How Anthony Franze Became Alex Finlay, and How a Rebrand Birthed a Bestselling Author

You could say Anthony Franze had a successful case of double vision. His first vision didn’t turn out so well. His second made him a bestselling crime fiction author. 

His original vision for becoming an author—if you could call it that since he never aspired to be one—was to write legal thrillers. As an attorney licensed to practice before the Supreme Court, he wrote legal briefs on major issues of the day.

His crime fiction writing career, however, didn’t begin until 1998 when he was in his late twenties and his son arrived. He was up late at night taking his turn with a newborn with erratic sleeping patterns. And with nothing more intellectually stimulating to do, he decided to try writing a novel.

“I wasn’t one of those people who knew I wanted to be a writer at an early stage. I wasn’t a good student…I don’t know what got me to get into writing a novel. Maybe I was seeking a creative outlet since I was a musician when I was young playing in bands throughout high school and college, and I had given that up.”

Now, with his head buried in legal briefs and law books, he took two years to complete his manuscript for his legal thriller Chain of Evidence. And surprise, no one answered his call to publish.

“It should have been called Chain of Crap,” he says. He gave it a proper burial in a delete file. 

With his law practice taking off, he decided to take time off from writing. “I had young kids, and I thought this is a selfish way to spend my time.”

It was six or seven years later before he decided to try again. He was now practicing before the Supreme Court, so he decided to do what most new writers do, he wrote what he knew. He specialized in appellate work. “I don’t argue the cases. I’m a brief guy,” he says. “I take a big mass of information and tell a story. It’s good training for fiction writing…There are people who are much better at oral arguments than I am.”

Franze wrote his draft scenes for the novel on his cellphone while walking or riding on the Washington DC Metro system from Friendship Heights on the city’s border, to his law office in downtown DC. He began the practice on his Blackberry years ago. He finished a chapter during each commute, which is why they were all short, long before it became a thing. You can calculate how long his commute was by the length of each chapter. 

Anyone who has watched someone walking down the street typing on their cellphone realizes it could be as dangerous as texting and driving. “My wife is always worried I’ll get hit by a car,” he says. One time he did have an accident. While walking the streets of Paris, he stumbled straight into a traffic bollard, almost breaking his leg.

At one point, Franze and his wife decided to move out of the city to Virginia’s horse country. He quickly realized there were no sidewalks and no subway for his walking and writing habit. He had to buy a treadmill. But after three years, it became too much, and the family moved back into the city into the Georgetown neighborhood with its brick sidewalks and lack of any subway station. Today, he either walks more or drives to work. And just how is that working for him? Check the length of his chapters in his most recent novel, The Anniversary, which became an instant bestseller upon its May 14 release.

During the pandemic when he was stuck at home like everyone else, he couldn’t understand why he came down with a case of writers block instead of Covid. The cure, he realized, was going on long walks with his cellphone again. 

When his thumbs were polishing his first manuscript in the early 2000s, he began querying agents he found in the acknowledgements of thrillers he enjoyed. In gratitude, he received a big pile of rejections that filled a bankers box. Finally, he landed Peter Miller, who widely shopped his manuscript. It didn’t help that Miller was shopping Franze’s novel near the end of the thriller genre’s heyday. Eventually Franze signed a contract with a small publisher, Sterling & Ross, and Franze’s debut was launched.

The Last Justice focuses on the assassination of several Supreme Court Justices. It was published in 2012, in another era. Franze says he wouldn’t write it today because of the more hostile political environment in America. He wonders if a publisher would even accept it today.

His first concern back then was the Supreme Court community’s reaction. To his relief, they seemed to get a kick out of his fictionalized version of the court community.  

The community is small and close, and Franze used some of his Capitol Hill experiences in his early novels. Justice Elena Kagan once agreed to meet with his daughter’s sixth grade class and his son tagged along. The children were all seated around a large conference room table with Franze and the other lawyers standing along the walls. Just before Kagan arrived, Franze’s son sat in the chair at the head of the table where Kagan was supposed to sit. When she entered the room, Kagan pulled up a chair beside him. When she began to speak, his son began sighing out of boredom. 

“I’m across the room seeing my son hold his head in his hands,” Franze says. “Thankfully, Justice Kagan either didn’t notice or was just being a good sport.” Today, at least, he can laugh about it, and it created a great scene in his second Supreme Court novel, The Advocate’s Daughter. 

While Franze’s The Last Justice did not sell well outside the legal community, the reviews were good. 

 In 2014, Franze switched agents and signed with Lisa Erbach Vance, with Aaron Priest Literary Agency. She signed him with St. Martins Publishing Group (a division of Macmillan), which offered him a two-book deal. The Advocate’s Daughter and The Outsider, both court thrillers, sold better but not enough to excite anyone.

When Franze handed Vance his next manuscript, she explained if he wanted to breakout as an author, he might consider writing thrillers with broader appeal. “I was in a distinct category of thriller. Those things can box you in and dictate how publishers think of you—how readers think of you.”

Meanwhile his marketer at St. Martin’s, Joe Brosnan, wanted to break into editorial. Brosnan approached Franze at the bar at the International Thriller Writers annual ThrillerFest conference and asked if he would be interested in working with him in writing something different. Franze was intrigued. Ultimately, after reading a partial manuscript Franze had worked on with guidance from Brosnan, the powers-that-be agreed to try marketer Brosnan as editor Brosnan. 

As part of the deal, Brosnan suggested Franze consider a complete rebrand, which would include a pen name. That’s when his second vision began to form and Alex Finlay was born. Franze likes his nom de plume because it carries his initials. But his wife still struggles with it.

“My wife has a problem with people calling me Alex, as do my older friends. It was a business decision…I don’t think I found my voice until I was writing under a fake name.”

And it turned out to be a good one. With Brosnan’s editing and under his pseudonym, Franze’s sales took off. Ditching the legal niche eventually saw his sales grow exponentially. His last three novels are bestsellers and have been translated into twenty-seven languages worldwide.

He owes much to Vance and Brosnan, he says. “They totally changed my career.”

While he’s still with Vance, he lost Brosnan as his editor when the marketing guru-turned-successful editor was later hired by Grove Atlantic Press, owner of CrimeReads.com, to build its new crime fiction imprint, Atlantic Crime. 

“Joe and I took a chance on each other, and it paid off,” Franze says. “He now has his own imprint, and I’m proud of his success. Since he left, I’m with a dream editor, Catherine Richards. The marketing and PR team have been with me for every book since I became Alex Finlay and made me a bestseller. They all changed my life as a writer.” 

Franze found a better niche and became an international bestseller. And while his sales grew exponentially and his vision doubled, it was his agent and former editor who enabled him to clearly see his literary future.

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The Last Justice

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Start to Finish: 14 Years

I want to be a writer: When first child was born

Experience:  Writing legal briefs

Agents Contacted:  A box-full of rejection slips.

Agent Responses:  Not many.

Time to Sell Novel:  Six months

Novel Agent:  Peter Miller

Novel Publisher:  Sterling & Ross  

Inspiration:  John Grisham

Advice to Writers:  You can call yourself a writer if you go through all your rejections and still keep doing it.

Websites: alexfinlaybooks.com / anthonyfranzebooks.com

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