Who’s Thrilling You Now? The New Guns of the Thriller Genre; an Author Panel

August 4, 2009

by Jonathan Maberry

A couple of years ago a bunch of hot new thriller writers broke onto the scene with novels that won awards, made best-seller lists, and established these authors as serious players. Fast-forward to today. How is the reality being a published author different from the promise? I spoke with a few of these New Guns about their life in the writing game.

JONATHAN MABERRY: You’ve passed the ‘First Novel’ milestone now and have written other novels. What’s changed between the night before that first book release and now?

J.T. ELLISON: Nerves. Without a doubt. I was so scared before my debut – excited, but scared. I knew things were going to change drastically as soon as the book hit the shelves. I was desperately afraid of speaking in public, so I ended up worrying more about that than the performance of the book. Now, I worry about the logical things I can’t control – placement, reviews, if readers will enjoy it, will that TV spot I did get bumped for bigger news, did I sound stupid on the radio – instead of the illogical fears.

BRETT BATTLES: There’s nothing like your first release. You’re on a high for several months prior to your pub date, eagerly awaiting the day you can walk into a bookstore and see your novel on the shelves. As the day approaches, you check your ranking on Amazon, at first once a day, then twice, then when there is less than a week left, you’re probably checking multiple times each 24 hour period. You hang on every email you get about your book, wondering what new news there is. And when the day comes, you realize that you are something you’ve never been before. A published novelist. When your second comes out, you’re still excited, but the territory you’re crossing is no longer unknown. You start comparing what happened with your first release to what’s happening with your second. You start to worry about whether your sales will go up or go down. The unbridled excitement you experienced with your debut is tempered now by your growing knowledge of the publishing world, and a more discerning eye toward business. This only increases with each release. Don’t get me wrong. You don’t become jaded (though some do), and you are still excited and overwhelmed by the fact that your work is out there for the world to see. It’s just with experience comes knowledge, and you use that knowledge to start looking long term.

JASON PINTER: Once the euphoria of having your first book published wears off, you realize just how much work goes into not only continuing to publish, but trying to maintain a career doing it. I still get those same shivers at every milestone with every book (when I see the first cover concept, when I get galleys, when I hold the finished book in my hands for the very first time), but now you always have to be looking ahead to the next book, the next idea, and how to get more readers to dig your work.

ROBERT GREGORY BROWNE: There was a certain giddiness I felt the first time out that has all but disappeared. I look forward to a release now, sure, but with a slight emotional detachment that wasn’t there with that first novel. Back then I was a novice, a newbie, so everything was shiny and bright and exciting. Now that I’ve settled into this new rhythm of write-edit-release, I find myself getting much more excited about the next book than the books currently in the stores.

KEN ISAACSON: I guess the biggest change is that there’s now a standard against which my work will be measured. I wrote SILENT COUNSEL, my first, in a vacuum. I could have finished it, done nothing with it, and no one would have been the wiser. I know how lucky I was to have had it published, and now it’s only natural that my next book will be compared to that yardstick. Had SC completely flopped, that would have absolutely stung, but there would be nowhere to go but up (unless just slinking away in shame was an option). But I was extremely fortunate in that the book has met with a respectable amount of success, so I definitely feel the pressure to produce. That’s a big change for me—having to impress someone besides my mother.

MABERRY: Ever writer I know hits a moment when they realize that the writing game isn’t at all how they imagined it. Talk about your moments of realizations.

ELLISON: It was in 2008, right as my second novel was released. I was writing the fourth book in the series, editing the third book, and promoting the second, all at the same time. I had a week that was the perfect storm. I was on travel, on deadline, edits being mailed to me while I was out on tour, putting aside the work in progress to tackle revisions in the hotel before I went to speak. No one prepares you for the level of intensity that confluence of events brings. When you’ve lived and breathed a debut for however many years before you get published, and suddenly you’re under contract for several books and you have to put the pedal to the metal, it can be a shock. But who would change it? Not me. I thrive on pressure, so this is nirvana.

BATTLES: Not sure I’ve ever had that moment. So far it’s everything I imagined and more. Of course, I didn’t put a lot of expectations into it at first. I just thought what would happen would happen. If anything is a little different, I think it’s the way publishing has been forced to change (and continues to change) in recent year. Sometimes I would be nice to have been a writer back in the days when all a writer had to worry about was writing his or her next book. But that’s not our reality, so that’s fine with me. I have no problem rolling with it.

PINTER: This is a little different for me because I worked in publishing for over five years before I left to write full time. I’ve worked with a lot of authors, and have seen many, many different roads to publication. For me, it’s realizing just how much authors have to do beyond the writing of the books. Between corresponding with readers, traveling for conferences and signings, maintaining all sorts of social networking sites and contributing to two blogs, it’s quite time-consuming. Every writer I know hits a moment when they realize that the writing game isn’t at all how they imagined it. Talk about your moments of realizations.

BROWNE: I think that most new writers have dreams of hitting The List, even though we know the odds against it are strong. But then reality sets in and we realize that it takes a number of factors, and sometimes a number of books, to get there. And because that first book was written over a long period of time and we had all the time in the world to get it right, we can sometimes be blindsided by the stark reality that this is a job and you have deadlines and you can no longer write at a leisurely pace. So you have to learn to get it right, right now. Suddenly The List is no longer all that important. You just need to write a great book in a very short period of time and not let anything else distract you.

ISAACSON: Book of Revelations, Ch. 1, v. 1: The book does not write itself. This stuff is work. As much fun as it is (at times), unless you actually go to the computer and bang on that keyboard, it’s going to be a long, long time before that book is done. Book of Revelations, Ch. 1, v. 2: The book does not sell itself; neither shall anyone else but you. Write the book, turn it over to the agent or publisher, and move on to the next project. Oh, that’s not what happens? There is a lot more—here’s that word again—work to do. Promotion, promotion, promotion.

I find myself thinking of it in terms that Stephen Covey talks about in his book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” where he describes the importance of finding the proper balance between production and production capability (the “P/PC balance”)—doing something (production) vs. working on your ability to do something (production capability). Covey gives the example of running a car—you need to find the right balance between driving and proper maintenance. Spend too much time driving and not enough time maintaining, and the car will fail. Spend too much time with it in the shop, and the car won’t be available to drive.

In the writing game, I think it’s the same. The struggle is to find the right balance between writing and promoting. Spend too much time writing, and not enough promoting, you’ll produce great books, but no one will know about them (and no one will read them). Spend too much time promoting and not enough writing, everyone will know about you, but there won’t be anything for them to read. Find the right P/PC balance!

MABERRY: Celebrity comes in all wattages. What was your first celebrity moment? What is celebrity like months or years in?

ELLISON: I don’t think of it as celebrity, more like notoriety. It’s hard to avoid when you write in a small but exceptionally literate town like I do. I’ve been blessed with excellent publicists, who have gotten me on air and in print, and as a result people do recognize me. But it’s always at the most inopportune moments – at the salon after a grooming session, or rushing into Publix for something to make for dinner. I am a rather informal person, and it never fails that someone recognizes me when I have no makeup, gym shorts and a ponytail going on. But hey, that’s life.

BATTLES: Author celebrity is not like movie star celebrity, or political star celebrity, or sports star celebrity. First, with the exception of a few top level authors, most people don’t know our names. And even with the top level authors, most people don’t know what an author looks like. With the exception of Stephen King and perhaps one or two others, most authors can walk down the street without being recognized. So, for most of us, celebrity is only a sometimes thing, and those sometime things are a very small percentage of our years. They come at fan conferences or at book signings and festivals. To a certain extent it’s fun, but on a deeper level when a fan approaches you and is obviously very nervous to talk to you, it’s kind of surprising. I mean, I’m still me. I’m still the guy who spent many a party a little shy to talk to the cute girl across the room. I go shopping, I wash my own clothes, I cook my own meals. But to be nervous to talk to me? And then I remember just a few years ago when I went to my first Thrillerfest, and there was the great Lee Child. I was SO nervous to talk to him, I’m not even sure I ever introduced myself then. Which just goes to show me that Lee was probably thinking the same things I’m thinking now when that happens with my fans. One of the best moments, though, I will say was at a conference signing when this guy walked up with my book to get signed, stuck out his hand to shake, and said, “Mr. Battles, you are one bad ass writer.” That was priceless.

PINTER: Celebrity is a very relative word. Not many authors get ‘recognized’ the way movie stars, musicians, or even some hobos do. My first ‘wow’ moments came from my first fan letter, when I realized that not only were my books now being read by the public, but that somebody not only enjoyed my book, but took the time to write me a letter about it. The second was the time I was in line at my local bookstore, and I noticed the guy in front of me holding a copy of THE MARK waiting to pay for it. That was unbelievably cool.

BROWNE: I almost laugh at the thought of being a celebrity. But I guess we are celebrities in certain circles. The first time I actually felt that way was at a conference, when a bookseller approached a writer friend and me at a conference and wanted to have her photo taken with us. She was extremely nervous and I couldn’t quite understand why. I’m still not sure. The only kind of celebrity I’m interested in is the kind that kicks in when a reader is in the bookstore or library or grocery store and gets excited about a book with my name on it, the same as I did when I was a kid roaming the stacks at the library.

ISAACSON: Celebrity wattage, huh? No “dimmest bulb in the box” cracks, please! The first “celebrity moment” I can remember was just a soft glow. It was at the BEA in 2007, a few weeks before SILENT COUNSEL was released. I’d spent a number of months getting my website up and running, and establishing a presence on the web, and I thought I’d done a decent job. I was walking down an aisle in the Javits Center, gawking at all of the free stuff the publishers were handing out, and a complete stranger stopped me and said, “Hey, you’re Ken Isaacson. I’ve seen you online. Is your book out yet?” I thought, “OK. This is cool.”

More recently, I find it extremely rewarding to be part of what I’ve come to know as a close knit community of writers and readers. I go to as many conferences as I can, like Bouchercon, Left Coast Crime, and CrimeFest, and it’s great to get there and feel so at home with people who have become “old friends.”

MABERRY: Talk about your current book.

ELLISON: My latest title, JUDAS KISS (the third installment in the Taylor Jackson series) was a first in many respects for me. It was my first non-serial killer book, the first that I did a more-than-cursory preparatory synopsis, and the first that had elements from an actual case. And strangely enough, a whole subplot that wasn’t based on a real case made it into the local news when a middle-age man was arrested for running a teenage sex club. Life truly does imitate art. I so enjoyed writing this book – I put my very black and white character into a gray area, and let her fight her way through. It helped me grow as a writer.

BATTLES: Here’s what it says on the cover flap [of SHADOW OF BETRAYAL]. It pretty much covers what the new one is about. “The meeting place was carefully chosen: an abandoned church in rural Ireland just after dark. For Jonathan Quinn—a freelance operative and professional “cleaner”—the job was only to observe. If his cleanup skills were needed, it would mean things had gone horribly wrong. But an assassin hidden in a tree assured just that. And suddenly Quinn had four dead bodies to dispose of and one astounding clue—to a mystery that is about to spin wildly out of control.

Three jobs, no questions. That was the deal Quinn had struck with his client at the Office. Unfortunately for him, Ireland was just the first. Now Quinn, along with his colleague and girlfriend—the lethal Orlando—has a new assignment touched off by the killings in Ireland. Their quarry is a U.N. aide worker named Marion Dupuis who has suddenly disappeared from her assignment in war-torn Africa. When Quinn finally catches a glimpse of her, she quickly flees, frantic and scared. And not alone.

For Quinn the assignment has now changed. Find Marion Dupuis, and the child she is protecting, and keep them from harm. If it were only that easy. Soon Quinn and Orlando find themselves in a bunker in the California hills, where Quinn will unearth a horrifying plot that is about to reach stage critical for a gathering of world leaders—and an act of terror more cunning, and more insidious, than anyone can guess.

PINTER: My latest book is THE FURY, the fourth book in my Henry Parker series, which will be released on October 1st. I conceived of this book at the first in a two-part series, that concludes with the publication of THE DARKNESS on December 1st. In THE FURY, Henry Parker is devastated to find that he has a long lost brother, but that the brother was savagely murdered. Henry is forced to not only come to terms with a thirty-year old family secret, but the truth about his brother’s short life and brutal death. And what he finds is only the beginning of something far more sinister.

BROWNE: My latest book, which was released on June 30th, is a thriller about hypnosis and reincarnation and one of the most unique serial killers you’re likely to encounter. It’s called KILL HER AGAIN, and stars a disgraced FBI agent who’s battling visions she can’t explain as she investigates the disappearance of a four year-old girl. And like all of my books, just when you think you know where it’s going, I pull the rug out from under you. So watch out.

ISAACSON: SILENT COUNSEL asks you to suppose something unimaginable: What if your child were killed in a hit-and-run? And the one person who knew the driver’s identity—his lawyer—couldn’t tell you his name because the court held it was privileged information?

The book examines how two concepts that we like to think are one and the same—law and justice—often diverge. With disturbing results. As a mother, how would you deal with your unspeakable rage at a legal system that places a legal technicality above the search for your son’s killer? And as a lawyer, how would you deal with your ethical obligation to remain silent, when you know in your heart that the right thing to do is to help the mother find justice?

It was a real kick to see that shortly after SILENT COUNSEL’s release, it spent an entire month on Amazon’s list of Bestselling Legal Thrillers with only two titles ahead of it—John Grisham’s THE APPEAL and Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD.

MABERRY: Tell us about your next book.

ELLISON: THE COLD ROOM releases February 23, 2010. I haven’t quite figured out how to pitch this one, so I’ll use my publisher’s tag line – He can only truly love her once her heart stops. Yes, I’ve stumbled into the ultimate forbidden territory with this book – necrophilia. My villain is a classical music-loving artist with a secret housed deep in his basement. It was by far the most difficult book I’ve ever written – structurally, because it’s heavy on the police procedure, and emotionally – because the villain scared the crap out of me and invaded my dreams. My research was fascinating and disturbing, and it took me a few months to recover from the whole writing process.

BATTLES: I’m just finishing up the next Quinn adventure, due out next summer. Right now we’re calling it THE SILENCED, but that’s not official yet. This one will be Quinn’s most personal yet, pushing him in ways he never expected to be pushed. We’ll finally get a look at what Quinn’s life was before he became a cleaner, and how that affects his life now. And as always there’s going to be plenty of action.

PINTER: My next book is THE DARKNESS, which will be out in December. Here Henry finds that his brother’s murder is the tip of a much bigger iceberg. And when this book ends, Henry’s world will have changed forever. These two books were inspired by James Ellroy’s brilliant L.A. CONFIDENTIAL. I wanted to write a story that, like Ellroy’s, would seem on the surface like an isolated incident (i.e. the Nite Owl massacre), but in fact was the cover for a much bigger story.

BROWNE: The next one will be in stores in July of 2010. It’s called DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN and is the story of a Hispanic-American reporter who’s investigating the slaughter of a house full of nuns down in Juarez, Mexico, near the Texas border. He soon finds himself caught up in a world of drug smuggling and death cults and realizes this may be the last story he ever gets a chance to tell…

ISAACSON: What if it were legal to gamble on the time someone else is going to die? It is, if you invest in a life insurance product called a viatical. In a viatical settlement—designed to provide the terminally ill with much needed cash—an investor purchases someone else’s existing life insurance policy, paying that person a lump sum and taking over the premium payments. When that other person dies, the investor receives the death benefit. But the transaction’s a gamble, because if the investor misjudges how long that person will live, he could end up paying those premiums for a lot longer than anticipated.

In DEATH BENEFIT, when the sister of a Newark, New Jersey law firm client dies in her sleep of carbon monoxide poisoning, third year law student Elliot Lerner is asked to determine whether anyone could be held responsible in a wrongful death lawsuit. As he looks into the circumstances surrounding the death, he learns about viatical settlements. And he learns that if the investor’s gamble looks like it’s not going to pay off as planned because the cost of ongoing premium payments is exceeding expectations, there’s only one way to eliminate that cost. DEATH BENEFIT is the beginning of a series in which we’ll be able to follow Elliot’s career as he graduates from law school, becomes a young lawyer, and hopefully flourishes in the legal profession.

Thanks to our panel!

JT ELLISON
Website: www.jtellison.com
Blog: The Tao of JT and Murderati (Tao is soon to be housed on my website but for the moment it’s JT’s Blog and on Fridays, find JT on www.murderati.com
Twitter – @Thrillerchick
Facebook JT Ellison http://www.facebook.com/JTEllison
JT Ellison photo by Chris Blanz

BRETT BATTLES
Website: http://www.brettbattles.com
Blog: http://bbattles.blogspot.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/brett.battles
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/brettbattles
Photo credit for the author photo Moses Sparks

JASON PINTER
My official website: http://www.jasonpinter.com
The Man in Black blog: http://jasonpinter.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jason.pinter
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jasonpinter
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/jasonpinter

ROBERT GREGORY BROWNE
Website: http://www.robertgregorybrowne.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Robert-Gregory-Browne/67597906429
Blog: Murderati
Connect with Rob on Twitter: @rgregorybrowne

KEN ISAACSON
Website: www.KenIsaacson.com
Facebook: www.Facebook.com/ken.isaacson

The Idea Box

“Where do you get your ideas?”

It has to be the most frequently asked question in fiction. I can’t remember a single event that I’ve done that it hasn’t come up. And the answer, of course, if everywhere. We’re writers. There is little that escapes our notice. Our job is to observe, synthesize and report back our findings in new and different ways. The magic of that process can’t be quantified – give fourteen mystery writers the same newspaper article and instruct them to write a story about the topic, and you’ll get fourteen different stories.

The question that readers should be asking us is: "How in the world do you keep all the billions of ideas you have on any given day in any semblance of order?"

I’m no different from any other writer. I never know what will trigger my imagination. It could be something as simple and natural as an exceptionally fluffy white cloud passing overhead in a crisp blue fall sky, or as complex as the murder of a young pregnant mother. There are times that I seek out new inspirations, and other times that something odd catches my eye and I think, hmmm, that might be an interesting story.

I also subscribe to the belief that if a story idea is solid, it will stay with you, growing and fermenting over time, without too many influences or excess research. Which can be difficult to deal with when you’re first starting out, because you’re juggling about 1,000 different ideas about how to make your story better, and the thought of one of them slipping away is tantamount to inspiration genocide.

But it’s not. I’m here to assure you – those scattered idea that you don’t write down can sometimes be the genesis of something exceptional.

Anyway, I’ve gotten myself off track. What I wanted to talk about today was my idea box.

It started as a few cuttings from the local newspaper, or printouts from websites, that I stashed in a file folder and shoved in my drawer. When something would leap out at me, I’d throw it in the file and leave it alone. As time went on and my repertoire for idea building grew, I started throwing jotted down scraps of ideas into the folder too: lines of dialogue that amused me, amorphous scenes, pictures of kitchens. Imprints, really. Imprints of ideas, of possibility. These aren’t the IDEAS themselves, they are the germs, the bacteria of my mind’s eye. The microscopic beings that find their way under my skin and eventually force me to scratch.

When I get stuck—and yes, that does happen, even though I’m resistant to call it writer’s block because block, I think, is your story’s way of telling you you’re going in the wrong direction and being stuck is something wholly different, more a necessarily evil to the thought process—I clean. I organize. I shuffle, realign, file and trash. I rearrange the furniture, delete long overdue dead files, read, catch up on scheduling issues, sort out my archives, anything that’s not inherently creative in nature. I’ve come to welcome these spurts of agony, because something wonderful always comes out of it in the end.

The last time I was really and truly stuck, I organized my ideas file.

It had grown to an idea drawer while I wasn’t looking. Folded up newspapers lazily shoved into the space where the folder should go, post-it notes stuck to printouts – it was a mess. No rhyme or reason. Just a collection of whimsies, stowed out of sight until I might need them.

But isn’t that what a creative box should be? Isn’t there something magical about knowing it’s there, that you’ve dropped your little bits of inspiration into one secure place to ferment? I liken it to Dumbledore’s penseive – an aggregator of memories swirling around in some sort of transparent fluid. The idea box is just that – the repository for lost ideas.

So I took an afternoon and organized my drawer. I went to Staples and bought a smart looking expandable file folder that has a hard top and sides, and offloaded everything from the file that became a drawer into the box. I cut out the newspaper articles, sectioned the stories out into subject and geographical region, and slipped the cleaned sheets into the box. Then I stashed it right behind my chair, so I can look at it anytime I want. Just knowing it’s there is fine with me. I don’t need to open it and lovingly finger the papers inside. That, I’ll save for the next round of proposals, or when I need a random subplot.

If these thoughts and ideas mature and make it out of the idea box, they will be transferred to their attendant book box. I read Twyla Tharp’s THE CREATIVE HABIT last year and was surprised to find I already used the same organizational method for projects as Tharp: the individual book box.

Every book I write has it’s own plastic, sealable box. Everything related to that book goes in the box as it’s written. That way, I always know where everything is. By the time I’m done with the book, the box is full to the brim: each draft of the manuscript, the copyedits, the author alterations all go in, on top of the research material, notes, music, etc. When I finish a book and it’s gone to ARC, I take all my notes from their yellow legal pads and stash them in there, too. And then I put them away.

I have to say, this is a really good system. I got to test it out with the fourth book in the series, THE COLD ROOM. Because the box had been put away. Stored. Done. Complete. Smiley face on top (okay, no smiley face, but you know what I mean.) And when my editor wanted me to make a change, it was easy to see exactly where I’d been. I pulled out the box, pulled out the notes to refresh my memory on its impetus, scanned through the original CEs, and went from there.

And since I use a Brother touch labeling system, it was simple to print out a new label for the box with the new title. And soon, the box will go away again, nestled deep in the closet with its friends, and I’ll reopen the next box. And the next. And the next.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my process lately, looking for ways to make things even more streamlined. I have tried a number of different methods for idea storage. There are a number of online avenues to do this. Most everything I do is online now – calendar, to do list, email, goals, even ideas, which I clip to Evernote.

But I’m resistant to the idea of doing away with my boxes, simply because I just love those moments when you spill everything out onto the floor in front of you and comb through the mess looking for that one little spark that will help you move along. There must be some chaos to the creative process. I think we can stifle ourselves if we try to do everything to perfection.

So, where do you keep your ideas?

Wine of the Week: Gnarlier Head Old Vine Zinfandel

The Shots Heard Round The World

You may be aware of the shot heard round the world that emanated from my backyard this week. Sports legend Steve McNair was shot and killed on the 4th of July. Murdered, in his own home, in his own living room, on his own couch, a stone’s throw away from the house that he built, known officially as LP Field, but still referred to by most Nashvillians as The Coliseum. The place where giants and gladiators stride on any given Sunday for our entertainment.

As far as stories go, it’s sad. Terrible even.

But this is Nashville. Which means there’s more to the story than meets the eye.

 ______________________

Steve McNair was a good guy. As an athlete, he was a glorious God. In a quick glance at his football career en totale, from little Alcorn State in Mississippi to the Houston Oilers to the Tennessee Titans, he is referred to in reverential tones, a tough and humane player who never complained, never shirked his duty, always set the example on the field. He will be remembered well, I think. I’d say there’s better than an 80% chance he will be posthumously inducted into the Football Hall of Fame. And Steve deserves to be in Canton, there’s no doubt about that.

But Steve didn’t make the news this week because of his skills and dedication to the game. Steve made the news this week because he was cheating on his wife with a 20-year-old waitress from Dave & Buster’s, an obviously unstable little girl who racked up a DUI, a semi-automatic purchase and a murder, all in three days.

Steve is in the news because he cheated on his wife with a girl who shot him dead in his own living room, then killed herself.

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? It’s a classic locked-room murder scenario – inside the locked house with no signs of forced entry are two dead bodies, one riddled with bullet holes, some close contact shots, and a second, smaller body, with a contact wound to the right temple, laying on the murder weapon. The two persons involved were in a rather public relationship despite the fact that one of them was married. The two persons involved were not known to have any domestic assaults on record, were law-abiding citizens, and seemed to be in love.

So what really happened in the early morning hours on the 4th of July???

That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.

______________________

On the surface, this does look like a straightforward murder/suicide. But this is Nashville, and nothing is ever what it seems. Here’s what we know for sure.

* In the wee hours of Thursday morning, July 2, Steve’s mistress, Sahel Kazemi, was pulled over for a DUI. Steve and another unidentified person were in the car with her, but were allowed to leave in a cab. Steve returned and bailed her out in the morning.

* Sometime later that day, Sahel legally purchased a semi-automatic weapon in a private sale.

* On Thursday July 2, Sahel also put her furniture up for sale on Craigslist: "NICE FURNITURE. TV, COUCH, COFFE TABLE AND MORE - $1 (hermitage)."

* On Friday night, July 3rd, Steve was on his usual rounds, out on the town for the night. A woman approached him in a lakefront bar and accused him of slipping her a roofie last year. She threatened him, saying her boyfriend was going to kill him.

* Friends saw Steve and Sahel talking in the Escalade he’d bought her for her birthday. They didn’t seem to be fighting.

* Steve was sent home by himself in a private car around 1:00-2:00 a.m. Sahel was waiting for him when he arrived.

* Sometime on the morning of July 4th, Steve’s friend came to the house they shared (this seems to have been a bit of a “bachelor pad” for the boys), unlocked the door, went inside and saw the bodies. Instead of calling the police, he called a third friend. More than 45 minutes elapsed between his arrival and the eventual 911 call.

* Steve was shot four times, twice in the chest and once on each side of the head. The first three shots were from a distance of at least three feet, the last temple shot was at close range.

* Sahel was shot once, a contact shot to the right temple.

* The gun, the same gun Sahel purchased on Thursday evening, was found beneath her body.

* Her hands tested positive for gunshot residue, Steve's hands had no trace.

______________________

Steve was a big, big supporter of the restaurant and bar industry in Nashville. And it wasn’t exactly a state secret that he played around on his wife. It was something that I couldn’t ever reconcile about him – this was an unbelievably accomplished athlete who had the respect of every single person who’d ever met him – but boy, did he like the ladies. Drove me nuts. Be the same man Saturday night as you are Sunday morning, and you get a lot more respect in my book.

Steve was dear friends with the owner of a few establishments that we frequent, and it was in one of these establishments where we met Steve for the first time. This was several years ago, when he was still Air McNair, the quarterback for the Titans.

We were sitting at the bar, and Steve came in with his driver. He sat next to us. We chatted a bit. He was sweet. I was struck by two things: one, he had a gigantic watch with diamonds the size of tennis balls on the bezel, and two, he was unfailingly polite and good-natured to all of the fans and well-wishers (and even the lone detractor) who came by to shake his hand and wish him luck on Sunday. Despite our proximity for the evening, I didn’t want to ask for an autograph. That’s not how we do it here in Nashville.

Celebrity in Nashville is a business. You can’t shake a stick in this town without running into someone hugely famous. Whether it’s Starbucks or PF Chang’s or Venetian Nails or Magic Mushroom or Joe’s Crab Shack or Whole Foods or Sunset Grill, you’ll see someone. But no one really does anything about it.

You see, Southerners are unfailingly polite. They know how to mind their own business, (which they do exceedingly well on the surface, but fail miserably in reality - how else would we get the good gossip otherwise?) But it wouldn’t be right to accost a famous person while they’re minding their own business. That’s how the likes of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban and the legions of other celebrities that now call Nashville home can go out to Starbucks on a Sunday morning unannounced and be left alone – we’re too polite to stare and point. Instead, you’re likely to get a nod and a smile, and that’s it. Lovely for them, really.

But for the athletes, well, if you’re sipping rum and coke in a little suburban bar, you’re probably going to have a few folks stop by to wish you well.

Strangely enough, the night Steve died, he was doing just that.

 _____________________

 
Being a mystery writer in Nashville has its ups and downs. We have plenty of crime, more than enough to make my novels realistic. I’ve had two pretty farfetched scenarios that I’ve made up in my twisted little head make the news in real life. Three, now. The opening of my debut novel is, ironically, set on the 4th of July, with my protagonist, Taylor Jackson, sitting at her desk while the fireworks are shot off, wondering what crime scene she’s going to be called to.

Any minute now, she’d be answering the phone, getting the call. Chance told her somewhere in her city, a shooter was escaping into the night. Fireworks were perfect cover for gunfire.

On this 4th of July, Randy and I had a most surreal night. We were downtown to have dinner and watch the fireworks. There was a storm brewing; one of Nashville’s nasty tornado-inducing thunderstorms was on the way. The city decided to move up the fireworks to 8:10 p.m. so people could take cover as the storms rolled through. Of course, you can’t time out Mother Nature, so the rain started in earnest after the second or third firework. We were standing on 3rd Avenue, in a restaurant parking lot, under an umbrella, with the fireworks blasting into the sky to our left backlit by lightning, and the whirling lights of police cruisers attending the McNair crime scene to our right, both in perfect view of one another. I couldn’t tell if we were all celebrating America’s independence, mourning Steve’s death, or what.

They’d removed the bodies by this point, and the rumor mill was churning in full gear. The first news broke that he’d been found in an alley and it was a murder/suicide, both those reports were quickly backed away from. It took ages for the media to report that the bodies were inside the house and that Steve did own the property. As a matter of fact, after the very first presser our Public Information Officer Don Aaron did, there was nearly a four-hour lag until the media got anything new. And let me tell you, four hours of not talking to the media in this town is probably a new record.

Some of the early gossip had Steve’s wife, Mechelle McNair, as the shooter, having found her husband in flagrante delicto with a younger woman. There was also talk of his new business venture, a restaurant he’d opened earlier in the week, and some of the folks he may have gotten involved with there being responsible.

The fascinating thing is, this investigation is playing out in the news just like the damn books I write, step by step, unraveling the pieces day by day. The police are doing a stellar job of not jumping to conclusions. They are being methodical. They are using state of the art forensics, managing the media, keeping everyone at arms length and staying away from classifying this as what it seems too quickly. They are doing one hell of an investigation, and I applaud them. Because there are plenty of what ifs and pieces that aren’t adding up just right.

Some of the what ifs:

* What about the woman who threatened Steve at the bar? Where is she and where is her boyfriend?

* Why is Sahel's ex-boyfriend Keith Norfleet so convinced she was leaving Steve to reunite with him?

* Why don't the police consider him a suspect, especially in light of this?

* Why did Sahel tell her sister Steve was getting a divorce that would be final in two weeks? (There are no divorce filings on record.)

* Why did she up and put her furniture for sale?

* Was the mistress pregnant? Why won’t the police say yes or no definitively?

* Why did she suddenly buy a gun of her own? (Steve was arrested for a DUI years ago and had a firearm in his possession, we know he had guns.)

* Was Steve having yet another affair, one which Sahel found out about?

* Why did Steve leave Sahel in the back of a police car when she was asking for him to come talk to her? (Here's video of the arrest.)

* Why didn’t Steve’s friend call the police immediately upon finding the body? And why did he move the shell casings at the scene?

* Why would a girl who was head over heels in love with a very, very rich man suddenly snap and decide to kill him?

* How many people had keys to the condo where the bodies were found?

* What really happened between 2 a.m. and 10 a.m.?

These are just a few of the unanswered questions floating around town right now. I have to think like the mystery writer I am with this - it's not easy to stage a suicide well, but it has been done. The methodical shots to Steve's body seem off to me: shoot him in the head, then step around the body and shoot him twice in the chest, then administer the coup de grace to the opposite temple up close? Does that sound like the grouping of a 20 year old in love?

As you can imagine, the murder of one of our own, of possibly the biggest sports star we have, has shaken a lot of people. We’re in the spotlight, and so far, I think Metro has shown themselves to be competent and capable. As of Wednesday afternoon, this was ruled an official murder/suicide. The case is closed pending final toxicology reports.

My prayers go to Mechelle and the McNair kids. I hope that someday, they’ll be able to separate the man they thought Steve was from the man he showed himself to be in the end.

So what do you think happened? Is this a classic locked-room murder/suicide, or is there something more sinister afoot? I mean really, we are crime fiction lovers...

Wine of the Week: 2006 Bivio Italia Tuscan Red Bivio means "fork in the road" in Italian, so I couldn't resist using it here today. Maybe if Steve had taken a different road, he'd still be with us. Regardless, the wine is luscious!

Never Let Them See You Sweat

Ah, nerves.

Many of you know that I nearly came apart early on in my career because I was going to have to do the one thing I was terrified of doing. And when I say terrified, I mean heart-pounding, panic-attack, sweaty-palms, spots-dancing-before-your-eyes, stomach-tied-in-embarrassingly-gurgly-knots, on-the-verge-of-passing-out terrified.

Of course I’m talking about speaking in public.

And I’m not talking about a mild case of nerves, either.

I’ve always had problems with being the center of attention. And no, I will not pay for the keyboard you just spit your coffee onto, because I am dead serious. Having people look to me to be the voice of reason, hell, to be the voice at all, isn’t my cuppa.

“But JT,” you say, “that can’t be true. You have such an outgoing, effervescent personality. I’ve seen you at conferences, laughing in the bar, having a grand old time.” And you’d be right – in my element, with my friends, I’m entirely at ease and not worried of making an ass of myself.

But being in front of a group is much, much different than being a part of a group.

I remember, long, long ago, a semi-drunken night at one of Nashville’s adult establishments where I was crying, quite literally, on Randy’s shoulder in fear. “What if the book sells?” I wailed. “I’ll have to talk to people. I’ll have to get up and speak. I don’t think I can do that.”

“You’ll do what you have to,” my eminently practical husband said, before taking me home and pouring me into the bed.

Imagine the terror I felt when the books did sell. The weeks leading up to my debut were unsettling, to say the least. I was planning a launch party, at which I was going to have to, gulp, speak. I wrote out a speech, figuring I’d just read and pray no one laughed to my face. Before I knew it, there were interviews, and signings set up in 12 states, and I knew I needed to conquer my fears, and fast.

I relayed my worry in an offhand comment to my doctor, and he prescribed medication to help me conquer my fear. And conquer my fear it did. Inderal is a beta-blocker, used for lowering blood pressure. It’s the medication they prescribe for people afraid of flying. It works to even your heartbeat so you don’t get the palpitations and sweaty palms. It nips your fear in the bud. “Take it 30 minutes before you go on,” he told me, “and you’ll be fine.”

And strangely enough, it worked.

But it had its drawbacks. Most of my speaking engagements were an hour long, and I’d noticed, somewhere around the 40 minute mark, a wild sense of unreality, like I was outside of myself looking in. My head would feel sort of floaty, and my heart would pound a few beats more than entirely necessary. Which would make me stumble. Not a perfect scenario.

Ultimately, it wasn’t a doctor who cured me, but a fellow writer. My friend James O. Born saw me popping pills at Southern Festival of Books and asked what the deal was. I told him and he laughed— that hearty guffaw that Jim has—and asked me, “What in the world are you afraid of? Do you think the audience is going to rush the stage, throw you down and gang-rape you?”

“Well, no,” I answered.

“Then what’s the big deal?”

He was right, of course. My next event, I skipped the Inderal. I made it through just fine.

That was two years ago. I’ve fully mastered my nerves now. No medication necessary, a few deep breaths before I go on and I’m fine. I’ve gotten to the point when I’m decent at the speaking part, I think. I still much prefer panels and group signings to speaking solo, but I can manage just fine either way. I just turn on JT, author girl, and become what the audience needs to see. My problems are behind me.

Aren’t they?

Not so fast.

I had an event last week, my last of the summer, in fact. I’m taking a few months off promotion to focus on me, something that’s been sorely lacking since I started this gig. I was really looking forward to this event; it felt like a chapter was closing.

Until I woke up at 4 in the morning with some sort of food poisoning.

Terribly sick.

I couldn’t cancel – this event had been booked for months, a large turnout was expected, a bookstore was coming in to sell the books – I just didn’t have the heart to bail on them. So I sucked down a bottle of Pepto and said a prayer.

To no avail. I got sick before I left the house. I got sick as soon as I got to the venue. I managed to meet my hostesses before I had to bolt to the bathroom again. When they served lunch, I nearly came undone at the table.

And suddenly, the nerves kicked in. Nerves like I hadn’t had in two years. Bordering on panic attack nerves. I honestly didn’t think I was going to be able to pull it off. Try as I may, I couldn’t put on my JT, author girl, suit and go get ‘em, tiger. I was shaky and sweaty and pale and feeling terrible, and I couldn’t for the life of me separate me from JT.

I’ve spoken before of the dual personalities that reside inside my body. The people who know me, know my real name and are a part of my real day-to-day life, aren’t always the same people who know JT and are a part of my book life. I do try to keep the two separate, if only as a buffer for the inevitable bad reviews that happen to that poor JT girl. It’s that same other person who takes over when I have to perform. No true artist can let the world see their tortured soul, the tiny, squawking baby bird inside the glorious Phoenix we must project. You drape yourself in whatever invisible cloth you have designed as your mask, do your thing, and shed it when it’s over.

But that little bit of quiet magic wasn’t working for me last week. I finally had to tell my tablemates that I wasn’t feeling all that hot and had a bad case of the nerves, because I think they were about ready to send out for some sort of elephant tranquilizers. They were very sweet, and understanding, and allowed me some space to gather myself, then smartly got me talking about the books until I finally, finally settled down.

They say never let them see you sweat. And no one outside of my table knew I wasn't on my game, which helped. When I got up to speak I was okay. Not great, but okay. I gave them my best, but left disappointed that I couldn’t give them the whole show, the full monty. No one who was there had ever seen me speak before, so I’m sure it came across as completely capable. But it wasn’t my most stellar effort.

I’ve only performed sick one other time, at Left Coast Crime in Denver, just after the Great Kidney Stone Attack of 08. I swore that I’d never do it again, because I don’t want to shortchange the readers. There's a level of expectation involved in public promotion, so much that I understand the desire to be a recluse. I’ve read that Henry Fonda threw up before every performance. I know there are athletes and actors and writers and politicians who do the same. And I applaud every person who tries to overcome their terror and fulfill their purpose. It’s hard, and you should be lauded for your efforts.

For you newbies out there who may be suffering from stage fright, it’s okay. We’ve all been there. The audience is incredibly forgiving. They want to see you succeed. They will be kind. And always remember, no one knows your topic like you do. You are the expert. If you feel yourself faltering, talk about your inspirations and that should get you through the worst of it.

So what about you, ‘Rati? Ever experience performance anxiety? (And that's for everyone - not just authors have to deal with these issues.)

Wine of the Week: 2006 Cellar No. 8 Merlot

Shadows Fall N Friends Interviews Me about... well... everything.

Hi J.T. and welcome to SHADOWS FALL N FRIENDS. When did you start scribbling? Tell us a bit about your writing history.

I’ve been a writer my whole life. I started young, with picture book stories, little shorts with handmade felt hard covers that I illustrated and carried around proudly. I dabbled in poetry, read anything my parents would let me (which was pretty much everything) and dreamed of being famous one day. Then came my first introduction to the harsh world of publishing.

I won a contest when I was in the third grade – a poetry assignment for the local newspaper. I was studying slavery at the time, and wrote this poem from a slave’s point of view. My grandmother on my Dad’s side was a journalistic type; she wrote a column in the newspaper, did some short romances, that kind of stuff. My parents sent her the poem. She sent it to TRUE CONFESSIONS magazine. I promptly received a very nice REJECTION LETTER. I was eight. I understood why they didn’t want my poem about slavery – really, what’s romantic about that?

Fast forward to college, senior year, and a professor who told me I’d never get published. That probably offhand comment by a frustrated artist killed my creative spirit. I stopped writing, took a job in politics, went to graduate school to learn how to run political campaigns. Met my husband, so I guess I need to thank her at the same time. It’s one of those things, the road not taken, which baffles me. I can’t imagine doing it any other way, but what if she had been encouraging, thought I should go ahead with my MFA? Would I still be here?

Fast forward to 2003. I’m living in Tennessee, am in between jobs, and have some time on my hands while I recover from back surgery. I’m reading John Sandford’s Prey series front to back. I have a wild hair. I’m going to write a book.

What inspired you to write this book?

In 2006, I saw an article from a North Carolina newspaper about a young pregnant mother named Michelle Young who was found murdered by her sister. Her death was unspeakably violent, and her child had been alone in the house for days with her mother’s corpse. The media reported a number of salient details, including the bloody footprints the child had left through the house. I watched the case, hoping there would be a resolution. Unfortunately, Michelle Young’s murder still isn’t solved. Her husband is the prime suspect.

Her story became the opening of JUDAS KISS.

The crime stories that seem to capture our interest as a society are the ones that take place where we feel the safest, which is inside our own homes. That’s where the majority of homicides take place. And we all know how much the media loves a good suburban murder, especially in my fictional Nashville. In the novel, there’s a sense of the fantastic surrounding this case, an “it could have happened to me” mentality couple with the media frenzy – satellite trucks parks on quiet streets, reporters camped on the lawns, every moment chronicled. It doesn’t happen that way in the Section 8 housing. The drug and vendetta killings don’t make the news very much. So in a sense, I’m capitalizing on what does capture our attention.

What kind of work routine did you use?

I’m a night owl, so I rise late in the morning, do the business side (answer email, read Murderati, Twitter, etc.) From 12-4 I write. I shoot for at least 1,000 words a day. It takes me six months to write a book – one month for research, four for writing, and one for editing. In a perfect world, I’d be writing a solid eight months out of the year, and researching and edited in the other four. Unfortunately, it never works that way, because the books go through their process at the house, and need touring, promotion, etc. It’s a juggling act, but an awful lot of fun.

What was the biggest challenge you encountered completing this book?

Actually, I had a lot of trouble because it was the first book I’d ever had more than a bare bones outline for. I had an in-depth 13 page synopsis, and it threw me for a loop because I’m a pantser – I write by the seat of my pants. My feeling is if I’m surprised, the reader will be too. I also think that despite my difficulties having a script to follow, the book is my best effort, the most solid of all my stories. I’m working on the sixth book in the series now, and I’m outlining that one, simply because I have the time and I’d like to see if I’m still anti-outline. I can always throw it out if it becomes too confining.

What was the greatest reward?

The starred Publisher’s Weekly review, hands down. I was shocked, and thrilled.

Why did you choose this particular title for your work?

It’s a literal title – the kiss of betrayal. I named it two years before I wrote it – sometimes a book knows its name from the start. In contrast, my fourth, THE COLD ROOM, is on its third title. I also must, must, must have a title before I can start writing. I can’t work without one.

What advice would you give to writers trying to get published?

Write every day. Read. Write every day. Read. Write every day. Read. Read. Read some more.

And follow your heart. You always hear write what you know. Well, I knew less than nothing about being a cop, but I’m passionate about forensics and behavioral analysis. I wanted to write something I’d enjoy reading, and knew I’d love doing the research. And I get to hang around with a bunch of cops now, so it was all worth it.

What book would you tell them is a must to read and why?

Stephen King’s ON WRITING and Elizabeth George’s WRITE AWAY. King’s book changed the way I thought about my writing. I read it while I was writing JUDAS KISS, and it shows, I think. The George book I read back at the very beginning. It’s a hugely detailed “Process,” and I highly recommend it for writers doing standalone, because it teaches how to world-build. And Christopher Vogler’s THE WRITER’S JOURNEY, which covers the mythic structure of fiction.

Who is your favorite author and why?

I’m a huge, huge fan of so many writers, it’s hard to pinpoint just one. I take different things from different authors and different styles. That said, in crime fiction, John Connolly is one of the most talented writers alive. John Sandford and Lee Child are brilliant series writers, Diana Gabaldon writes my favorite historical time-travel romances. I also love Nabokov, Austen, Rand and Rowling.

What book are you reading right now?

Jeff Abbott’s COLLISION. Mr. Abbott is another one of my favourites – the smart reader’s thriller writer. He’s fantastic.

What advice would you give to a debut novelist to survive in today’s publishing world?

Patience is a virtue, and perseverance is key. Be a good teammate, and MEET YOUR DEADLINES. I can’t emphasize that enough. When your book goes on submission, start the next one. Write thank you notes, and be sure that any kindness you receive, you pay forward. Karma is hard at work in the publishing industry. I have more tips on my website, JTEllison.com.

Thanks for having me!

My pleasure. Thanks for dropping by and all the best with the new book.