Sunday Smatterings

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas...

Which ain’t going to happen, no matter how much I dream, because I don’t get to spend Christmas in Colorado anymore. But I remember how much I used to love getting up on Christmas morning to find out Santa had brought a lovely storm. It was so magical. Christmas Eve, we always watched the classics—Charlie Brown, The Grinch, and Rudolph. If you recall...the final plot twist in Rudolph is a terrible winter storm that’s going to cancel Christmas. Because of his big, beautiful red nose, Santa realizes he’ll be able to deliver all the gifts after all—and of course, the stop to the Island of Misfit Toys never failed to leave me sobbing into my pillow at the injustice of the very concept of unwanted toys, with every toy I owned on the bed so none of them—NONE—would feel left out. (Even as an adult, I can’t watch that scene without crying. It’s so wonderful, the message of inclusion, of gratitude, of little joys, and not taking love for granted.)

And then, spent, I’d fall asleep and wake to a winter wonderland, evergreens bowing under the weight of the snow, the gentle susurring of branches shaking themselves free of their white blankets, the deep silence only a snowfall can bring, and I’d know Santa had come. It was glorious.

So now you know what I’ll be doing Tuesday night...

We have some other family traditions, one in particular that’s very important to our Christmas Eve. We light bayberry candles at sunset and let them burn down all night in remembrance of those loved ones who are no longer with us. As the youngest in the family, I always have the honor of lighting the candles. I keep promising myself I will loop some people in my world into this tradition, but always end up with the usual seasonal overwhelm. It will happen, eventually. 2020, The Year of Enough, is going to see some major changes in how I approach the whole commercial side of my life in addition to my perfectionism, so this seems like a great time to get started.

Do you have any holiday traditions—new or old—that you just will not miss?

And with that, off we go…

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Closer To Home:

GOOD GIRLS LIE comes out one week from tomorrow!!!

You can imagine my delight at seeing this wonderful snippet in ELLE Canada this week: “If the Succession prequel series of our dreams actually existed, we imagine it would find Shiv Roy at a private school similar to the one where J.T. Ellison’s latest novel, Good Girls Lie (out on December 30), is set. The twisty psychological thriller follows Ash, who quickly makes friends with the popular crowd at her elite new prep school. But when Ash falls out of favour and a student ends up dead, she becomes the clear suspect. Enter secrets, betrayal and general mistrust—all of our favourite things (to read about).”

I am obsessed with Succession, and Shiv Roy, and I admit to absolute delight at this comparison. Also, when I first started writing, I was reviewing for the Elle Book Club, and Elle Magazine was my very first byline. This has a bit of a full-circle feel to me. 🥰

A few of the places GGL has popped up recently:

-Providence Journal: “A bracingly original thriller set inside the ironically named Goode School that reads like a female-centric A Separate Peace spiced with murder.”

-BookTrib: Good Girls Lie, Cheat and Murder … Or Do They? “A whopper of a dark tale, a nail-biter bound to keep you reading beyond the midnight hour.”

-Mystery Scene Magazine: “A dark, moody, surprising, well-wrought psychological thriller that evokes the best of Agatha Christie and Patricia Highsmith.”

Don’t forget to check out the Events page to see if I’ll be in your town for book tour. I would love to see you! If I’m not coming to your area, you can preorder a personalized copy from Parnassus Books.

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THE LATEST ON THE INTERNET:

Cozy cabin was custom-designed for reading. What an amazing getaway!

Best mystery books of 2019. This is a fabulous list, including two of my best of 2019 reads, Laura Benedict’s THE STRANGER INSIDE and Michael Kortya’s IF SHE WAKES. My full list of top 2019 books is coming soon!

Shop Less, Give More: 4 Ways to Give Bookish Experiences as Gifts This Holiday Season. Great ideas!

How Reese Witherspoon Took Charge of Her Career and Changed Hollywood. This is so inspiring! I know I speak for all of us when I say - GOOD FOR HER!

New owners and location for Mysterious Galaxy in 2020. Wonderful news! Welcome to the family, Matt and Jenni.

Video of a Delivery Man Discovering Snacks Outside a House. This is so lovely - putting together my basket this weekend.

'The Silent Patient' Wins Best Mystery of 2019. And it’s incredibly well deserved. I loved this book and I appreciate the effort that went into it.

My favorite gifts to give and receive. A superb gathering of goodies to gift and receive this holiday season, from Anne Bogel.

(Almost) Every Sci-Fi/Fantasy TV or Movie Adaptation in the Works Right Now. Lots of good stuff ahead!

104-year-old woman celebrates birthday with a children's book drive. How remarkable!

Writing Inspiration: Turning Good Reading into Good Writing. Good tips here.

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WHAT I’M READING:

THE KILL CLUB by Wendy Heard

A chilling, clever plot combined with highly original characters makes Wendy Heard's THE KILL CLUB a surefire winner. Relentlessly paced, elegantly written, diabolically twisted, you will not be able to put it down. Heard is a true talent. And a really, really cool chick.

What are you reading?

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That’s it from me. Watch a classic, listen to one of the awesome new book podcasts, take a few days off this week, and I’ll see you next week!

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Season’s Greetings, Happy Holidays, Happy Kwanzaa, heck… MERRY EVERYTHING!!!!!

Peace and hugs,
J.T.

Sunday Smatterings

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

That’s about how my week has gone. In the best of times category, I crossed off two of my primary annual goals this week. I set a goal of 200,000 fiction words, and I hit it. It’s nice to realize that I’m going to surpass it by quite a bit, though how much of it will be kept is a whole different story.

I also finished reading my 80th book. Last year, I set a goal of reading 80 books and blew past it in October, so revised up to 100. It became a point of honor to hit that 100 books, and I did hit it, at the last possible moment, on December 31.  

I decided then and there never to do that again. As much fun as it was to have a huge goal, I got a little frayed around the edges trying to meet it.

I’m little wigged out about what my non-fiction number will be this year. The double-dose of anesthesia made fiction difficult but non-fiction much easier. Whenever I started to struggle with the books, I slipped here, to the blog, or drafted a newsletter. I’ve found talking about writing fiction engenders writing fiction for me, so this is time well spent. But I predict that with PR and blogs and newsletters, the non-fic number will be off the charts. I used to let it bother me, that I write 2 - 3 times as much non-fiction as fiction, but since I did get 200,000 of fiction, I can’t be too upset.

The worst of times, though… it’s been a seesaw editorial week, with a lot of holiday goings-on, all capped with a cortisone shot and an RX for 6 more weeks of physical therapy. The knee is doing really, really well, but there’s a spot that simply refuses to heal and it causes pain. I don’t like pain. No one does, naturally, but I’m just ready for the poor thing to be 100%. 

Have you watched the Lindsey Vonn documentary on HBO? If not, watch it. The girl’s my hero anyway, but watching her make career decisions after I too spent months with a messed up knee, having to make decisions about what I can and can’t do that affect everything from travel to tours to deadlines, really hit home for me.

The December newsletter is in your inboxes (or Bulk Mail, or under the Promotions tab) so give your inbox a gander. Or you can read it here. Lot’s of good stuff.

And today is the last day to get LIE TO ME for only $1.99! Such a deal.

And with that, off we go…

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Closer To Home:

GOOD GIRLS LIE comes out two weeks from tomorrow!

We had a great new review this week from The Free-Lance Star: “An exploration of deception and betrayal—and the caring-and-cruelty rollercoaster of adolescent friendships—“Good Girls Lie” represents a gripping read that simultaneously mesmerizes and disturbs.”

A few of the places GGL has popped up recently:

-The Real Book Spy’s December 2019 Reading Guide. Thrilled GOOD GIRLS LIE is the Featured Selection!

-Booktrib: 6 December Thrillers That Will Give You the Chills. “J.T. Ellison plows new ground on familiar land with Good Girls Lie, a bracingly original thriller set inside the ironically named Goode School that reads like a female-centric A Separate Peace spiced with murder.”

-When a Writing Break Turns Into a New Novel: J.T. Ellison. I’m so excited to have this essay on writing breaks on The Kill Zone, compliments of Laura Benedict. Have you ever had to take a creative break?

-Gumshoe review. “Kudos to Ellison for helping to revitalize the boarding school nightmare genre.”

-Christina McDonald Author’s Corner interview. Such a fun interview - and if you haven’t read Christina yet, you’re in for a treat!

Don’t forget to check out the Events page to see if I’ll be in your town for book tour. I would love to see you! If I’m not coming to your area, you can preorder a signed copy from Parnassus Books.

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THE LATEST ON THE INTERNET:

Check out 7 of Canada’s most impressive libraries. Now I need to visit all of them.

The History Of A CHRISTMAS CAROL. It’s always interesting to hear how classics came to be.

How Social Media Hacked Civic Conversation. Can we save the sinking ship? Do we want to? I say yes, we do, and there are many of us who are working on that.

Literary Dinner: The Secret History. Spectacular! I wish I could have been there!

Vintage books discovered inside the walls of a flood-damaged Utah library. It’s amazing how things can survive! What an unexpected time capsule.

Pizza Hut's ‘Little Free Libraries’ Look Exactly Like Mini Pizza Huts. Darling idea!

Meet the man adapting your favorite childhood book. “Thorne says that the first thing he does when adapting a work is try to understand everything about his source text. ‘You eat the books,’ he explains, ‘and then you try and regurgitate them in a way that feels right for the medium you’re writing.’”

Museum of Miniature Books. Pretty cool!

20 Personal Development Books For Your Best 2020. Great list! Get to thinking about those resolutions!

Shakespeare and Co: The world’s most famous bookshop at 100. One of my fondest memories, doing my Hemingway walk of Paris and stepping inside the store for the first time. Incroyable!

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WHAT I’M READING:

THE FAMILY UPSTAIRS by Lisa Jewell

I don’t often close a book and say “brilliant”, but that’s exactly what I did when I set down Lisa Jewell's latest. What a story! I read this in one gloriously long evening, captured from page one, and now I’d like to get it on audio and experience it again. A superb, insidious, compelling, compulsive read.

What are you reading?

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That’s it from me. Preorder GOOD GIRLS LIE, won’t you? It would mean the world to me.

Meanwhile, smile at a stranger, just five more minutes on that exercise bike, start planning a little vacation, even if it’s just a cozy weekend at home, and I’ll see you next week!

Peace and hugs,
J.T.

Sunday Smatterings

“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…

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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*

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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???

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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?

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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.

Sunday Smatterings

Happy Sunday to you! And OMG it’s time to panic because it’s now officially the holidays. No more complaining about holiday decorations up too early. Carols and cards and lists for Santa abound. I sent my list to my family on Friday—you’ll be shocked to hear I asked for several cooking tools. I broke my sieve and my tongs recently, and boy, you don’t realize how much you use things until they break. 

Thanksgiving was a success, happily. When you’re cooking to accommodate food allergies, recipes are a jumping-off point. It’s even scarier when you’re baking—baking is a science, absolutely. I’ve always known you have to follow the recipe to achieve perfection. But... when you have to substitute and create from scratch with different ingredients, it’s hard to say what will work out. For example, for the topping of my Dutch apple pie, the recipe called for a cup of rolled oats. We have a family member who can’t eat oats, but the texture for the topping was important. I hemmed and hawed and finally decided I’d try a combination of cashews and cornflakes. I use these as a base for breadcrumbs all the time, why not sub them in for oats?

And guess what? It worked!!!!!! I’ll put this apple pie recipe in the December newsletter for you allergen folks—and for the rest of you lucky ducks, you can just make it straight. It was delicious! 

We ordered a very special turkey breast from a free-range farm in Wisconsin that guaranteed no soybeans in the feed, and brined it overnight using a combo of two recipes, then cooked it in the Dutch oven with a lovely mirepoix, apple slices, butter, and white wine, and people, it was glorious. I even threw together a pumpkin custard with an almond flour crust that was delish. Score one for Thrillerchick.

The point of all this wasn’t to make you hungry, but to talk about tools. The proper tools can make a good cook a great one. I didn’t invest in my kitchen for the longest time, and my meals suffered for it. I was always afraid to try what I thought were complicated recipes, and when I did, I was less than successful. I wanted to cook Julia Child’s Coq a Vin, but ack, sooo complicated. Or so I thought.

I was at my brother’s place in Colorado while he made a pork shoulder green chili in a Dutch oven, and my eyes were opened. I invested in some serious bakeware, was gifted a Le Crueset 7.5 quart Dutch oven, and started with a French onion soup. Eureka. You can caramelize onions in anything, but the Le Crueset cast iron made it taste like the l’onion gratinee at our favorite Paris bistro (Le Zinc, in the 15th, if you’re interested. Also, here’s the recipe, should you be drooling...)

Your career as an artist will be enhanced by using the proper tools. Chefs know the exactly the right amount of salt and spices to add to a dish without looking at the recipe. Painters know exactly what kind of brush—sable, bristle, nylon, acrylic, palette knife—and what ratios of colors combinations are needed to get the right expression of paint on the canvas. Writers are less complicated, in many ways—do we really need more than a pad, pencil and a wicked imagination? Technically, no. But the progression from paper to typewriter made things a lot easier, especially editorially. Then came desktops, and Microsoft Word. Laptops, and Scrivener. Scapple. Story Planner. Mac vs PC (You will pry my Apple products from my cold, dead hands.) 

Just don’t shirk on your ingredients. You need the best basics, the mirepoix of writing—vocabulary, grammar, voice—not to mention the salt and seasonings: a kick-ass idea and a bunch of rowdy characters.

I think this metaphor is a little overcooked. Point is, the proper tools help.

And with that, off we go…

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THE LATEST ON THE INTERNET:

Reminder: Your Daughter Doesn’t Owe Anyone a Hug. Not Even at The Holidays. As the queen of the awkward hug, I wholly applaud this. Instead of a hug, a high five is just fine.

You Can Book Harry Potter's Childhood Home On Airbnb For Less Than $150 A Night. Well, this is cool! Also, is anyone watching HIS DARK MATERIALS? I swear I spotted Dudley in Episode 3…

On Quiet, Undistracted Alone Time. Which is awesome, and necessary. How else are you going to master Coq a Vin? 😉

'Your throat hurts. Your brain hurts': the secret life of the audiobook star. I love my audiobook narrators, and now want to send them all a nice hot toddy.

This May Be the World's Most Ambitious Public Library. It looks and sounds amazing!

A Brief and Buttery History of Libby’s Pumpkin Pie Recipe. Who knew? This is the recipe I use, and it’s delightfully consistent.

10 YA Fairy Books for Fans of Holly Black. These are going straight to my TBR! I’m reading THE QUEEN OF NOTHING right now and I *swoon*.

Squirrel Saved From Hurricane Has Her Own Mini Teddy Bear And Won’t Let Go Of It. Awwww…

Why I Always Read the Acknowledgements. "For me, reading the acknowledgments is a way for me to glimpse the author as a person, not just as an artist."

"I'm Lonely and Scared. Would You Be My Friend?" 90-Year-Old Woman Writes in Heartbreaking Letter to Neighbor. Reach out to someone who might be lonely today, okay?

Make Working From Home More Productive By Pretending You're at The Office. Simple, actionable advice for anyone who works at home. Still… pants.

3 Foods You Should Give Up Forever. Three simple changes to your diet will make you feel so much better.

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WHAT I’M READING:

THE FOUNTAINS OF SILENCE by Ruta Sepetys

This intriguing look at 1950s Franco-era Spain was in turns enlightening, frustrating, and horrifying. Sepetys has a knack for using vivid characterization to tell the inside story of her chosen historical moment, and I was entranced by eighteen year old Daniel Matheison and his inamorata Ana Morena—star-crossed lovers who find themselves torn apart by the stringent rules of Franco’s twisted reign. A subplot diving into the illegal adoption trade is at once fascinating and terribly sad. An impeccably researched story, Sepetys’s unflinching account is well worth your time. What are you reading?

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That’s it from me. Buy yourself something special for your kitchen, put on some Tchaikovsky and write some holiday cards, buy at least one of your gifts at a local indie store, and I’ll see you next week!

Peace and hugs,
J.T.

Sunday Smatterings

Happy Sunday to you all! First, some big, exciting news: GOOD GIRLS LIE is a December LibraryReads pick! As you can imagine, I was so chuffed to see Good Girls on the list of awesome books the librarians say are the best of the month. Many thanks to Douglas Beatty of the Baltimore County Public Library in Baltimore, MD for the incredible review, too.

“Sinister and atmospheric, this page-turner elevates the thriller genre with descriptive writing and well-drawn characters.”

And even more good news, The Strand Magazine named GOOD GIRLS LIE one of their top 12 books of 2019! So, so honored by this recognition. Thanks, Strand!

This week’s missive will be brief, as I’m locked away on a writing retreat. But I wanted to mention how very important community is to writing. We primarily work in a vacuum, locked inside our own heads for hours, days, weeks at a time. It’s so important to find and cultivate relationships with like-minded creatives. When you emerge from your writing cave and get started in the publishing part of the journey, there’s a lot to learn, a lot of misinformation to debunk, and a lot of opportunities to set yourself on a steady course to success.

And that means finding friends you can trust.

So go to the signings at your local indie or BN. Conferences, too, even if it seems insurmountable. Almost all of us are shy, almost all of us have issues with big groups. Don’t be afraid to approach authors and booksellers and librarians and influencers you admire and strike up a conversation. Get to know people online, for sure, but also try to meet them in person. You would be amazed how the personal interaction changes the complexities of the writing life.

Be brave. Find your tribe. Talk less. Listen more. And write hard.

With that, on to the links…

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THE LATEST ON THE INTERNET:

Incredible footage captures a sleeping octopus changing colour while dreaming. This is simply the coolest thing I saw this week. Just amazing!

Experience more fun and less fuss this holiday season. Less is most definitely more, and when we’re all so stressed, sometimes we can take comfort and pride in making our holidays simpler for ourselves, and more enjoyable, to boot.

The Food That Helps Battle Depression. Excellent advice—and don't forget your Vitamin D supplements, especially now that the dark months have arrived!

Tony Wrighton: Finding Life Beyond the Monitor. Yes, please.

WSIRN Ep 208: The underappreciated art of literary forgery. Anne Bogel interviews Charlie Lovett, making for a fantastic conversation!

Raccoons Have Taken Over a Library & No, It's Not in Pawnee. This made me laugh!

Winter Houseplant Tips: Do's & Don'ts As The Weather Gets Colder. This is a great list of tips that I am (now) following...I do not have a green thumb when it comes to indoor plants except my 21-year-old african violets, who’ve been with me since I moved to Tennessee in 1998.

CBS 2019 Holiday TV Specials: Here's when to watch. Ready, Santa!

‘Lord of the Rings’ author J.R.R. Tolkien’s home is for sale — and it's magical! It really is!

Since it’s Thanksgiving week here in the USA, I thought I’d share my favorite cornbread sausage stuffing recipe! Delish!!!

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WHAT I’M READING:

SAVE ME THE PLUMS by Ruth Reichl

What a lovely, fascinating book. I'm late to come to memoir, but each one I read builds on the last like layers in a cake. This slice of Reichl's life chronicles being named editor-in-chief of Gourmet Magazine to the magazine's eventual close a decade later made me laugh, and made me think. "Brand Ruth" is an excellent cautionary tale to us all, I think. What are your favorite memoirs?

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That’s it from me. Stop and admire some of the wildlife around you, reach out to a friend you think might need a little love, make your bed, and I’ll see you next week! Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Peace and hugs,
J.T.