“It is often up to the author to bestir [her]self and think of ways to advertise [her] talent.”

~Patricia Highsmith, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction

Happy Sunday to you. I hope you’re well.

I’ve finally settled in to read Highsmith’s book. I’ve been carrying it around with me for months, pulling it out everyday, setting it on top of my notebook, and yet, never reading past the foreword. It’s traveled all over the country, and out of it, twice.

I will never understand how my brain works. Resistance happens for thousands of minute reasons, none of them reasonable. For example, every time I start writing, I get a sentence down and find myself in the kitchen. I’ve come to recognize it’s a performance hitch. It doesn’t stop me, or curtail my words. I write a sentence, go to the kitchen. I grab something from the fridge, warm my cup of tea, pour some some water, get a handful of nuts, and then I go back to the laptop and start working again.

Baseball players and golfers are two great examples of people who have a hitch that doesn’t hurt their performance. I’ve seen golf swings that defy gravity, defy the laws of physics, and yet out-distance my own smooth swing by fifty yards. My husband loves to show me the hitch of a hitter--this one takes an extra step, that one starts his swing, stops it, then starts it again.

I figure, if it doesn’t negatively affect the outcome, who cares, right?

For years and years, when I started writing, I turned on a banker’s lamp on my desk. It was the old fashioned kind with a string you pulled. Click. Warm, sunshiney light, and off I went. When that lamp went to the great lampyard in the sky, I got another, but it was never quite the same. The click wasn’t the same, this one had a proper switch that I depressed instead of pulling a cord.

The traverse to the kitchen is the way I turn on my lamp. It is my click. I’ve made sure to have healthy, non-impactful ways to satisfy that click, or else I’d be in trouble. But this is not about satiation, it’s about the mental game we play with ourselves.

The quote from Highsmith above is actually a warning to the authors reading that sometimes they will need to do their own PR. Was Highsmith so sentient in 1983 that she could see what was coming down the pike? I don’t know. I do know that I did a LOT of PR this week for GOOD GIRLS LIE, so that particular cauldron is properly bestirred.

But the quote hit me in a different way. It spoke to my ultimate goal with every book, to create something new, to find a way to elevate my craft. It was not - J.T., you need to find a way to goose your online presence.

Instead it was a call to arms: J.T., you know you have this in you. Go do it. Bestir yourself!

What better way to go into these next few weeks, when I will be (hopefully) finding the path to the first draft, getting the rest of the story down on the page, while juggling the pre-release expectations.

And with that, off we go…

Closer To Home:

GOOD GIRLS LIE comes out three weeks from tomorrow! It’s really happening, y’all. Thank you to everyone who has preordered and spread the word. It means so much!

We announced the book tour this week so do be sure to check out the Events page to see if I’ll be in your town. I would love to see you! If I’m not coming to your area, you can preorder a signed copy from Parnassus Books.

We had a great new review this week from BookPage: “Good Girls Lie is an entertainingly twisted coming-of-age tale, pitting the desire for privacy against the corrosiveness of secrecy and taking an often harrowing look at how wealth and power can lull recipients into believing they’re untouchable.”

A few of the places GGL has popped up recently: CrimeReads: 9 books you should read in December, PopSugar: 18 New, Must-Read Books Coming Out In December, Hypable: Winter 2019-2020 movie, TV, book release dates to add to your calendar. The Professional Book Nerds podcast mentioned it in December’s Biggest Books. *pinches self*

THE LATEST ON THE INTERNET:

Cool Bookish Stocking Stuffers to Give (or Get) in 2019. Lots of great ideas here. I love little presents.

Here Are The Best Bookshops In America For Bibliophiles. How many of these have you been to?

This Morning Routine will Save You 20 Hours Per Week. Focus, focus, focus. Work smarter, not harder. And meter your time online!

Deck the Halls with Harry Potter Christmas Decorations! 25+ To DIY or Buy. Because nothing says Christmas like Harry Potter (which I’m rereading, as I do sometimes this time of year.)

Why Can’t I Focus? 8 Reasons and Solutions for the Distracted Brain. Actionable solutions here. Great stuff. I’m working hard on my distraction this year, it’s a major goal.

A Photographer Captured The Exact Moment a Squirrel Stopped to Smell a Daisy. This makes me unbearably happy.

The Life Cycle of a Library Book. So interesting!

The Secret Society of Women Writers in Oxford in the 1920s. What a marvelous group of women! I feel like we have a lot of this is Nashville now.

7 Actionable Tips for Consistently Focused Writing. Good advice! Are you sensing a theme - focus???

WHAT I’M READING:

THE QUEEN OF NOTHING by Holly Black

The last book in Black’s Folk of the Air trilogy does not disappoint. There is nothing better than a grand escape, and Black’s books provide that for me. King Cardan and Queen Jude are exceptional in this tale, and the worldbuilding is simply superb. I know it says a trilogy, but I do hope Black revisits this world soon. (If you’re reading this, o glorious one, hear our entreaties: more Cardan and Jude, please.)

What are you reading?

That’s it from me. Stop by your local library and say hi, buy yourself a little plant for your windowsill, drop some paper and food off at the local animal shelter, and I’ll see you next week!

Peace and hugs,
J.T.