I met Liz Lazarus at SHOT Show in 2019 during the annual Women of the Gun event. As a writer of a different sort, we hit it off and she gave me a copy of her novel, Free of Malice. I devoured the book shortly after returning home. Years later, we got the chance to catch up when Liz agreed to be a guest on the Kat Haas Outdoors podcast. She also generously donated a set of her books to the Castle Rock chapter of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation for our annual banquet dinner and auction.
Liz Lazarus lives in Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from The Georgia Institute of Technology with an engineering degree and Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management with an MBA. She went on to a successful career as an executive at General Electric’s Healthcare division.
Believe it or not, Lazarus calls herself “the most reluctant author you’ll ever meet.” Instead of writing, she tackled other ambitions on her bucket list. But, as she explains, her first book “wouldn’t leave me alone—it kept nudging me to write to the point that I could no longer ignore it.”
Her first novel, Free of Malice, released in 2016, is fiction, the attack on the main character is real, drawn from Lazarus’ own experience. It portrays the emotional realities of healing from a vicious, physical assault and tells the story of one woman’s obsession to force the legal system to acknowledge her right to self-defense.
Reader response to Lazarus’ first novel was so encouraging that she embarked on a writing career, releasing her second novel in 2018. Plea for Justice is a legal thriller that depicts the journey of a paralegal investigating the case of her estranged friend’s incarceration. As she seeks the truth, loyalties are strained and relationships are tested leaving her to wonder if she is helping an innocent man or being played for a fool.
Her third novel, Shades of Silence, released in 2021, showcases the resilience of a woman faced with devastating loss, the unexpected friendships forged from tragedy, and the recurring societal themes that confront every generation.
Free of Malice struck home. Laura Holland wakes up in the middle of the night to a shadowy figure standing in the bedroom doorway. He crosses the room to attack her and the fight is on. Laura fights back against her would-be rapist and eventually, he leaves. Struggling with the aftermath of the attack, she begins having nightmares, among other classic PTSD symptoms. Laura’s husband schedules an appointment with a therapist, encouraging Laura to face and work through her trauma.
Plea for Justice and Shades of Silence are both on my To Be Read list, but if they are anything like Free of Malice, then I know I won’t be disappointed. Check out the videos below for my interview with Liz as we dive into how she became an author and talk all the dirty details about each of her books.
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