Hello, friends! Hope your Sunday is shaping up well. I'm home today after a whirlwind family trip to celebrate my dad's birthday. Much fun, food, and golf was had. Hmm... something else happened... Oh yeah, Brit in the FBI #6 is in the hands of the master! Which means I am D.O.N.E. with writing for a while. My mantra for the past 18 months has been -- "I can't, I have to work." Ten hour days, 6-7 days a week, I've had my head down, staring at my screen. Ick. I mean, it's fun, don't get me wrong,. But when your knee-jerk reaction to everything is I can't, I have to work... nope. Time to take a step back.

So guess what? My new mantra is -- "yes, let's do it!" Golf. Travel. Reading. Fresh air. Exercise. Friends. I will be refilling my well, one day at a time, until I feel the urge to create again. It's going to be a lovely few months.  

So, in the spirit of all work and no play makes JT a dull girl, I'm outta here. 💂🏻‍♂️

Let's take a look at the latest and greatest links!

Here's what happened on the Internets this week: 

Reading a Book Takes Time—Deal With It. "Is our obsession with hurrying up getting in the way of our having fun?"

Who Owns Harry Potter? What J.K. Rowling's Series Can Teach Us About Copyright Law. "Culture is better, is more inclusive, is more dynamic (not to mention enjoyable) when the arts are thriving. Copyright law, says Bressler, incentivizes creativity."

Inside J.R.R. Tolkien’s Notebooks, a Glimpse of the Master Philologist at Work. Fascinating! I think every writer eventually wants to create their own language.

Fictional Glimpses of the Past: From the Tudors to the Czars. So many congrats to Ariel Lawhon on this excellent NYT review of I WAS ANASTASIA!

Woman becomes first-ever female infantry platoon commander in Marines. Go, sister, go!  #SemperFi

Emotions run high as Aunt Agatha's in Ann Arbor prepares to say goodbye. A heartbreaking loss to our community.

From Star Trek to Fifty Shades: how fanfiction went mainstream. "What separates these works from the Harry Potter fanfiction you find online may come down to snobbery. There is an undercurrent of misogyny in mainstream criticism of fanfiction, which is widely accepted to be dominated by women; one census of 10,500 AO3 users found that 80% of the users identified as female, with more users identified as genderqueer (6%) than male (4%). Novik has spent a good deal of time fighting against fanfiction’s stigma because she feels it is “an attack on women’s writing, specifically an attack on young women’s writing and the kind of stories that young women like to tell”."

The Writer's Life: Louise Candlish: Domestic Suspense from Across the Pond. Great interview. Such an interesting premise!

And closer to home:

My publisher is repackaging all the Samantha Owens novels and the new covers are dynamic and story-appropriate. I can't wait until we have all of them out for you. This past week we revealed Samantha Owens #2, EDGE OF BLACK! If you're curious about the origins of this story, check out this post.

What an awesome giveaway! Win all four of these upcoming fall thrillers: WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT by Mary Kubica, FOR BETTER AND WORSE by Margot Hunt, UNDER MY SKIN by Lisa Unger, and TEAR ME APART! 

US and Canada only. 

Don't forget! ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS, the first book in my Taylor Jackson series, is on sale for $1.99! 

WHITEOUT, a Taylor Jackson novella is free on Instafreebie this week! Check out the other free thrillers and mysteries while you're over there.

Join Nashville Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson as she races to find a deadly assassin who’s seemingly blended in with the blizzard.

Metro Nashville Homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson has reluctantly agreed to take the place of her fiancé, FBI profiler John Baldwin, as a presenter at the annual Freedom Conference, a foreign intelligence initiative attended by the best in the business of “clandestine services.” Then a blizzard effectively isolates their hotel on Chesapeake Bay: no power, no generators, and no possibility of outside help. When two guests go missing, and one of them is found dead in his room, Taylor discovers an assassin amongst the spies—one with a deadly score to settle.

Lots of fun stuff coming up, including the finalized tour dates for TEAR ME APART. I hope to see some of you on the road! That's all for now! Take a walk, hug your bestie, give your kitties a scratch, and I'll see you next week!

peace and hugs,
J.T.