LIVE OAK, Fla. — Always intrigued by writing, Jennifer Kuyrkendall Griffin combined that hobby with her law career in writing “Deadly Escape.”

Now Griffin is using her novel to help teach the next crop of prosecutors as a guest lecturer for Stetson Law School’s Criminal Procedure class.

Published in 2014, Griffin’s (aka J.R. Kendall) book has been used as a course textbook for the class at Stetson for three semesters. She just recently was able to join as a guest lecturer for the course.

It was a rewarding experience, she said.

“I had so much fun,” Griffin said. “The questions they had, it was so much fun. I think they were like, ‘Wow. Here’s this author.’ Which I don’t feel that way at all. I’m just Jennifer.

“But it was so much fun with the questions they had and there was one student in particular who had very technical questions. They had put so much thought into it and it turned on one word in the book on what his question was. So I was inspired by a young person like that, putting so much thought and critique into his class. That’s a future prosecutor or public defender right there.”

It was Griffin’s own experience with required reading in law school combined with serving as an assistant state attorney in the Third Judicial Circuit that helped spark the novel.

“I thought what a great thing it would be to have a kind of fictionalized — but still use real law, real procedure, that type of thing — (story) that ultimately could be used as course material,” she said, adding that she wanted to also provide a storyline that could make the book appeal to the general public in addition to those involved with law.

She added a real case that she worked on in Columbia County helped spark the crime that she then wrote about in the book.

“There was a death and we went out to the scene,” Griffin said. “That inspired, we’ll say, the opening scene of how this crime ensued.”

After writing and publishing the book, working on the “Mentoring with a Masters” program for the Young Lawyers Division of The Florida Bar Association helped Griffin connect with Tallahassee attorney Joe Bodiford, who also serves as a professor at Stetson.

Griffin mentioned her book and after reading it, Bodiford told her it was perfect for a college course — his course.

“He said, ‘Jennifer, this hits all the ABA (American Bar Association) points that you have to have for the criminal procedure class,’” Griffin recalled. “So kind of on purpose but also inadvertently, I hit every point that they needed to discuss in class.

“It worked out great.”

Griffin also isn’t done with her hobby. She said a sequel to “Deadly Escapes” has been written, but isn’t quite ready for publishing.

“I have the base written, it’s just a matter of having the time to sit down and finish it,” she said.

But this time, the book isn’t being written as possible course material. Rather, Griffin wrote it just to continue that storyline from her first work.

“It was funny, with the class they were like, ‘Well what happens”,” Griffin said, adding that she put a love twist into the story to help with general appeal. “They wanted to know who the prosecutor ended with — the deputy or the attorney.

“I couldn’t tell them. I said they have to find out in Book 2. You have to read it to find out.”