, comes in as a spark plug of sorts, and causes tension between herself and Jill, because they both find Tom to be interesting in many ways. There’s also a fourth character named Rudy Santana, who is the former boyfriend of Lana and is still pining for her as the story begins and as it goes forward.

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What drew you to the contemporary fiction genre compared to any other genre?

I’ve always enjoyed observing relationships and seeing how people interact with each other at work and outside of work and in families. I thought it would be interesting to see how relationships might play out and how different characters might conduct themselves at work, in their lives outside of work and also how their lives in each of those places could cause issues in the other. So, for example, in the book, Tom’s interactions with Lana (…) can cause stress for him and have an impact on his work. In particular, he has kind of a meltdown in the courtroom later in the book. So, things like that, I think, are interesting, because we all experience stress in our lives and a lot of times, they can be due to relationships that we have.

Overall, how long was this process for you from starting to write the book to publication?

It took me four and a half years from the time that I decided to start writing it in the latter part of 2014 until it was published in early 2019.

How does this differ from your work as an attorney and how does it relate?

As an appellate attorney, I came to learn early on how important storytelling is in the process. We’re all human, and I recall my time as a law clerk. Seeing so many cases when an appellate attorney can frame things in terms of a story, you start to see patterns, and you can relate to what’s happened. And the case often will stand out more. In terms of the creative process, I would say that I learned more about the importance of storytelling. Each case has its own cast of characters, has a plot and often can have surprises along the way. So, with fiction, you’re creating a story and you’re creating conflicts and interactions with characters. In both cases though, there’s a creation process involved in terms of how are you going to take information or characters or things that happened and frame them in a way that any reader can better understand what’s happening.