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WORK TITLE: Big: Crisis
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.greysonbryan.com/
CITY: Los Angeles
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 80101795
Personal name heading:
Bryan, Greyson
Found in: His Taxing unfair international trade practices, 1980: t.p.
(Greyson Bryan; Harvard Law Sch.) publisher's info.
(dir. of training, Harvard Internatl. Tax Program)
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
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Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL EDUCATION:
Stanford University, B.A., 1971 (with distinction and honors in history); Harvard University, J.D. (cum laude), 1976.
ADDRESS
CAREER
International business lawyer, business advisor, public speaker, educator, and novelist. Admitted to the bar of California. O’Melveny & Myers, LLP (a law firm), head of Tokyo office, 1987-90, manager of international practice, 1990-2012, currently Of Counsel and partner. Attorney advising businesses and financial institutions on emerging markets and related matters, 2001. Instructor at Harvard Law School; University of California Los Angeles, School of Law, adjunct professor, 1994-97, Anderson Graduate School of Management, adjunct professor, 1995-98. SVWC Board of Directors, chair. Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, member of advisory board, 1995—; Asia Society, national trustee, 1992-2001.
MEMBER:Council on Foreign Relations, Pacific Council on International Policy (founding member), Los Angeles World Affairs Council (1992-2012, former director).
AWARDS:University of California Los Angeles School of Public Policy and Social Welfare senior fellow, 1998-99.
WRITINGS
Contributor to law journals, including the George Washington Journal of International Law and Economics and Fordham International Law Journal.
Also author of a blog.
SIDELIGHTS
Greyson Bryan is a writer, international business lawyer, business advisor, and educator. As an attorney and business expert, he specializes is issues related to emerging markets in countries such as Brazil, India, Russia, and China. He served as an advisor to financial institutions in the United States that were “just starting to look to emerging markets as places of great opportunity,” he stated in an interview with Lance Wright on the website Omnimystery News. He also spent several years as an advisor to investment bank Goldman Sachs and other financial services companies. He told Wright that one of the more unique projects he was involved in was advising “an investment in a company planning to harvest underwater timber from a lake in Ghana.”
Bryan has been associated with the international law firm O’Melveney & Myers since 1987. He served as head of the company’s Tokyo office from 1987 to 1990, as the manager of international practice from 1990 to 2012, and is currently Of Counsel and a partner. He has been an adjunct professor at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law and the Anderson Graduate School of Management. He has also taught at Harvard Law School. Bryan holds a B.A. in history (with distinction and honors) from Stanford University and a J.D. (cum laude) from Harvard Law School.
In the “Duncan Luke” series of thriller novels, Bryan draws from his experiences as an attorney and advisor working in international emerging markets. “I’d been told by some friends who’d heard details of my practice that they thought it was fascinating, and that I ought to try and write something about it,” Bryan told interviewer Don Franzen in the Los Angeles Review of Books. During a plane trip to Washington, DC, he “I started to sketch out some of the more interesting deals I had worked on. Those deals included an investment in an underwater forest harvesting operation in Ghana, an investment in a Channel Islands company involved in petroleum exploration in West Africa, and then an investment in a Nigerien uranium concession. These real deals became the backdrop for the three novels I’ve written,” he said to Franzen.
BIG: Beginnings
The first novel in the series, BIG: Beginnings, introduces series regular Duncan Luke. As a top-level business lawyer, Luke has gained a reputation for being able to make his clients millions—or save them equal amounts when necessary. He has earned good money himself, but has recently decided that it’s time to give up and focus more on his family—his wife Gracie and his ten-year-old autistic son Sam. He is also interested in pursuing an academic career as a professor of law. After returning from a trip to Loyola Marymount University, where he’s going to start teaching, he is surprised by Gracie’s announcement that she wants a divorce. Suddenly, Luke has to come up with unexpectedly large amounts of money to pursue his custody claim for Sam. To earn the fees, he takes on a new client, Ghislaine Bingham, who sends him all over the world to prevent the hostile takeover of her investment company. He and Ghislaine forge a complex relationship as Luke works to protect her interests and fend off newfound enemies who are willing to go to great lengths to foil him.
A Publishers Weekly contributor commented that “Readers will root for the sympathetic Duncan as he morphs into a more grounded version” of well-known adventure heroes James Bond or Jason Bourne.
BIG: Crisis
BIG: Crisis finds Luke in a new position as business intelligence consultant for Bingham Intelligence Group (BIG). One of his major projects is looking into whether an oil deal in West Africa is a good investment opportunity for the company. He continues to fight ex-wife Gracie for custody of Sam, but at the same time, another family conflict threatens the company he works for.
Ward Bingham, president of BIG and stepson of Ghislaine, plots to throw his stepmother out of the company. To do so, he needs to discredit Luke as one of her newest hires. He goes so far as to interfere with Luke’s custody battle to distract him from the attempt to oust Ghislaine. At the same time, Luke has discovered vast depths of corruption in the African oil deal. Amidst the personal and professional chaos that surrounds him, Luke has to protect the interests of BIG while facing unexpected dangers.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, April 3, 2017, review of BIG: Beginnings, p. 57; February 12, 2018, review of BIG: Crisis. p. 61.
ONLINE
Pacific Council of International Policy website, http://www.pacificcouncil.org/ (July 29, 2018), biography of Greyson Bryan.
Greyson Bryan website, http://www.greysonbryan.com (July 29, 2018).
Los Angeles Review of Books, http://www.lareviewofbooks.org/ (October 10, 2016), Don Franzen, interview with Greyson Bryan.
O’Melveney & Myers website, http://www.omm.com/ (July 29, 2018), biography of Greyson Bryan.
Omnimystery News website, http://www.omnimysterynews.com/ (August 30, 2015), Lance Wright, “A Conversation with Thriller Writer Greyson Bryan.”
A Conversation with Thriller Writer Greyson Bryan
Lance Wright 8/30/2016 08:00:00 AM No Comments
Omnimystery News: Author Interview with Greyson Bryan
We are delighted to welcome author Greyson Bryan to Omnimystery News today.
Greyson's new first in series international thriller is BIG: Beginnings (Greyson Bryan; June 2016 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we had the opportunity to spend some time talking about it with him.
— ♦ —
Omnimystery News: Tell us a little more about some of the business strategies that are featured in BIG: Beginnings and in the next two books in the series. And were you really involved in a deal involving harvesting logs from an underwater forest?
Greyson Bryan
Photo provided courtesy of
Greyson Bryan
Greyson Bryan: Beginning in 2001, I began to advise U.S. financial institutions which were just starting to look to emerging markets as places of great opportunity. In fact, the acronym "BRIC," for Brazil, Russia, India and China, was coined in 2001 by a Goldman Sachs investment banker. Needless to say, emerging markets may offer great opportunity but they also present legal and reputational risks quiet different than North America or Western Europe. For the next twelve years, I advised Goldman, Sachs and other clients on literally hundreds of matters arising from their growing activity in emerging markets, including an investment in a company planning to harvest underwater timber from a lake in Ghana.
OMN: If you had been working on deals in emerging markets for more than a decade, what prompted you to start writing about them fictionally in 2011?
GB: I'm sure some desire to explore writing fiction had lurked in my subconscious for years. And for a number of years several friends with whom I shared some of the details of my practice in emerging markets found them fascinating and dared me to write a novel based on my work as an international business lawyer. But I just laughed. Who had the time? Then one day in 2011 I found myself on a flight to Washington, DC. Without really thinking, I took out my laptop and began to tap out a list of some of the more intriguing transactions I'd worked on. The list included the investment in the harvesting of underwater timber I just mentioned as well as the financing of a small Channel Islands company engaged in West African oil exploration and a Nigerien uranium concession. These real-life deals were eventually adapted into the backdrop for the three BIG novels.
OMN: Where did the title BIG come from?
GB: I know it sounds counterintuitive, but, for some reason I needed a title before I started to write. Something to make the project concrete, I guess. So, before I wrote a word, I took the name for the tentative title from the acronym for the organization many of whose talented members had become my friends and colleagues: the Business Intelligence Group at Goldman, Sachs or BIG, as it's called. Of course, in the book, BIG originally stands for the Bingham International Group, an investment firm specializing in high-risk emerging markets, and then at the end of the first book and throughout the series, the Bingham Intelligence Group.
OMN: As a lawyer yourself, why didn't you make a law firm the institutional center of the action?
GB: I wanted to make the story primarily about the business risks from investing in emerging markets not about the legal issues. Besides, having worked for more than thirty years in a law firm, I had a hard time seeing how I could make it interesting enough. Also, because I worked primarily with bankers and in-house lawyers doing deals in places like the BRICs and South Africa, Nigeria, Indonesia and Argentina, it seemed natural to make a small private equity firm specializing in emerging markets the backdrop for the story.
OMN: Why did you choose Los Angeles as the city where BIG is based instead of New York or Washington, where I would guess most of these types of investment firms are based?
GB: I know all three cities, of course, but I grew up in LA and had been living there for two decades when I climbed on the plane to DC in 2011. I know the business, cultural and social scenes in Los Angeles well and I felt placing Bingham in Los Angeles would make it standout more than if it were in New York.
OMN: And I would guess that having raised your children in Los Angeles played a role in basing the story there?
GB: Absolutely, I'm sure it did. One of the two main characters, Duncan Luke, and his autistic son, Sam, emerged from my own experience as a single father raising a daughter on the autistic spectrum in Los Angeles. Duncan is a high-priced, burned-out lawyer who decides to leave practice to teach so he can devote more time to his family, a decision that precipitates a family crisis and forces him to take one last lawyer job at the risk of losing his son's love. As a Los Angeles lawyer with a fascinating but demanding practice and from many conversations with other frustrated, exhausted individuals trying — and often failing — to meet the competing demands of their careers and families, it was easy to imagine and write about the emotional turmoil swirling inside Duncan.
OMN: We'd like to hear more about Duncan and the other main character, Ghislaine Bingham, and your decision to have two protagonists and make one of them a woman. Perhaps in a subsequent Q&A?
GB: I look forward to it.
— ♦ —
Greyson Bryan is an international lawyer who earned his B.A. from Stanford and a J.D. from Harvard, and taught at the Harvard Law School and UCLA. A longtime LA resident, BIG: Beginnings is his first novel and the first book in the BIG series.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at GreysonBryan.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
My thanks goes out to the readers of the BIG series, many of whom have written me from as far away as Japan, Australia and England and from as near as down the hall to tell me of their delight in getting to know Duncan and Ghislaine, Rob and M.D., Ward and Gracie, and, of course, Sam. You are what makes writing the BIG stories worthwhile!
I hope you will enjoy Ending BIG and join the BIG conspiracy, one in which I enjoy writing the stories as much as I hope you enjoy reading them; a joint conspiracy that allows both of us to give life to the BIG characters.
And if you enjoy my books, I hope you'll consider writing a review on Amazon. Here's a LINK to add your stars.
Greyson Bryan is an international lawyer and longtime resident of Los Angeles. He earned his BA from Stanford and a JD from Harvard. He taught at Harvard Law School and UCLA and is an expert in the field of business intelligence. Ending BIG is his third novel.
About Grey Bryan
Work
Magneto Books
Author of novels · Los Angeles, California
Author of BIG: Beginnings (Magneto Books 2016)
Current City and Hometown
Los Angeles, California
Current city
Los Angeles, California
Hometown
Favorites
Music
[Music of Joel Rafael]
Music of Joel Rafael
Other
Stanford Alumni, Stanford University, Pacific Council on International Policy, Los Angeles World Affairs Council, Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard Law School, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Asia Society Southern California, Sun Valley Writers' Conference, Bradley K. Martin, AmCham Shanghai, NRDC, Books Kinokuniya Tokyo - Foreign Books, Peter Stasek Architects - corporate architecture, James Rosen, Joyce Rey Luxury Real Estate, Kubo Carlos, Johns Hopkins SAIS Asia Programs
GREYSON BRYAN Grey Bryan Dec 2015 cropped copy
Greyson Bryan was recently named Chairman of the SVWC Board of Directors. Grey has practiced, taught and written about international economic law for nearly four decades and currently is Of Counsel with O’Melveny & Myers, LLP. He has been recognized by Chambers and Partners as one of the World’s Leading Lawyers for Business.
Grey is a member of the Advisory Board of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He served in the past as Director of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council and as a National Trustee of The Asia Society. He holds degrees from Stanford University and Harvard Law School.
Grey is currently writing a suspense trilogy set in the world of international business intelligence. The first installment, BIG: Beginnings, is due to be published in Spring 2016.
Mr. Greyson L. Bryan
Partner, O'Melveny & Myers LLP
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Los Angeles, CA
Grey Bryan has practiced, taught and written about international economic law and policy for the past four decades. Grey was partner-in-charge of O’Melveny & Myers’ Tokyo office from January 1987 to April 1990 and for the next twenty-two years held leadership positions in the management of the firm’s international practice. He has been recognized by both Chambers USA and Chambers Global as a leading international business lawyer.
Grey was born and raised in Los Angeles. He received his B.A., with distinction and honors in history, from Stanford University, and his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School.
He has been actively involved in organizations the promote writing and that foster the understanding of international affairs. They include: Chair, Board of Directors, Sun Valley Writers’ Conference; Past Chair and Current Member, Board of Advisors, Stanford University’s Freeman-Spogli Institute; Past Chair, Asia Society California Center; Past National Trustee, Asia Society; Member, Council on Foreign Relations; Past Member, Board of Directors, Los Angeles World Affairs Council; and, Founding and Current Member, Pacific Council on International Policy.
He has held academic positions at Harvard Law School, UCLA School of Law, and the Anderson Graduate School of Management (UCLA).
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Based on his experience as an international lawyer and work with the business intelligence group of a major U.S. bank, BIG: Beginnings (June 21, 2016, Magneto) is Grey’s debut novel and the first in a series of international business thrillers.
Richard Kletter, adjunct professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, says BIG: Beginnings has “…the page-turning pace of a Grisham novel but with the intricacies and international complications of Le Carré.”
OCTOBER 10, 2016
GREYSON BRYAN is a prominent Los Angeles–based lawyer with an international practice that has carried him to places as diverse as Ghana and Japan. But the lure of writing — not in court filings, but in fiction — has proven irresistible for him, as it has for many other attorneys. Bryan now joins the ranks of lawyers turned novelists like appellate specialist Anthony Franze and L.A. lawyer/screenwriter Jonathan Shapiro. Bryan’s project is a trilogy chronicling the internecine family and business conflicts within Bingham Investment Group (i.e., “BIG”), the first book of which was published in the summer of this year. LARB’s legal affairs editor Don Franzen talked with Greyson about BIG, Bryan’s career in international law, and how he made the transition to writing fiction.
¤
DON FRANZEN: I’m sitting here with Greyson Bryan — pleasure to be here with you. I’ve just finished your first Duncan Luke novel, BIG: Beginnings.
GREYSON BRYAN: It’s appropriate for the first book in a series, I hope.
I know that the usual advice to first-time novelists is write about what you know, and I take it that you took that advice with respect to this novel. Can you talk about your career and how it led to you writing this first book?
In 2001, I’d been an international practitioner for a number of decades, but in 2001 major US financial institutions were discovering emerging markets. That was the year that the term “BRICs” — Brazil, Russia, India, China — was coined, and big financial institutions in the United States were looking for greater profits outside the country. What they didn’t realize at the time was that along with greater profit opportunity came greater risk, both legal and reputational, and I got involved in representing a number of them in emerging markets.
Fast-forward a decade later and I was on a plane to Washington, DC. I’d been told by some friends who’d heard details of my practice that they thought it was fascinating, and that I ought to try and write something about it. So I started to sketch out some of the more interesting deals I had worked on. Those deals included an investment in an underwater forest harvesting operation in Ghana, an investment in a Channel Islands company involved in petroleum exploration in West Africa, and then an investment in a Nigerien uranium concession. These real deals became the backdrop for the three novels I’ve written.
I was wondering where the idea for the underwater forest came from when I read the book.
It’s fascinating. There are a number of these underwater forests hidden under natural, but more often, man-made lakes around the world. I didn’t want to use the one I worked on in Ghana — I wanted something a little closer to Los Angeles — so I found that there was underwater logging in Panama and that’s how I began to weave together the idea of a plot that would originate in Los Angeles but extend to Tokyo and then into Panama.
How much of Duncan Luke’s story, then, is autobiographical?
Well there are certain major elements: middle-aged, international lawyer with a demanding practice; a single father trying, and failing for the most part, to try to reconcile the competing demands of career and family. I have a daughter on the autistic spectrum. She’s older than Sam, Duncan Luke’s son in the book, but nonetheless I understand some of the rewards and challenges of being a parent of a child with special needs. Tokyo, Japan, has been a big part of my career. I opened my firm’s office there in the late ’80s, and, I’ve spent many, many years working and traveling there. I speak Japanese. I understand the culture very well for a foreigner, so that’s a big part of being able to write about Japan.
But it is fiction. I’ve never been to Panama, for instance. Never in my practice, career, or my life.
I have to say the scenes in Japan really gave the impression that you knew the place well. They’re very evocative, very descriptive. I’m impressed that you also evoked Panama so well without ever having been there.
I found that I could research a location and, as long as I could compare it to a similar place where I had been, then I could describe the background in a way that would be interesting to readers. I also found that one of the first mistakes I made was over-describing a setting and I had a wonderful editor — who later became my publisher — and one of the first things she said to me was, “Just give readers a taste and allow their imagination to take it the rest of the way.” And I although I learned that finally, it took a number of painful drafts for me to get there.
I’m guessing that some of your characters are composites of people you’ve come to know during your practice. Can you comment on that a bit?
I think Duncan Luke is a composite of several people, myself included. What I really wanted was to have two central characters. I’m a big fan of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey–Maturin series of historical novels, and I really enjoyed seeing how Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin played off of each other. Very different characters, with deep mutual respect as well as some conflict. But instead of having two males, I wanted to have a male and a female. I wanted Duncan Luke to have the thing that he valued most in life threatened — that’s his relationship with his son — and I wanted the other character, a woman, Ghislaine Bingham, to have the things she most valued — her business, her legacy, her family — to be threatened, in that case by a dispute with her stepson, Ward. And, it’s been relatively easy for me to get into the character of Ghislaine since I’ve known many strong businesswomen who share a number of her characteristics.
Duncan, the main protagonist starts off in the book in kind of a hapless situation. He’s left his high-level, high-profile job at a major law firm to take a teaching position, only to have his wife Gracie throw him out of the house in summary-judgment fashion, you might say, with no appeal, and he finds himself in an apartment in Playa del Rey instead of his beautiful home north of Montana in Santa Monica — what is for him a pretty dire situation. What was your thinking? Start the character off in a crisis and take him from there?
I didn’t want to base the story in a law firm; I wanted to place it primarily in the context of an investment bank specializing in emerging markets. But, Duncan was a lawyer and so I had to separate him from his practice, and to throw into jeopardy the thing he held most dear, as I said, his son. Having him leave practice and then be thrown out of his home accomplished all of those things. He takes one last job because he needs Ghislaine to fund his custody battle. But she also needs him, because he has this relationship with Taro Takayama who has the swing vote and can decide whether Ghislaine can defeat Ward, her stepson, for control of her company.
Duncan is a very interesting character. His mind tends to wander at very critical moments, and I’m wondering if that’s autobiographical. He would go off and think about, “Where did this bottle of wine come from?” in the middle of a critical meeting.
It’s not me, for better or for worse. I can focus a little bit better than Duncan can. I wanted to give him some flaws that would make him a believable character. He’s somebody who’s stronger on the facts than the law. Somebody who tells a good story in court, somebody who I think has a curious mind and has innovative solutions to problems. But, as you say, particularly under stress, his mind wanders and he has to be called back to reality. Something which I’m sure didn’t help his marriage.
No, and in fact, Gracie calls him to account on that several times. I have to say you give a fair airing to just about every character in the book, even Ward, but it was very hard to be sympathetic with Gracie. How did you come up with her character? Was this based on real divorce situations you had seen or real custody battles that you’ve known?
I went through a divorce, and we had disagreements about the custody of our children along with some other things. But, Gracie is a fictional character, and like most of the characters you have to draw them in a slightly extreme way in order to make them interesting and to create conflict with other characters. From Gracie’s perspective, she has a son who’s at risk, and who is vulnerable, and who needs help in her view, and she is furious at Duncan for deciding to leave his practice of law and removing the resources she believes, genuinely, are necessary for her son’s well-being. I can understand that, from her perspective. And I tried to the best I could to have her make that argument in a compelling way.
She’s pretty hard on him though.
Well, she is. But she’s a former Goldman Sachs banker and someone who is very protective of her son, and if Duncan gets in her way that’s too bad for him.
You also give voice to Ward’s point of view, despite the fact that he does some awful things in the course of the book. I got a hint that maybe he and Gracie are headed toward some kind of relationship? Is that a spoiler alert?
I think I can say that that is a subplot that will be worked out through the next two books. So, stay tuned.
Alright, that will really drive Duncan crazy, I’m pretty sure.
That’s, of course, the point. And Ward knows that, and will use that. You know Ward is an interesting guy, because, as unsympathetic as I think he has turned out to be, when you think back on his life he lost his mother when he was quite young, and was left to the not so tender mercies of his father, a narcissistic character if there ever was one. So, as much as I take Ghislaine’s side in their struggle you can certainly understand why Ward turned out the way he has and why he so strongly believes that the company is his, not Ghislaine’s.
You have some hot political topics in the book. Of course, the fact that part of the novel takes place to Panama, which has recently been in the news as a tax haven, or tax avoidance regime. You have environmental issues, you have foreign corruption issues, you have espionage, you have sex trafficking. A lot of headline elements. Was this all designed, or is it just lucky that Panama hit the news lately?
Very lucky. You know, as I said, I made the decision to base the underwater forest in Panama because I didn’t want it to be in Ghana. And once I made the decision to put it in Panama it was relatively easy to imagine an unscrupulous character like Salduba as one of the villains. One of the other elements in the book that I tried to bring out was the issue of human trafficking and human trafficking victims. Magdalena, one of the characters in the book, is a trafficking victim, and as I researched human trafficking — both the legal and the psychological aspects of it — I began to realize that our system here doesn’t really do enough for victims. And I wanted to make that argument as strongly as I could in the context of a fictional story like this.
We do have federal laws dealing with trafficking. Do you think those laws don’t go far enough or are they not being enforced vigorously enough?
I think the problem is that our laws don’t really help victims who are trafficked outside of the United States. Yes, once they are inside the United States our laws reach them, and I think we provide a fair amount of assistance, but in terms of granting asylum or temporary freedom from deportation, I’m not sure we do enough. Duncan, at one point in the story, reviews what he’s learned about these cases to try to see if he can craft something to keep Magdalena in the United States. But many of those laws are there primarily to fight the crime of trafficking, and do not do much to give the victims any solace or refuge.
How hard was it for you to start writing fiction? As a lawyer you’re supposedly writing nonfiction. How difficult was it for you to transition?
Lawyers write for a living, and although there’s a lot of bad legal writing, there’s a lot of really wonderful legal writing out there too. I think I benefited from a career where I learned from some people who are wonderful writers.
As far as fiction goes, there have been people who accused me of writing fiction in some of my briefs! I think what I can say is that conflict is the essence of drama, and that the practice of law is all about conflict. Being able to put yourself not just in the shoes of your client, but in the shoes of the adversary who may be sitting across the table in a deal, or sitting next to you in a courtroom — that kind of empathy, if you will, the ability to understand your client totally, and also understand where the other person is coming from — is something that I think good lawyers learn, and that helped me as an author create characters and conflict.
Who are the authors that inspired you, or acted as your mentors for writing this book?
Writing this book, I didn’t have writers as mentors. I had the immense good fortune of being introduced to Katharine Cluverius, who is a former ICM literary agent, who, five years ago or six years ago, became a freelance editor when her younger child was born. I was introduced to her and I sent her the manuscript and said, “Will you look at it?” and she was kind enough to take a look for free. She sent her evaluation saying that it was better executed than she had thought, but that she could help me, and there has been no greater understatement in the world. That was draft two and the book is draft 27. She was immensely helpful to me and just as I was going out to market with this, and encountering stiff resistance, she decided that she wanted to extend her business into offering authors a full range of services, including those of a virtual publisher. And, she was the one who through Magneto Books, found the cover artist, the copyeditor, put up the website, the trailer, and everything else. So, I’m very fortunate to have found her. She’s as much the creator of this work as I am.
So she’s your Maxwell Perkins?
Yes, she’s my Maxwell Perkins. Exactly.
What writers in this genre are your favorites?
I’m a big fan of Scott Turow. I think he writes beautifully and has very well-crafted characters, and I think his plots are surprising. So I’m a big fan of his.
I noticed that every once in a while you have a digression in your book. Some of the passages are almost cooking lessons. I particularly liked the pasta recipe toward the end. Is that because you’re something of a chef yourself? How did Duncan Luke come to be so good in the kitchen?
He came to be so good in the kitchen because when he was a relatively young man his mother left him and his brother and his father. His father was a kind of distracted professor of organic chemistry at UCLA and was incapable of cooking, and his brother was too young, so he fell into it, and then discovered that he liked it. I wanted to give Duncan something that would show readers his creative side and allow him to decompress. For me, yes, cooking is that release. So it was easy for me to see him in the kitchen, usually with a margarita or a beer, cooking up something, usually Mexican or Indian.
Here’s an idea for your publisher or editor, maybe a companion spin-off cookbook? You could call it the BIG Cookbook.
That’s a great idea, a great idea.
So what’s next for the BIG series?
The second book went to the copyeditor today, and is coming out in November, and the third book is one pass away from going to the copyeditor, and it’ll be coming out in the spring. And the main characters — Duncan, Ghislaine, Ward, Rob, MD — are carried through the entire series. After the third book I’m not quite sure. We’ll wait and see. I think the third book has a relatively satisfying end, ties a number of things together. But it’s more of a colon than it is a period, so —
Or maybe a semicolon?
Or, yes, a semicolon, that’s right.
¤
Don Franzen is an entertainment lawyer based in Beverly Hills. He is also an adjunct professor at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music teaching on the law and the music industry and the legal affairs editor for LARB.
Greyson Bryan
Of Counsel
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Overview
Experience
News & Resources
Grey Bryan counsels US and non-US clients involved in international business disputes and transactions. His litigation practice emphasizes representing clients before US agencies that regulate international trade and business, particularly on economic sanctions, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, export controls and customs matters. Grey also represents clients before US and non-US agencies in connection with trade remedy proceedings such as antidumping, countervailing duty and escape clause proceedings, before panels established pursuant to international agreements such as the WTO and NAFTA and before arbitral tribunals organized under the rules of various international commercial arbitration institutions. Grey has broad experience in corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, licensing and distribution agreements.
Previously, Grey established the Firm’s Tokyo office and was partner-in-charge for several years thereafter. He also formerly served as Chair of the International Practice Group.
Languages
Japanese
French
Honors & Awards
Chambers Global - The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business (2009-2013)
Chambers USA - America’s Leading Business Lawyers (2008, 2010-2012)
Recommended in The Guide to the World's Leading International Trade Lawyers (2010)
“Leading Lawyer” in International Trade, Expert Guides (2008)
"Super Lawyer," Law & Politics Media Inc. (2014)
Leading practitioner, Guide to the World's Leading International Trade Lawyers (2010)
Admissions
Bar Admissions
California
Court Admissions
US Court of International Trade
New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division
Education
Harvard University, J.D., 1976: cum laude; Sheldon Traveling Fellowship; Board of Student Advisors; graduate student associate, Harvard University Center for International Affairs; articles editor, Harvard International Law Journal
Stanford University, B.A., 1971: with distinction and honors in history
Professional Activities
Member
Founding Member, Pacific Council on International Policy
Former Chairman, Asia Society Southern California Center (1992-2001)
Former Chairman, Board of Visitors of the Institute for International Studies at Stanford (1995-2004)
Council on Foreign Relations
Board of Directors, Los Angeles World Affairs Council (1992-2012)
Board of Trustees, Asia Society (1992-2001)
Board of Advisors, Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University (1995-present)
Author
Foreign Corrupt Practices: An O’Melveny Handbook, 6th edition (2009)
“Antidumping Law in the European Communities and the United States,” 18 George Washington Journal of International Law and Economics 631, co-author (1985)
Taxing Unfair International Trade Practices, Lexington Books (1980)
“Foreign Investment Laws and Regulations of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea,” 21 Fordham Int'l L.J. 1677 (1998)
Speaker
“Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: Navigating the FCPA Minefield,” OMM webinar (June 2007)
“Doing Business in the Expanding European Union,” British American Business Council, Los Angeles, and the State Bar of California, International Law Section (September 2004)
Adjunct Professor
UCLA School of Law, “Regulation of International Business” (1994-1997)
Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, “International Business Law” (1995-1998)
Senior Fellow
UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Welfare (1998-1999)
Represented both US and Japanese clients in connection with US and foreign country trade remedy proceedings, such as antidumping, countervailing duty, and escape clause investigations, in the steel, non-ferrous metal, textile, chemical, industrial equipment, electronics, automotive, and agricultural industries
Represented major US and non-US multinational corporations with respect to compliance with US customs, economic sanctions, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and export control laws, both in the context of transactions and with respect to their operations
Represented major Japanese corporations in international mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, licensing and distribution transactions.
Represented foreign governments in connection with US proceedings alleging unfair practices and violations of treaty obligations
Big: Crisis
Publishers Weekly. 265.7 (Feb. 12, 2018): p61.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Big: Crisis
Greyson Bryan. CreateSpace, $16.50 trade
paper (464p) ISBN 978-1-5405-5692-9
Bryan's lackluster second novel in the Big series (after Big: Beginnings) is filled with too many conference calls and meetings instead of action and thrills. As the new business intelligence consultant for Bingham Intelligence Group, Duncan Luke is charged with investigating whether a complicated West African oil deal is a good investment opportunity. At the same time, he's fighting his ex-wife for custody of his autistic son. Ward Bingham, the president of BIG, enacts a plan to oust his stepmother, Ghislaine, from the company, which involves discrediting Duncan, whom she had hired. Meanwhile, Ghislaine is determined to keep her position as chairperson. As Duncan begins to find evidence that the oil deal is rife with corruption, Ward hits an unexpected snag in his plan and attempts to interfere with Duncan's custody battle to distract him. Unfortunately, while the main characters were captivating in the first book, they are much more staid and predictable in this outing, which only exacerbates the uncomplicated plot's plodding feel. Readers will expect more from the third novel. (BookLife)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Big: Crisis." Publishers Weekly, 12 Feb. 2018, p. 61. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528615497/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7980f3db. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A528615497
Big: Beginnings
Publishers Weekly. 264.14 (Apr. 3, 2017): p57.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Big: Beginnings
Greyson Bryan. Magneto, $15.95 trade paper (442p) ISBN 978-1-5306-8077-1
International lawyer Bryan puts his professional experience to good use in his engrossing first novel and series launch. High-powered L.A. lawyer Duncan Luke takes his time driving home to Santa Monica after a trip to Loyola Marymount University, where he's about to start teaching as a visiting professor at the business school. On the way, he stops to buy a pizza that he hopes will please both his 10-year-old autistic son, Sam, and his wife, Gracie, with whom he's been quarreling. When Duncan gets home, Gracie announces that she's filing for divorce. To pay the fees in the ensuing custody battle for Sam, Duncan goes to work for a demanding new client, Ghislaine Bingham, who requires that he jet to places like Tokyo and Panama and back, in an effort to prevent the hostile takeover of her investment group. Duncan must rekindle old friendships and business relationships, form new alliances, and sidestep treacherous adversaries. Readers will root for the sympathetic Duncan as he morphs into a more grounded version of James Bond or Jason Bourne. (BookLife)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Big: Beginnings." Publishers Weekly, 3 Apr. 2017, p. 57. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A489813712/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1c8175e4. Accessed 14 July 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A489813712