september / october 2005:

Lord of a Different Ring
Atlanta’s Mitchell Graham has been a fencing champion, a lawyer, and a neuropsychologist. So what turned him into a fantasy novelist with Spielberg beating down his door? We took him out to lunch to find out. by Bradford R. Pilcher


ou’d think Mitchell Graham an unlikely fantasy novelist. A national fencing champion, lawyer and neuropsychologist, he’d led a thoroughly full life, but none of it had indicated a future as a fictional author of the fantastic. Then again, you might not know about a little story from Graham’s youth.

As we sit over lunch, the blistering sun warming the dining room of the Sandy Springs deli we’ve selected, he tells it to me.

“I was about nine-years-old, and I sat on the floor of the public library in Brooklyn and read this book called, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” he says with the glimmer of a sly smile. His rusty red hair is on fire thanks to the sunlight pouring over it. It adds just a touch of spark to the story he so deftly tells.

“I went home and I told my dad, ‘This is the greatest book ever,’ and so he tells me I should write the author.” Graham shrugs and gives what will quickly become a trademark line. “So I said, ‘OK’.”

The young kid from New York soon struck up a correspondence with C.S. Lewis, one that went on for some time. Then the letters stopped, and the young Graham wasn’t entirely sure why.

“My father said, ‘Well he’s busy. He’s famous. Who knows why,’ but then I get this letter from another Oxford professor.” Here’s where the twinkle returns to his eye and the smile slips back across his lips.

“It said, ‘Mr. Lewis died of a heart attack, so I’m afraid he won’t be able to write you anymore, but perhaps I could serve as a poor substitute and you might also enjoy my book’,” Graham pauses for effect, as storytellers do.

“The Hobbit,” he finishes.

Yes, in case you were wondering, young Mitchell Graham proceeded to have a long-standing correspondence with J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings) as well.

The boy who would do almost anything if it interested him, even strike up friendships with two of the twentieth century’s greatest authors, is now a man who found fencing, the law, and the workings of the human mind interesting. But it was Graham’s son, a “voracious reader” who got him into writing.

“He brought home this book and told me I should read it, that it was a great read,” says Graham with a hint of the irony in this generational parallel to his own childhood story. “So I did, and I thought this is crap. I could do that, so I did.”

After he wrote his book, one of his friends sent it secretly to a contest, which he promptly won. “The next day, all the agents and publishers called.”

And so it was, years after Tolkien, Lewis, and that library in Brooklyn, that Mitchell Graham became a bona fide writer. He got an agent, who sold the trilogy (never mind the second two books hadn’t even been written) to a publisher and Graham now had a new profession.

“I couldn’t stay a lawyer while I wrote. You can’t say to somebody, ‘I’ll get you out of jail later’,” he laughs while finishing off one of the sandwich wraps in front of him.

Now, with those books (known as The Fifth Ring trilogy) out of the way, Graham isn’t resting on his literary laurels. In fact he’s not even sticking around the fantasy genre. His next three books, (including one titled Stone Mountain), are legal thrillers more akin to John Grisham than J.R.R. Tolkien.

“It’s where I feel I have the most natural place,” he says in defense of his genre switch. “I can do swords and wizardry very easily, because of my fencing and my love of that stuff growing up, but I feel like I can be more comfortable with the dialogue and the development with a legal thriller.” Mitchell adds he’ll likely stick with this genre.

Who could blame him? While his legal thrillers haven’t been published yet, Buena Vista Studios and Bruce Willis have already snatched up their film rights. Steven Spielberg (yes, that Spielberg) wants to direct his fantasy trilogy with Mitchell helping on the script. Even his agent is a little taken aback by his runaway success.

“My agent asked if I was playing a trick on him,” says Graham once he’s finished all his food. “I said, ‘What are you talking about,’ and that’s when he told me that Dreamworks was interested as well as Buena Vista. He didn’t believe it.”

Our lunch is almost at an end, so I ask the fencer-lawyer-neuropsychologist-author about his faith. Does Judaism fit in?

“In the trilogy, I tried to work it in,” says Graham, a member of Etz Chaim in Marietta. The lead character even got a Jewish-sounding last name. “I mentioned there was a church that split, and I made sure one of them met on my Sabbath, on a Saturday. But still, I’d like to make it more present in future books.”

Then he mentions one of his favorite Jewish authors — Daniel Silva [see our interview with him in the March/April 2005 issue]. “He writes about Israel and Judaism. It’s very out there for him, and he’s very bold,” says Graham before pausing, “and deservedly so. He’s got enormous talent.”

He takes a few sips of his drink, then ends lunch with — what else — another story.

“I remember playing basketball as a young guy back in New York,” begins Graham. “This I will die remembering as one of the greatest moments in my life, and it was the one time I faced blatant anti-Semitism.

“This boy rode by on his bike and called out, ‘Hey Kike’,” remembers Graham. I look around to make sure nobody else in the restaurant reacts to the epithet. Thankfully, nobody does, and Graham continues.

“As he turned the corner at the other end of the school yard, I just remember hauling the basketball all the way across the length of the school yard.” The sly smile from before is gone. Graham is practically beaming as he reaches the best part of his tale.

“I hit him square in the face. I just looked up and said, ‘Thank you God.’ He had to be with me to get that ball that far.”

Graham, the man who’ll do seemingly anything, might have had God on his side that day. Odds are, he still does, because all that he’s done has turned out well. And he’s got a great story about it all.


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