The Why Behind TEAR ME APART

God bless National Geographic.

I have had a subscription for decades. I used to keep all the old magazines until it became an issue (stacks and stacks and stacks - all donated, finally), so I switched to the digital version. I always knew I’d find an idea in one of them that would give me the key to a really cool book. 

Enter the July 2016 issue. I was reading it on a plane, and I read a story and felt that incredible tingle all over when I see something I want to incorporate into a book. It was about a new forensic technology called phenotyping. The uses are endless — with a DNA sample, forensic analysts can generate facial features of a suspect. Eye color. Hair color. Ancestry.

I got excited by the possibilities of this new technology. To start, think of the people accused of a crime who are wrongly convicted. Phenotyping will cut down on these cases, for sure. Nothing is infallible, but it’s a cool leap forward. And there’s also a program that can take the DNA and build a 3-D face out of it. Not admissible in court…yet. We’re about to enter the brave new world of criminology, for sure.

When I read the story, I knew immediately I wanted to have a character use these skills to solve a crime. 

But what crime? How about DNA from the crime scene of a missing, day-old baby? Cool, but… What if that baby was now 17 years old and famous? OK, now we’re getting somewhere. You see how this works. This is my process. What if? How about…? Hmmm…..?

I took this concept, married it to the idea I’d been carrying around with me for years about a woman who makes the ultimate sacrifice—her life—for her family, and boom—I had the beginnings of a story. 

In TEAR ME APART's first draft, the book was narrated by a dead woman in heaven. It was very cool, but it wasn’t right. Then I was challenged by one of those Facebook memes where you’re supposed to post the first seven lines of your work in progress (WIP). I took a look, and felt like my first seven lines weren’t shareable. I don’t like to discuss the WIP as it’s being created—you give away the magic when you do that, in my mind. So I cheated. I wrote something totally unrelated to my real opening. (Hey, don’t judge. People pay me to make things up for a living… 😉)

This is what I wrote, tossed off, really, just to satisfy the guilt of a meme:

I remember the day she arrived so clearly. What quirk of fate led her to me? I wondered about this for years. If only I had stepped right instead of left at the corner, or taken the stairs instead of the elevator at the hospital, perhaps ordered chicken instead of steak for my last meal with my father before his death, the principles of chaos—the butterfly effect—would have altered the course of my life enough that she wouldn’t have appeared. But I did step right, and I took the elevator, and I had the steak, and she did appear, and I will never recover from her. 

I posted it, and walked away. When I logged in again, there were a few comments from people who really liked it and wanted to see where the story went.

And I started to think. Who is she? Where DID this story go? Maybe this WAS the real opening of the book. It was a totally new voice, an undiscovered character. I knew one thing. It was a woman speaking. 

And suddenly, there it was. A new frame. A new setting. A new situation. A whole new story.

Magic. The sort of mental razzle-dazzle our creative brains do when we let them.

I love chaos theory; it’s the basis for a number of my stories. With my new frame in place, my new voice, the book… became. Without the meme challenge, would I have found my way into this story? I don’t know. But I am so grateful I did. (Thanks to fellow writers Bryon Quertermous, Allison Brennan, and Brian Tracey who all tagged me. Smooch!)

One last thing about TEAR ME APART: please read the Author’s Note. I was compelled to discuss some pretty dark, scary topics in this book, specifically depression, self-harm, and suicide. All have deeply affected my family, and I hope and pray we can have more open discussions about mental illness, remove the stigmas, and help ourselves, our family, and our friends live a better, happy, joyful, hopeful life. 

I leave you with the symbol of that movement, the humble semi-colon. Look it up. You won’t be sorry.

︔

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For every book, I create a soundtrack. This one is dark and evocative. I absolutely love it and hope you do too.

A DEEPER DARKNESS has a new look!

A DEEPER DARKNESS has a new ebook cover, and I absolutely LOVE it. I think this is the first time the cover really evokes the story perfectly. Since many of you are new to me, and don't know the story behind my Samantha Owens series, I thought I'd share her inception with you.

WARNING: If you haven't read the Taylor series, there's a major spoiler ahead, so you may want to avoid this one. 

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Adapted from original post in 2012

Several months ago, my team and I made a decision to let Taylor take a long vacation, and focus on a new lead character, Dr. Samantha Owens. Sam is Taylor's best friend, and Nashville's head medical examiner. She features prominently in all the books, but she hasn't had her own tale, not yet.

Suffice it to say, starting a new series was scary for me. After seven (eight, including FIELD OF GRAVES, which wasn't yet published) books with the same lead character, I was in a groove. I knew how every character would react. It was simply a matter of creating a dynamic plot and a cool villain to confront them with.

But Sam had been knocking on the doors and windows of my Muse’s hamlet, begging to strut her stuff on the page. When at long last I relented, and decided to spin off her character, changes needed to happen.

To do the new series justice, it needed to be different. To start – a new setting. I settled on Washington, D.C., my former home of many years. And Sam needed to be unmarried, and unencumbered by children. I debated long and hard. Divorce? Custody arrangements? Multiple scenarios, but they all kept her tied to Nashville. There was only one choice.

Her husband and children had to die.

I fought against this reality for weeks. I couldn’t do that to her. And there are rules in writing. You can’t kill animals, and you can’t kill children. Except you can. And I did. The question became not if they died, but how. Car accident? Been done. Plane crash? Been done.

And then it hit me. The flood.

Nashville was stricken with a flood of biblical proportion in 2010. As it happens, A DEEPER DARKNESS released on the second anniversary of that fateful weekend, that moment in time where we lost so much. Synchronicity at its finest. I was able to both honor those hurt and killed in the real flood and give Samantha a chance to recover with everyone else. Recover we did. It hasn’t been easy, but we’re back on our feet.

Another challenge was finding the right tone, the right mood, to express Samantha’s loss without suffocating the reader in her grief. I needed to get in her head, and live there, trying to understand how hard it must be to lose a husband, and to lose her twins. How, and if, that sadness could be overcome.

I used a lot of music to guide me, mostly the mournful, melancholy cover of “Hurt” by Johnny Cash. (It's on the A DEEPER DARKNESS playlist.) The song makes me weep, and the video tears a hole in my heart. Imagining the loss of my own husband, how frightened and alone I would feel, helped me mine Sam’s grief.

With grief comes hope. With hope comes possibility. They say what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and for a young, dynamic, intelligent widow, simply surviving her loss makes her invincible. Samantha stares into the abyss, acknowledges its presence, and somehow, some way, pulls herself back from the brink. And is rewarded for her strength. Yes, she's overwhelmed with OCD that manifests in excess hand-washing. Yes, she won't autopsy drownings. Yes, she runs away from her pain, starting a new life. But there are seeds of hope scattered throughout her story. Seeds of possibility.

Ironically, without realizing it, I was unwittingly writing my own story. My husband and I struggled with infertility for a decade. Multiple pregnancies resulted in multiple miscarriages. IUIs and IVF didn’t solve the issue. Over and over, I lost my own children.

I thought I was fine. Normal. Nominal. That I’d dealt with my own grief, my own loss. But it wasn’t until I read A DEEPER DARKNESS in galley form that I realized I’d used the book as therapy. All of Sam’s losses mirror my own. Her strength, her hope, her will to continue on gave me the strength to do the same.

A DEEPER DARKNESS isn’t a sad book. Samantha Owens is all of us: our hopes and fears, our determination and our weakness. For the first time in my writing career, I’ve put bits of myself on the page. And that’s possibly the most terrifying thing of all.

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Whew! So now you know where my girl comes from. To celebrate our new look, I'm giving away one ebook. Enter on the Rafflecopter!

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2017 Annual Review

Oh, 2017. You will go down in history as one of my most exciting, crazy, thought-provoking, and frustrating years ever.
 

Looking Back on 2017 - The Year of Flow

After purposefully pulling back from external commitments, 2017 is the year I give my art my full attention again by staying home and working on my writing habit. Consistent writing brings me great contentment, and that is my goal for 2017 — contentment through consistency. This applies to more than just writing; it is my personal goal as well. Staying home allows for regular habits to grow and thrive — not just writing, but yoga, golf, friendships, minimalism for the house, and lots of regular, protected deep work time. This deep work practice will create great flow, allowing me to focus and challenge myself in my work.

HOW DID I DO?

When I read this, I started to laugh and wrote Ha—not even close. But... as I thought about it, while I wasn't able to stay home and nest all year, pouring out words as quickly as I do my morning tea, I do believe I achieved my goal of contentment through consistency. I'm rather surprised by this revelation, as I spent weeks on the road this year, had my schedules shift around several times, ran around with my hair on fire meeting new deadlines, remodeled the house, and otherwise spent a lot of time freaking out.

And yet... The crazy remodeling of several rooms to make them exactly what we wanted resulted in us decluttering the house to the point of austerity—a long-time goal achieved. It feels so good now. Another goal met: I spent a lot of time with the people I adore the most—friends, family, and business teammates, at home and on the road—deepening those relationships. With all the chaos, I managed to meet all my deadlines, read almost 80 books, took an actual unplugged vacation, wrote 275,000 fiction words, launched an anthology and recruited another, taped 6 episodes for A Word on Words, and found a comfortable writing habit. I even lost ten pounds in the process. Maybe I didn't fail as much as I thought I did! Then again, my golf handicap did go up because I only played 8 rounds this summer. 8! This must change. 

WHAT WENT RIGHT?

Well, everything and nothing. Professionally, the year-long campaign for LIE TO ME was a massive success. The book was a big hit, and allowed me to travel all over the country, meet a lot of readers, and put me on the radar of some very influential book bloggers and Instagrammers. My publisher got behind me big time, with major future commitments, and really, you can’t ask for anything better. Catherine and I wrote a new book that I think is wildly unique and fun, I finished a new standalone novel that is dark and different, wrote some short stories I’m very proud of, and grew Two Tales Press to its next level. Assistant Amy worked her tail off all year to allow me more margin for creative work, and when you see the numbers below, you’ll see exactly how well that worked. 

Personally, I found a great deal of contentment toward the end of the year once all my deadlines were met. The changes to my schedule and focus worked well, and I absolutely love my new interiors. I nearly exceeded my writing goals, nearly met my reading goal, and had a very good year in general. I committed to handling the holidays early and did, which brought a surprising amount of joy. Like so many others, the holidays are sometimes hard for me, but this year, having everything dealt with Thanksgiving weekend allowed me to enjoy instead of fret. So there’s the key — planning, and executing the plan. Who knew?

I also asked for and received an Apple Watch for Christmas. I can already see how this tool is going to be very useful in helping me meet my physical goals this year. I am so excited by it — it’s very clever, and I was able to import all 5 years of my Fitbit data using a cool app, and can track my sleep, too. Winning! I also upgraded my laptop to a Mac Touch Bar, and I LOVE it. The keyboard alone is worth the price. So much better ergonomically.

We also did a great job decluttering, emptying closets, turning the bonus room back into a game room instead of using it for storage. We have no house projects on the horizon; it’s time to settle into our bones and enjoy what we have. 

WHAT WENT WRONG?

If I say everything and nothing again, you’re going to smack me and call me dramatic. You know the saying, still waters run deep? That was this year.

On the surface, everything looks stunning. But trust me when I say there was a lot of behind-the-scenes chaos, fear, freakouts, emotional collapses, self-doubt, and just plain too much to handle. Were it not for the support of friends, family, teammates, a very compassionate husband, and a brilliant assistant, I would have run away to a little town in Europe and not looked back. It’s interesting, I seem to have a cycle going. Every few years, I lose it completely and struggle for a couple of months to find my footing again. Why is this? Perhaps because I take on too much and it all catches up at once, perhaps I care too deeply about the work and am holding on to it too tightly, perhaps the natural physical changes as I’m growing up affect my emotional state (chick hint: it does). A combination of all these things? Regardless, I’m committed to lowering my stress levels in 2018. Something has to give. I don’t know what yet, but to start, I have canceled all travel and conferences save two I’d already committed to. I really need to step back and take a breath so I can focus on my work.

NERDOLOGY - AKA THE NITTY GRITTY

2017 Word Total: 919,881
Fiction Total: 274,410
Non-Fiction Total: 78,571
Email: 566,900
Fiction Percentage: 30%
Books Read: 75 (of a goal of 80)

2016 Fiction Total: 217,228 (Fiction 25%)
2015 Fiction Total: 203,749 (Fiction 28%)
2014 Fiction Total: 291,114 (Fiction 36%)
2013 Fiction Total: 270,000 (Fiction 34%)
2012 Fiction Total: 265,000 (Fiction 34%)
2011 Fiction Total: 252,300 (Fiction 35%)
2010 Fiction Total: 198,383 (Fiction 32%)
2009 Fiction Total: 135,738 (Fiction 27%)

The most important takeaway from the 2017 numbers is this: my fiction total went up by over 57,000 words, and my non-fiction dropped by 48,000 (as compared to 2016). That in and of itself makes the year a raging success. I’m back into my 2013/2014 output levels, which means I can stock my magic bakery with more titles, and I’ve converted non-fiction words into fiction words for the very first time. A very good thing.

2017 was an insanely good year for my creative work. So many great things happened, some of which I can’t even talk about just yet! I released three original titles: THE DEVIL’S TRIANGLE with Catherine Coulter, my second standalone, LIE TO ME, and my first anthology under my Two Tales Press imprint, DEAD ENDS. I wrote and published two short stories: CATWOOD and THE ENDARKENING, and started two more that will come out in 2018. THE DEVIL’S TRIANGLE hit #2 on USA Today and The New York Times, and #1 on The Wall Street Journal. It received a starred Booklist, too. LIE TO ME hit The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star top ten lists, received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, and continues to do well. Target chose NO ONE KNOWS for their Emerging Author shelf, and LIE TO ME as a Target Select Read. FIELD OF GRAVES was nominated for a RITA® Award for best Romantic Suspense, and both NO ONE KNOWS and FIELD OF GRAVES were long-listed for the Southern Book Award in the Thriller category. I went to ALA and BEA in support of LIE TO ME (OMG, that banner!), as well as toured all over the west coast, which was a blast. And of course, a huge exciting highlight of the year, A WORD ON WORDS won a regional EMMY®! And I managed to throw in another standalone novel, that I’m revising now, which will be my 2018 solo release.

Now if I could just write faster…

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2018 - The Year of Change

It’s time to apply all the changes I’ve made over the past several years into a single, overarching habit that encompasses my work, my current life, and my future work. Putting my own needs first will allow me to grow both as a writer and as a person. Being selfish with my time, only applying my energy to work I love and believe in, will help me reconnect with my creativity in new and exciting ways. I vow to try new things, to read new-to-me authors, to regularly unplug and decompress, and enjoy life without pushing so hard all the time. Most importantly, I will set work hours, and step away from the screen when the day is done. “Mischief Managed” will be my new end-of-workday mantra, giving me permission to shut down until the next day. A shutdown ritual coupled with an 8-week modular work plan will lend structure and cohesiveness to my days, and drop my stress levels exponentially. 
 

I’m not even pretending to have a zen word for this year. 2018 is going to see some serious life changes for me work-wise, and I intend to shift several of my personal goals as well. I’m closing in on a major birthday in 2019, and I want to lay the foundations this year that will carry me through middle age (gulp). This includes the usual culprits: exercise and weight loss, a sustained yoga practice, and more vegetables than meat. And golf is a priority. But this year, I’m going deeper than changes to my physical being. 

I want to change how I approach my creativity. I feel like it gets stifled with all the pressure that exists in our current environment. I stepped away from social media several times in 2017, and this will continue into 2018. The psychic cost isn’t one I’m willing to pay anymore. I’ve found a comfortable pace with my networks, and my focus is on deepening those relationships instead of trying to grow, grow, grow. I’ve always said quality is more important that quantity. 2018 is the year I prove that to myself. 

I want to push myself creatively, too. You’ve heard the term “leveling up” — well, I want to find a way to be focused enough to level up every book instead of every five to ten books. That’s going to take an overhaul of my systems. Deep work is paramount, no distractions, no panic. I've learned how to say no when something doesn't enhance my life or work, and will continue to do so. My daily habit is in a good place, reinforced by scheduled Freedom sessions: Read during breakfast, write from 10–12, read during lunch, write from 1–3 (or 2–5 depending on the day), then a workout. Dinner, read or TV. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

I want to read more and consume less. As always, I want to read more of what I already own instead of buying new books. I want to read with intention, work with joy, and put myself first. I want to continue mentoring, continue broadening my horizons with A Word on Words guests, and dig deep into my mental wellbeing. 

I also ran across a very cool concept recently about breaking the year into multiple 8-week segments. The idea is 6 weeks of deep work, 1 week of wrap up, 1 week of vacation/rest. Looking at my word trackers, I do something very similar to this already—the bulk of my books are almost always written in the last 6 weeks of the project’s timetable. I spend the first 8 weeks or so on the first 25,000 words, making the set up works perfectly. I will be analyzing this new method and applying it to my annual creative planning, and see where it takes me. Plus, that week of rest is paramount. I took a real vacation in 2017, and I need to do it again.

As far as work plans: I want to write three short stories, and finally wrangle the non-fiction project I’ve been circling for the past several years, which means instituting a non-fiction day every week. I’m choosing Fridays, to echo my many years blogging at Murderati. Catherine and I will be writing the sixth Brit in the FBI, which is due in late summer, and I will tackle another solo book. I'm not sure if that's a standalone or a Taylor/Sam yet. I might toss in a secret project if I have the time and energy.

I have three original releases this year: THE SIXTH DAY, A Brit in the FBI #5, comes out on April 10. TEAR ME APART, my new standalone, releases on September 18. And we have a cool new anthology coming from Two Tales Press in November. I can’t WAIT to tell you all about it.

There’s even more incredible news to share, projects that will be taking my creative time, and I will release those details as soon as I’m able. Exciting times ahead!

Honestly, I don’t know that I ever imagined my career would be humming along like it is. I am blessed, and I know it, and so much of that is thanks to you. 

All in all, I’m faced with an interesting moment in my creative life. I hope I can meet it with aplomb, meet my new goals head on, and accomplish a lot. Thanks as always for being a part of my journey. Many blessings for a splendid, productive, happy, and safe 2018. Peace out!

The Deets - 2017 Writing

 

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For the past several years, I’ve been doing annual reviews of my life and work, based on the format from Chris Guillebeau’s wonderful Annual Review on his blog, The Art of Non-Conformity. Chris’s system is exceptionally detailed, more so than I really need, but the gist is there. It’s a great system for those of us who are self-employed and want to do an assessment of our work for the year. Here’s the link to the actual post. Go on over there and take a read. I’ll wait. 

And if you're interested, here are the links to my previous annual reviews for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Daily Tao ☯ 5.6.17

All hail silence! Yes, I've lost my voice. It's a super low grumble, and I can whisper without too much issue, but things aren't looking good in larynx land. I'm guzzling tea, keeping it warm and loose, but if you have any suggestions, I'm all ears. This seems to happen once a decade for me, and ALWAYS at the worst possible time. As a matter of fact, the last time was when I was heading to NYC for Thrillerfest, when THE COLD ROOM was nominated. I won and had to give a speech with no voice. Fun times!

Tons of deep research today, especially on the Voynich Manuscript. The ideas are coming fast and furious as the historical timeline reveals itself, and I'm excited to hash them out with Catherine on Tuesday. I'm really digging writing these books with a historical tie-in. Gives the adventure so much more texture! 

Hope your weekend is fun and peaceful!