20,000 Leagues under the Sea

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From Murderati April 2, 2005

You’ve all heard the term “underwater.” The service industry refers to it as  “being in the weeds.” It’s reserved for that moment, the perfect storm, when there is simply too much going on for one person to handle.

Yep. That’s me this week. Home from tour, FINALLY, thinking I’m going to get some time off. Not really time off, per se, since I have a book due May 1, but a little breather? Maybe a chance to catch up on Gossip Girl? Read the massive stack of People Magazines that have taken root next to my chair? Talk to a couple of friends? My parents? Heck, my mom literally started pouting yesterday when I had to get off the phone after a quick five minute call because we haven’t had a chance to just plain chat for almost a month.

Suffice it to say, I’ve had a lot on my plate. And yes, the vast majority of it I put there myself, which means I’ve got a damn sore backside from kicking myself.

The tour went great. The highlight, by far, was getting to travel with my good friend, the brilliant and talented Erica Spindler. We rocked the West Coast and Denver, and had a great time. Special thanks to everyone for dinners and drinks and rides during our coastal stay (Keith Raffel, Ken Isaacson, Michelle Gagnon, Jason Pinter, Maddie James, Steven Steinbock (though I think I bought HIS drink ; ) Jim Scott Bell… ) I even saw my dear friend Lee Child and managed not to get sucked into the vortex known as the Camel. Denver was wonderful, because I got a chance to see my family, and a couple of my dearest friends. D.C. was the same, I got to meet Katherine Neville and Robbie Goolrick, which was incredibly cool, and I made a new friend, Pickles, the Easter Bunny from Borders. Though poor Randy got food poisoning and we got stuck in Baltimore whilst he was ill. I feel sorry for our neighbors.

The Tennessee Mountain Writers conference in Oak Ridge, Tennessee was wonderful. I taught two fiction sessions, Building an Idea into a Novel and Murder Your Darlings: the Art of Revision. And I spoke to the plenary session, giving a long, convoluted speech about the joys and dangers of social networking. As always, teaching gives me insight into my own writing, and while I’m still not the best teacher in the world, I’m at least getting the hang of it so I don’t have the night terrors before I go in.

And then I came home. March was gone. The book did great. My sanity, not so much.

It’s that damn To Do List, you see.

Priority 1 - My AAs are here for my October book, THE IMMORTALS. AAs, Author Alterations, are Harlequin’s version of page proofs. It’s my very last chance to see the book before it goes to press. Being a bit of a perfectionist, I do my absolute best to catch all the little mistakes: copyedits that didn’t make it in, repeated words and phrases, typos and the like. It’s painstaking work. I’ve marked the manuscript with mini-post-its every place there’s a change, purple for copyedit fixes, yellow for my changes. I’ll compile them all into a spreadsheet and mail the whole thing to New York (today!) So there’s one thing off my plate.

Priority 1.5 - Golf started this week. Randy and I made an executive decision to join a golf club this year. Playing golf on the Nashville public courses has always been good enough for us – the municipal courses around here are fantastic. But the price has gotten completely out of control. A single round of 18 holes for two, with a cart, on the public course, was running us $90. That’s just plain insanity. When we looked at the number of times we played, and the number of times we wanted to play, we realized that it would actually be cheaper to join an actual club. And said club has 27 holes and a strong women’s league, which I promptly joined.

We had our first outing Wednesday morning – and I’ll be playing every Wednesday morning from here on out. I joined the group for a couple of reasons – 1, so I would have some accountability, would make myself get off the computer and actually get outside in the fresh air and get some exercise. You can burn 1,000 calories during a sedate round of golf. And 2, the ongoing attempt at socialization. Being an introvert means I’m perfectly content sitting in the house and not interacting with people, and I have to force myself to go out and do these things. So it should be good for me.

Yes, I took 3 hours away from the multitude of things on my To Do list (one so long it’s actually giving me hives) and played golf. I played like hell, but at least I wasn’t on the computer or staring at words. One of my personal goals for the year was to drop ten strokes off my game, and by God, I’m committed.

Priorities. I Has Them.

Granted, I haven’t read a book since I downed Robbie Goolrick’s A RELIABLE WIFE (fantastic book) last month, I have a stack o’stuff that needs dealing with, two books to read and blurb, oh, and that naggy little thing called a DEADLINE coming up.

But you know what? Life is too damn short. I’m the one who put all this pressure on myself, and I’m going to take it off. It’s my new mantra. I will not feel guilty for doing something that’s good for me. Everyone around me will benefit. My priorities have changed.

This has been coming for a while, the death of fellow writer Louise Ure's husband Bruce this week really hammered it home for me. I have been trying to fathom Louise’s loss, and I can’t. I’m in tears right now just writing about it. And I’m getting to an age where loss is going to become a part of my vernacular. So I don’t want to lose a minute of the time I have left.

I hope you’ve taken some extra time this week to love the ones you love. Not just be with them, but truly reach out and let them know just how much they mean to you. Let me take a moment and thank all of you for reading this blog. It’s a true honor to write for you.

Happy Easter to those who celebrate!

Wine of the Week: In honor of our friends who just celebrated Passover: Covenent Cabernet Sauvignon, a Kosher Napa Valley wine. I want to go to this vineyard - I've heard delighful reports.



My Book, The Movie

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Marshal Zeringue, of the fabulous CAFTAR network, invited me to play a wonderful game - who would I cast if the Taylor Jackson books were made into a movie? I think we might be on to something, especially for our new characters McKenzie and Memphis. Here's the transcript from My Book, The Movie:

J.T. Ellison is the bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Taylor Jackson series, including All the Pretty Girls, 14, Judas Kiss, and The Cold Room. She was named “Best Mystery/Thriller Writer of 2008” by the Nashville Scene.

Here she sketches out some casting options for a big screen version of The Cold Room:

"I normally shy away from giving detailed ideas of who I think would be a good actor or actress to play my characters would they get made into a movie, because I don’t like to put someone in the mind of the reader before they have a chance to decide on their own.

But my wonderful readers have lots of ideas about who should play homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, and FBI Profiler John Baldwin. Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron and Blake Lively are all favorite contenders, though I’d have to throw Amanda Righetti into the mix as well – she’s got the exact profile I imagine for Taylor. And Baldwin is always a clean-cut up Hugh Jackman, or Thomas Gibson, though Baldwin’s green eyes are one of his commanding features, so I’m not sure the perfect actor has been picked for him yet. I’ll throw a new thought out there… Depending on how he ages, Chace Crawford wouldn’t be a bad choice.

The Cold Room has a couple of new characters in it, namely Renn McKenzie, Taylor’s new partner, and James “Memphis” Highsmythe, the Viscount Dulsie, and Detective Inspector for New Scotland Yard. McKenzie is hard – he’s serious, and not everything he seems on the surface. Someone like Leonardo DiCaprio would be a good fit.

Memphis, on the other hand, leaps off the page at people. I based him on a very physical version of Daniel Craig and features of Trevor Donovan, but my editor, with no reservations whatsoever, immediately saw him as Simon Baker. We’re both big fans of The Mentalist, and ever since she said that, I haven’t been able to get Baker out of my head when I’m writing Memphis.

So there you have it. An Aussie to play an upper-class Brit. I bet he could pull it off!"


Learn more about the book and author at J.T. Ellison's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: the Taylor Jackson series.

The Page 69 Test: The Cold Room.

Morbid Elegance and Elmer Fudd

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I'm Kim Alexander and this is Fiction Nation. The book is The Cold Room by J.T. Ellison.

It's a great pleasure for me on a personal level when authors I like have continued success and I get to help document it. I first talked to J.T. in 2008 with her debut thriller, All the Pretty Girls, which introduced us to our heroine Detective Taylor Jackson, the city of Nashville, and the special brand of crazy upon which J.T. draws to create her villains.

Since then, (the very normal and quite delightful) J.T. and I have talked a few more times, and with each conversation she becomes more assured, she gives Taylor more trouble, and her bad guys get exponentially more depraved. It's been fun to watch!

In The Cold Room, J.T. has outdone herself in terms of sheer out-there horrific behavior. Her villain is a necro-sadist, which she explains is different from your garden variety necrophiliac in that the latter doesn't require his (I'm going with 'his') victim to be dead; only really, really quiet. (I knew Elmer Fudd wasn't quite right.) The passages set in his lair are disturbing and fairly graphic — how could they not be? And why do the same kind of crimes start turning up in Europe? Taylor has to track this guy down, and because of the trans-Atlantic element, a super-hot yet troubled and mysterious man with a past AND a hot English accent is suddenly teaming up with her and her longtime squeeze, FBI agent Baldwin, and English dude has decided Taylor is The One, Full Stop. Will she relent to his English hotness? Will she be sensible and stick with Baldwin the hometown favorite? Most importantly, will she find the bad guy before he chills again?

J.T. complained that the research was gross and the topic gave her nightmares but the story wanted to be told, and if you've got the stomach for it, her hard work pays off with morbidly elegant plot twists. She's got more coming up for Taylor, and I shudder (in a good way) to think what she's going to do for an encore to The Cold Room.

Hear my interview with J.T. Ellison on Fiction Nation, on Book Radio, Sirius 117 and XM 163.

Howdy!

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Hi folks!

So sorry I haven't been as attentive to the blog as I should have - touring tires a thrillerchick out. I've been running with Erica Spindler, author extraordinaire, out here on the Left Coast. We started the week in San Francisco, with a great signing at M is for Mystery (signed books available from Ed!) and moved down to the City of Angels. We've signed at 21 stores over the past several days, and after our panels tomorrow, we are off to Denver - my hometown. 

San Fran was awesome, the weather put on a show and it was stunningly green, and Los Angeles has been so amazing - I had lunch with a friend from elementary school who's a big wig voice over actor out here, and tea with a writer/director/producer friend who is the height of cool. We dined at the most wonderful Cicada tonight, the fine Italian restaurant that's been the scene of so many movies, like Pretty Woman (who can forget the escargot escapade?) and after dinner the delightful manager snuck us into the penthouse, formally the home of James Oviatt. From the Cicada website:

The Penthouse was designed by some of the most distinguished architects and artisans of the Jazz Age. It was built for James Oviatt, a haberdasher whose luxurious shop once occupied the ground floor of his namesake building. Oviatt’s ambition was to create a spectacular residence that would showcase the Art Deco design he’d admired at the 1925 Exposition in Paris.

It was so utterly surreal... I'll have pictures to post later. The photos on the wall, signed by the likes of Cecile B Demille and Errol Flynn, were truly unique. Suffice it to say I felt like we saw the ultimate insider view of some old-school LA histoire.

The Left Coast Crime bar is packed with the greatest folks - too many to name, but a veritable who's who of crime fiction. It's become sadly apparent that I haven't done enough social networking about my new book, but you know, I think that's okay. Sometimes we need to make sacrifices, and I have to tell you, I think giving up Facebook and Twitter for Lent was a good idea - I haven't felt this creative in months. I've been excited to sit down to work every day, which translates, of course, to more books and short stories for my readers. You'd rather me do that Tweet my fondness for cappuccino. Right?

Anywhoo, it's time to crash, but I wanted to say hi, tell you I miss you, and hope you're having a fabulous week. We have many blessings in this world, and I hope that several rain down upon you tonight.

xo,

JT