On Decisions

What do you do when faced with a life-changing decision? Do you jump off the cliff and go for it, heedless of the consequence? Do you agonize, write lists of pros and cons, worry yourself into sleepless nights until the decision is made? Or do you use entropy, edging toward the decision through the path of least resistance, not deciding, but not walking away, either?

I’ve always been a bit of a cliff jumper myself. I make up my mind on things quickly, and move forward decisively.  Sometimes too decisively.

So when my main character, Dr. Samantha Owens, was faced with a life-changing decision at the beginning of WHEN SHADOWS FALL, I thought she’d be like me – make the decision and move on. But she didn’t. She fought against what she knew would be best for her, and it took her a whole novel to decide.

It’s a tricky thing, changing a character’s world. Whether they get married, have a child, get divorced, meet a lover, start a new job, deal with a loved one’s death – these catalysts drive our narratives, giving our character’s depth, and making them relatable.

I’ve been throwing changes at Dr. Samantha Owens for several books now. She’s had to face the death of her husband and children in the Nashville floods, the death of her ex-lover, the surprising love of a new man, a move from Nashville to Washington D.C. and a new job running the brand-new forensic pathology program at Georgetown University. And in WHEN SHADOWS FALL, she’s faced with even more decisions – whether to accept a consulting position with the FBI, whether to accept a ring from her lover, whether to investigate the murder of a man who clearly committed suicide.

What is it the French say? Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Stasis is the death of novels. Change, not for the sake of change, but for the sake of challenge, is the only way to keep a series alive, to keep the characters interesting, to keep their story moving forward. It’s a careful balance, and it’s where the novel’s conflict comes from. Too much change, and you lose the things that make readers love the character. Too little change, and things get boring.

Sam’s facing the biggest decision of her life in WHEN SHADOWS FALL. The question is posed in the first chapter, and she doesn’t decide fully until the last. Her decision changes the course of the series, sending it in a new direction. It gives the series real legs, sustainability, reason and meaning. Sam can move forward now, unfettered by her past.

At least, we hope she can.

So what about you? How do you make decisions? Leap and bounds, or slow and steady?

This blog first appeared on Murder She Writes February 24, 2014

On Release Day for WHEN SHADOWS FALL!

February Newsletter Special Edition

Vol. XXXIII

 “Exceptional character development distinguishes Thriller Award–winner Ellison’s third Samantha Owens novel, the best yet in the series.”

– Publishers Weekly Starred Review
– Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week 

Gentle Readers:

My eleventh novel, WHEN SHADOWS FALL, has been born into the world today, and I want to celebrate with you!

Over on my Facebook page,  I’m giving away 3 $50 gift cards to your favorite bookstore. All you need to do is leave a comment on the post to be entered – and in the interest of spreading the word, if you share it on your page, you’ll be entered twice. How’s that for a deal? I’ll announce the winners on Friday, February 28th at noon.

          Buy Yours Today!

IndieBound / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Books-a-Million / iBooks / Kobo /  East Side Story / Parnassus 

Audiobook available March 31, 2014 from Tantor Audio

Every series has a path, planned or unplanned. When I started writing my Taylor Jackson books, I had no idea it was going to be a series. I hadn’t thought about extended story, structure, character development. I created a finite character in a finite world, and it was difficult to see where to take the books.

With Sam, it was the opposite. I knew I wanted a character who could grow and change remarkably. I knew I wanted to allow her the freedom to move around the country, the world, with relative ease. As my then editor and I were planning the first book in the series, I mentioned I wanted Sam to be the Indiana Jones of forensic pathology. The idea stuck.

This third book is a seminal part of the series. Sam is faced with the biggest decision of her life, one she must grapple with over the course of the strangest case she’s seen to date. She receives a letter from a man begging her to solve his murder, but a quick look into his death shows he is a clear suicide. Sam discovers his body has DNA from a twenty-year old cold case, linking him to a kidnapped child whose remains were recovered years earlier.

The book unfurls from there, traveling all over D.C. and Virginia, from Georgetown to Lynchburg, and the beautiful Great Falls – all my old stomping rounds – delving into the a world of killers and cult leaders and things that go bump in the night.

I hope you’ll love this third installment in Sam’s story, enjoy watching her truly come back to life, moving forward with her new love and her dear friends at her side, into a mind-bending case that will decide her fate for years to come. Here’s a quick excerpt from the book to give you an idea of what’s ahead. 

For those of you in the Nashville area, I will be reading from and signing WHEN SHADOWS FALL at the Barnes & Noble in Cool Springs tonight at 7:00 p.m. I hope you’ll join me for an evening of fun and frivolity and murder.

Thank you, as always, for being the best readers on the planet. I wouldn’t be here without you! Cheers!

xoxo,

JT

Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Books-a-Million / iBooks / Kobo / Walmart 
IndieBound / East Side Story / Parnassus / Reading Rock

Audiobook available March 31, 2014 from Tantor Audio

 ___________________________________

Praise for WHEN SHADOWS FALL 

“Ellison has crafted a terrific thriller, and fans of forensic mysteries, such as those by Patricia Cornwell, should immediately add this series to their A-lists.”
-- Booklist (starred review)

“Skillfully seasoned with suspense, intrigue, adventure, and a dash of romance, [WHEN SHADOWS FALL is] essential for suspense junkies.”
-- Library Journal

“Ellison excels at imaginative and terrifying plots, and this thriller is a fine example that sucks readers in at the beginning and spits them out at the end, emotionally drained. The latest Samantha Owens installment is a complex story with interwoven mysteries and a frightening conspiracy. Villains range from just greedy to truly evil.”
-- Romantic Times Book Review (Top Pick!)

“Exceptional character development distinguishes Thriller Award–winner Ellison’s third Samantha Owens novel (after 2012’s Edge of Black), the best yet in the series. The author’s ability to neatly tie together the mysterious clues helps make this a standout in the romantic thriller subgenre.”
-- Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review)

“You want compelling characters, warp-speed action, a complex, terrifying plot, then Ellison's When Shadows Fall, with Dr. Samantha Owens, is for you. Be prepared for calloused fingers you’ll be turning the pages so fast.”

-- Catherine Coulter, #1 New York Time Bestselling Author of Bombshell

On A Book’s Path…

I’m not sure exactly how it happened, but Feb­ru­ary 25, my eleventh novel will be born into the world. WHEN SHADOWS FALL is the third Saman­tha Owens novel, a sem­i­nal book in the series, as it decides the course of action for the next several books.

Every series has a path, planned or unplanned. When I started writ­ing my Tay­lor Jack­son series, I had no idea it was going to be a series. I hadn’t thought about extended story, struc­ture, char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. I cre­ated a finite char­ac­ter in a finite world, and it was dif­fi­cult to see where to take the books.

With Sam, it was the oppo­site. I knew I wanted a char­ac­ter who could grow and change remark­ably. I knew I wanted to allow her the free­dom to move around the coun­try, the world, with rel­a­tive ease. As my then edi­tor and I were plan­ning the first book in the series, I men­tioned I wanted Sam to be the Indi­ana Jones of foren­sic pathol­ogy. The idea stuck.

What hap­pens in this book wasn’t sup­posed to hap­pen until book 4 in the series. It’s funny, the same thing hap­pened to me in the Tay­lor series. The third book, JUDAS KISS, was sup­posed to be the fourth. I made men­tion of my idea for it, hop­ing to entice my edi­tor to buy the book when I was fin­ished with the third I had planned. Instead, she jumped on the idea and told me in no uncer­tain terms this was the ONE.

So when I found myself in the same posi­tion this time, I knew what I needed to do. Aban­don the story and move the next book into its place. I couldn’t let Sam lan­guish in her sor­row any longer. It was time for her to move on. To start anew. Insert res­ur­rec­tion clauses here.

Of course, Sam wasn’t aware of the change her life was about to take. She wasn’t par­tic­u­larly ready to move on, not really. And I had to tell her, Too bad, sis­ter. I’ll let you have some onscreen sex to make up for it.

I think its one of the most part of the fun being a writer, this game you play with your char­ac­ters. I once asked a very famous writer about how char­ac­ters some­times do their own thing, and he looked at me like I was a recent escapee from an insane asy­lum and declared his char­ac­ters would never do such a thing because they only did what he told them to do.

I find that so sad. I like that my char­ac­ters and I have this sort of push and pull rela­tion­ship. They give me some of what I want, I give them some of what they want. In the end, we’re all happy and mov­ing on to the next adven­ture. At least, that’s the plan. After wrestling alli­ga­tors with them for 500 pages, they damn well bet­ter be ready to move on. Cause if they’re not, they often end up dead. Or maimed. Or mar­ried off, or on the run.

Poor char­ac­ters. Poor, poor char­ac­ters. Bet­ter behave, or I’ll make your life hell.

But Sam behaved, and she was rewarded with many excit­ing things, all of which set up the rest of the series. I’m not one-hundred per­cent sure where we go from here, but I love that book three has become this sem­i­nal turn­ing point for the Sam. And as such, for Xan­der and Fletcher too. The whole cast is being thrust into a new world because I got impa­tient. I hope they con­tinue to behave!

On Keeping a Book Journal, and the Nascent Beginnings of Books

WHEN SHADOWS FALL releases next week, and I wanted to show a bit of the process I went through writing the book. Every book has a different genesis, and I've been trying to keep better track of how the stories come alive for me.

I am not a natural journaler. I had the requisite locked diary as a girl (Dear Diary, why doesn’t so and so like me?) and when I found it a couple of years ago, I saw a familiar pattern: daily January entries faded into a sporadic February into one or two lonely March entries, then nothing at all until July, when I wrecked a friend’s moped and finally – finally! – had something to talk about.

It is the mundane that I’d always found of such little interest. And yet, how I wish I’d stuck to the discipline, that I’d at least put down a few words here and there for all those childhood years. Dinners, friends, sleepovers, heartbreaks. So many things lost, so many ideas gone.

I tried for years to journal properly – even took a class in college that called for a daily journal. What do you think happened? Yep, the night before it was due, there I was with my day runner, trying to recreate a semester’s worth of entries.

In 2003, blogging became a part of my life. It was a journal, though I didn’t realize it at the time. I can go back through the entries on my blog and on Murderati and watch my journey – my highs and lows, my successes and failures. When I stopped blogging weekly, I realized how much I missed it, and it hit me – you’ve been journaling. And you like it.

But I was still horridly inconsistent. I’m like many writers, I think, I have multiple notebooks and snippets of ideas and open file folders and cocktail napkins and half-finished blog entries scattered about my office. I need a method, a practice. And I found it again through two things – daily pages and a book journal.

Again, my fear of the mundane kept me from combining the two. What if, years from now, someone actually wanted to know my unpublicly chronicled thought process on a book? And what if they found my notebooks, and saw some of the ridiculously boring things that happen in my life?

So I kept them separate.

In each folder, for each book, I have a small journal file. I try to document the moment the idea for the book came to me, how I approached it, the emails I sent, anything that will help explain the genesis. And as I write, I keep score – word counts, what’s working, what’s not.

Which brings me to WHEN SHADOWS FALL, which comes out next week. You’d think, after all this time, I’d know what sparks a book idea for me. But for the life of me, I can’t remember. So I’m writing this blog, and now, I will go open the magic box that is the Book Journal and see. Be right back…

Here’s what I found – it’s a copy of the transcript of the email I sent my agent on 5.15.12

So the story idea for Sam #3 pranced into my head two nights ago, and I wrote it down. It's a fun idea, I think, and based in part of a real case in Mississippi, where a man moved from California running from the "Masons" then committed suicide. Don't worry, not a DaVinci Code-esque storyline. I have something much more fun in mind, as you'll see when you read the synopsis.

The title - obviously a working title, but I wanted to go with three words, and have a play on the darken and black from the first two. I like this. Second place is BREATH AND SHADOW - from Sophocles. (A human being is but breath and shadow.)

Ah – I remember now. I was in the shower, and the idea for the book hit me out of the blue. I messed around with the story, wrote up a synopsis, found a title – I can’t work without a title – and sent the email to my agent.

The title, by the way, was WHEN SHADOWS FALL – everyone loved it off the bat, and my agent loved the proposal, and the editor loved it, and suddenly, I was in business.

Except – I had a few other things on my plate, and I couldn’t come back to the story for a year.

A year is a very long time between concept and writing for me. Normally I dive right in, but I had to write my first book with Catherine Coulter, and I can’t write two books at once. So SHADOWS went on the back burner for a year. 

Not surprisingly, the book journal shows a rough start when I got back to it. I just read through the diary, and realized – I am rather hard on myself.

But, all that said – the journaling is now a Godsend. It was with this book that I really got into sharing my thoughts at the end of each day, which has morphed, these many years later, into an actual daily journaling habit!

I was using my blog, but there’s a strange, uncomfortable level of intimacy to sharing a book’s life while it’s under construction, so I’ve switched to a great app called Day One. I record the mundane and the important, the books stuff and the life stuff, all in one place, and I find I can’t move on with my evening if I don’t write my little bit at the end of the day.

Apparently, I’m a journaler after all.

A little added bonus, here's an excerpt from WHEN SHADOWS FALL 

1.21.14

Breaking radio silence to say - it's been a happy day. Had news this morning that WHEN SHADOWS FALL is a Romantic Times Top Pick for March! I am giddy! Thank you, Romantic Times!

Here's the takeaway... 

Ellison excels at imaginative and terrifying plots, and this thriller is a fine example that sucks readers in at the beginning and spits them out at the end, emotionally drained. The latest Samantha Owens installment is a complex story with interwoven mysteries and a frightening conspiracy. Villains range from just greedy to truly evil.

Just a reminder, there's a Goodreads Giveaway for an ARC of this book that ends January 31. Enter, and don't forget to add WHEN SHADOWS FALL to your To Read list. 

Back to the real world for me. 3000 today, 3000 yesterday. THE LOST KEY is rolling, rolling, rolling...