Meet John William Law | Writer and Author

We had the good fortune of connecting with John William Law and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi John William, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I’m a writer and after having spent a number of years in journalism, writing for newspapers and magazines, I wanted to branch out and write longer stories in book form. So, while I have written books and provided research for books by others and corporate efforts, the books I do on my own are the most rewarding because I can select my subjects and spend the time I need to in order to research and tell the story the way I want to.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I’m a writer who writes about film history. My books often look back as classic Hollywood with behind the scene stories about motion picture history. I’ve written about people like Alfred Hitchcock, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day, Montgomery Clift, Lana Turner and more. My latest book, Wicked Becomes Her looks back at Bette Davis and the making of her final film.

My career started in journalism, working for daily, weekly and monthly publications and I eventually moved on to writing books. There are always challenges, but I find that in news writing you are taught to get your facts up top and write tight stories because you didnt always get enough column space on the news page and your stories were cut from the bottom up. For books you are encouraged to go into all the details and write as much of the story as possible. So, it’s a change you have to condition yourself on.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I live in San Francisco, so the city is full of fantastic spots. Though we have lots of tourist locations to visit, there are a lot of local spots with great food, shopping and interesting locales. Because I love classic films I also enjoy visiting spots where great movies were filmed or stories are set. Last year I was in Ireland to give a talk on Alfred Hitchcock at the Trinity College in Dublin and the talk was about the making of Vertigo. I got to give conference attendees a tour of the locations in San Francisco where Hitchcock filmed his classic 1958 movie. It was fun to share the city with a lot of people who have only seen it in the movies.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My publisher, Aplomb Publishing, gives me the freedom to work on topics I’m interested in an the room to do them at my own pace. They also provide a channel to promote them through a podcast series that I host. I also want to thank Dennis Constan, who has expertly edited a number of my books in the recent years and has brought so much to the work to improve the final result.

Website: www.aplombpublishing.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacklawsf/

Other: https://www.threads.net/@jacklawsf

Image Credits
Aplomb Publishing