J. T. Ellison – Gothic Spine Chiller

J T Ellison has sold millions of psychological thrillers all round the world in nearly 30 countries. Her latest book, Her Dark Lies, is a Gothic spine chiller featuring international billionaires and a mysterious first wife. Does that sound familiar? It should do because it’s a re-telling of Daphne du Maurier’s classic page-turner, Rebecca. Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and in Binge Reading today J.T. talks about writing Her Dark Lies, about the Nashville thriller series with homicide detective Taylor Jackson that made her name, and co-hosting an Emmy Award-winning books podcast. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Moving from psychological thriller to domestic noir Re-telling Rebecca What it was like attending a Nashville post mortem Co-writing with the legendary Catherine Coulter Working in the White House Hot new authors she’s reading now Where to find J.T. Ellison:  Website: https://www.jtellison.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JTEllison14/  Twitter: @thrillerchick Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thrillerchick/ Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1311949.J_T_Ellison What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. But now, here’s J.T. Jenny Wheeler: Hello there J.T. and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. J. T. Ellison: Thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to be here. Introducing J. T Ellison, author Jenny Wheeler: J.T., you’ve sold or you’ve published millions of books in 28 countries, you’ve won awards, you’re share-hosting an Emmy Award-winning TV show about books – you sound as if you’re on the top of the mountain. Your chosen space is domestic noir and psychological thrillers, and I’m interested in how you differentiate between those two things and whether readers look for something specifically different in the two domestic noir and psychological thriller categories. J. T. Ellison – Best selling thriller author J. T. Ellison: This is such a fantastic question because yes, I think there is a difference between the two. I think they overlap very nicely but I think the domestic noir is exactly that – it is domestic. It is something that is very personal and very individual. Imagine your neighbor – you chat in the street and then your neighbor goes inside their house and they close the door and you never really know what’s happening behind those closed doors. That, to me, is the epitome of the domestic noir. The psychological thriller is broader in my mind. I feel that encompasses more professionals in the field, whether it’s a policeman or a private detective or anything along those lines that would bring in an element of law enforcement. I think that has a part to do with it, though that can obviously appear in domestic noir. But the other thing is that it’s probably a slightly bigger canvas. It’s not necessarily just what’s happening inside that house; it’s what’s happening inside that house that’s affecting all the people around it, so it gets a little bit bigger, a little bit broader, it can be a little more twisted. You can bring in different points of view. Flipping the script More of the domestic noir is going to be in first person, a lot of them, it’s going to be very personal. Psychological thrillers are going to have multiple points of view and it’s going to be a little bit bigger. That’s my theory. I may be completely wrong. Jenny Wheeler: Could we say that initially your series books were more in the psychological thriller category, and now with these stand alones you’ve been working on – and we’ll talk about your latest one, Her Dark Lies in a very short moment – they are more the domestic noir area. Is that right? You have moved a little bit from psychological thriller into the domestic noir. J. T. Ellison – A Deeper Darkness, Samantha Owens series J. T. Ellison: I have. I’ve flipped the page. The first number of books I did were from the law enforcement perspective.  There were victims, obviously, that things happen to and I might even be in their heads and be explaining it. But the predominant characters were the police – Taylor Jackson, Samantha Owens, the Brit in the FBI series, all of those came from the law enforcement point of view. When I started doing stand alones I walked inside the door and imagined what it would be like for the policeman to come to my door instead of me being the policeman knocking on the door. It was a complete flip of the script, and they are a lot of fun. I was having this conversation with my husband the other day, that heroes in thrillers are immortal. You know, because it’s a series, that the hero is not going to die. Creepy parallels with a classic story In the suspense genre, all bets are off. It’s very possible that the main character is going to be killed. It’s entirely possible that somebody close to them is going to be killed. It’s a slightly different take on things from the other side of the door. Jenny Wheeler: I loved the description I read of one reviewer of Her Dark Lies. They compared it to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, as a kind of gothic story. I think that really hit the nail on the head in terms of some of the parallels. Re-telling Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca It’s a creepy story about a family of international billionaires. Of course, they have to be somebody like the Jeff Bezos of this world, but they’re destroyed from the inside. There is all sorts of stuff going on on the inside, and some of the voices, at the time you’re not quite sure who it is that’s speaking, there’s mystery behind some of the voices. I wondered was Rebecca anywhere there in the background when you were conceiving this story? J. T. Ellison: Absolutely. It’s one of my favorite books. I don’t know how many times I’ve read it, but I re-read it and I actually listened to it this time. I did it on audio and there were a couple of things that truly stood out to me. One was the choice Du Maurier makes that Rebecca is dead in that story, that she is dead and how she’s died and all of that. That really got into my head, and I started thinking about how that would be – to be marrying somebody whose wife has died and they don’t necessarily know exactly what’s happened. That was definitely my springboard into this story. Jenny Wheeler: At the end of it, in the acknowledgements, you talk a little bit about the circumstances surrounding your initial inspiration for the story, and you indicate that it might have been quite a difficult birth to get it all to pull together. It’s extremely intricately plotted, so I wondered if you could give us an idea of that process from conception to delivery. A 21st century Rebecca J. T. Ellison: I think I started with this being more of a retelling of Rebecca than anything else, and that’s not what the book was and that’s not what the book wanted to be, but that’s where I set myself up. It was a really difficult book to write. It was one of the hardest books I’ve ever written. I had two knee surgeries while I was writing it, so I had surgery brain, we can chalk that up a little bit. But there was something elusive about the characters and I couldn’t land on their names. I changed their names multiple times because none of the names would work, and when you’ve written a manuscript with somebody you don’t know because their name doesn’t set with you, that’s really, really hard. It was not until I finally figured out, okay, her name is Claire, that’s her name. Then I was able to actually finish the book. It was a 14-month book. It never takes me that long to write a book, but this one did. And every book is different. Every story is different. There are seven versions of this book living on my computer. Not seven drafts, seven versions. I missed the mark several times before I finally hit the story and it came together for me. I was getting ready to walk away from it, because sometimes it doesn’t work. The one that nearly got away Jenny Wheeler: Have you walked away from many books ever? J. T. Ellison: No, I haven’t. I’ve put things down for a little while and worked on other things. Several of the stand alones, especially the first ones that I was writing on spec, I was writing in between other books, you know, I’ve got a month until the next revision is due, I’m going to work on this. There was a little bit of that, but I’ve never planned to abandon a story. I’m now writing my 25th book, so this is my 24th novel. That’s pretty good that out of all that, there’s only really been one that I was going to throw up my hands. Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books We won’t send you spam. 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100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} But it was in the middle of the pandemic and we got away, we went and house sat and the change of scenery, everything clicked. Sometimes that’s what you need. You just need a different environment. Jenny Wheeler: You made your name with thriller series fiction and your homicide detective in Nashville, Taylor Jackson, is one of your most popular heroines. I gather you’ve worked very closely with the Nashville police including sitting in on postmortems, which seemed to me almost beyond the call of duty. Is that one of the hardest things you’ve done in your research? J. T. Ellison – Book Seven of the Taylor Jackson series, Where All The Dead Lie. J. T. Ellison: Yes, hands down. I did a number of ride alongs with the police, with Metro homicide, with overnight patrol.  I’ve talked to the FBI, I’ve toured facilities, I’ve worked with the New York field office. The one thing I hadn’t done was an in-person autopsy. I’ve done online ones, which are incredibly helpful, but I had never done the actual sit down in person and do it. I was terrified and I was worried. I was afraid there would be somebody my father’s age or a child. What I didn’t know is they don’t just do one autopsy at a time, they do multiple autopsies at once. And of course there was a man my dad’s age, and there was a child and there was a woman my age and there was a teenager, and it was both horrifying and fascinating and possibly the most spiritual experience I have ever had. Challenging her comfort zones Because I was so terrified at the beginning, I wouldn’t even get near the bodies. I was on the other side of the room. By the end I literally had my head looking inside a person. And I dare anybody who doesn’t believe that there is a higher power to look inside somebody and realize we’re all just little machines. We’re all exactly the same inside, so there is something that makes us who we are – spirit, soul, whatever you want to call it. I absolutely believe that. It really was horrible and wonderful at the same time. I am not going to do it again. Jenny Wheeler: That’s an amazing thing. All I could imagine was the horrible smells. Did that bother you? J. T. Ellison: It didn’t smell. I mean, relatively – this is terrible – fresh bodies don’t smell. They only really smell if they’ve been decomposing, and these were not decomposed bodies. Jenny Wheeler: I was thinking more of the formaldehyde. J. T. Ellison: It smells no more than a lab, than anything else. It was very clean. It was bright. It was the exact opposite of everything you would imagine. Everything you’ve seen on TV is not right. It is worth doing. I wrote a whole piece about it on my blog called I See Dead People, a little tongue in cheek there, but it was truly a formative experience for me. I’m so glad I did it. I’m so glad. Jenny Wheeler: We always put links to things that are mentioned in our podcasts, so I’ll look out that blog and we’ll put a link to it because I’m sure there are people who might be interested in seeing a fuller account of that. I found it fascinating. A Brit in the FBI series You mentioned that you did A Brit in the FBI series. You co-authored that with Catherine Coulter who already has a bestseller FBI series that she’s writing. How did that co-authoring come about, and which one of you got to do the Brit part, and was that difficult? J. T. Ellison: The Brit part is the fun part. Catherine was looking for a co-writer because she had a series idea of A Brit in the FBI that she wanted to do. As it happens, I’m at her agency, so that worked out very nicely. Her agent mentioned it to my agent, my agent mentioned it to me, and I wasn’t planning to do co-writing, but this is Catherine Coulter. She’s a legend. I’ve been reading her my whole life. Catherine Coulter – best selling thriller author I said, absolutely. Throw my hat in the ring. Then I didn’t hear anything for a couple of months, and I figured that wasn’t happening. I had just done a new deal with Mira, my regular publisher, for new books and literally that deal closed on Friday and on Monday morning I got a call that said, you’re about to get a job offer. The phone rang and it was Catherine, and all I can remember is, within two minutes I was laughing hysterically because she’s really funny, and we took off from there. Every co-writing team has a different process. I would go out to her house in California, and we would spend the week plotting out the book. I brought it back to Nashville and drafted it, talking to her regularly about what’s going on, here’s where I am, this isn’t working the way we thought, let’s fix it. A process of collaboration Then when I finished the draft, I would give it back to her because I’m not good at doing pages, having them looked at and having them finalized. I can’t see the whole story until the whole story is there. She was very gracious to let me do it my way, and it worked out really well. I would give her a draft, she would edit it, send it back to me, I’d edit that, she would take one more pass and then we would turn it in. That worked really well. We did six books in the series and it was a blast. I did a lot of the British, she did a lot of the British. She’s got family there. I’m fascinated and love England and Scotland, so I spent a lot of time there. That’s not hard. It’s hard not to have British characters in my books actually. Jenny Wheeler: That’s great. Turning a bit from now from the specific books to your wider career, you had quite a fascinating time before you turned your attention to being a full-time author, and I wonder if you could give us a potted biography of that period. You worked full-time in politics before you went back to what had always been, I think, your first love – the idea of writing. How did the non-writing experience feed into your writing? Negative feedback put her off track J. T. Ellison: That’s a hard question because everything we do forms us into the person we are, and without that, we can’t be the writer we are. But everything I did was nothing related to what I do now. I went to school thinking I was going to be a writer and I was going to get an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) which is the degree that “professional writers” get. I used quotes around the professional writers. A lot of professional writers do not have MFAs, but I didn’t know that at the time. My professor, my thesis advisor, said I wasn’t good enough to get published, so I listened to her and did not go to get an MFA. Instead, I got a Master’s degree in Political Management and worked in the White House and Department of Commerce, and then went to work for an aerospace company doing marketing. John Sandford – inspired J.T. Ellison’s work All those experiences were great, but I hated it. All of them. I hated them. I felt trapped with everything I was doing. I was chafing at the bit. I don’t do well with authority, and so having somebody telling me what to do is very, very difficult for me. It was a really hard time. It was fun, I mean, working in the White House is obviously never a bad thing. But I was very young, and I was very idealistic and I finally realized, wow, I am not going to change the world doing this. I can make really great tea. I’m just not going to change the world. Turning into ‘worst country song’ By then I had met my husband. I met him the first night of classes in graduate school, so I’m not so upset about the MFA versus the Masters in Pol Sci but we had decided to move back to Nashville where he’s from. We moved here and I turned into the worst country music song. My cat died, I didn’t have any friends, kept getting lost going around town, I couldn’t find a job. It was total sad person case – really bad. I told my husband, I want to try this again. In the meantime, I had had back surgery and had been reading John Sandford. I’m sure everybody’s heard of him and read him. His Lucas Davenport and his Prey series really turned my crank, and I said, I want to try this. My husband said, go for it. He never once said, don’t. From the very first time I brought it up, he said, I think you should do it, go for it, which was an incredible blessing. I did. I typed that first paragraph. I hit period and I burst into tears because I was finally home, and I was back where I was supposed to be, and I haven’t looked back since. Jenny Wheeler: Was that a Taylor Jackson book? J. T. Ellison: It was, it was the very first one. It’s what became, what is now Field of Graves. It was called a couple of different things. I wrote it in a vacuum. I was such a naïve kid, I didn’t know anything about the publishing industry. Encouragement from other writers I didn’t know there were publishing awards and organizations for writers. I wrote that entire book in a vacuum, got a copy of the Literary Guide and started sending it all over New York. I found out, oh yeah, this isn’t actually a novel, this is only a novella, and there’s nothing special about it. I had a couple of people say, you’re a good writer, but there’s nothing special about this, nothing unique. That was hard, but I took all of that advice and I started doing research into the industry. I got hooked up with a couple of people and went to an author signing – John Connolly, the Irish writer. I went to his author signing in Nashville. It was the very first time I had met another author. He was so incredibly kind and so incredibly encouraging and he told me all good books find a home. That was what I went back to the page with. All The Pretty Girls – J. T. Ellison I rewrote the book into a full-length novel, I got an agent, it didn’t sell. My agent said write me another book, and I did. That was All the Pretty Girls and that sold almost the night we sent it out. We got an email from Linda McFall at Mira who said, don’t sell this to anybody else, and they bought a three-book deal. That’s the story. I never had to look back after that. It was wonderful. Jenny Wheeler: It is sad that that one academic person, who probably had never written a book in her life anyway, should have given you such a definitive opinion about your work earlier on, isn’t it, although it all came right in the end. Reads like ‘B grade detective fiction’ J. T. Ellison: She probably was right at that time. I probably wasn’t good enough, but what would have happened if she had said, you know what, you’re not good enough right now, so keep at it. That was not the message I got at all. It was, you are not what they are looking for. I’ve got papers in my filing cabinet, I have a paper where another one of my English professors wrote on a short story, “reads too much like B grade detective fiction”. Well, I’ve now made a career out of B grade detective fiction, so nanny, nanny, boo boo. Jenny Wheeler: Yes. I think a lot of writers find that academic literary courses aren’t the way to get into genre fiction. That’s the other thing, isn’t it? J. T. Ellison: Right. If you love genre fiction, that’s where you should be focusing your efforts. Literary is just another genre, it really is, but they wanted me to write a certain way and again with the whole authority thing, I couldn’t make myself do what they wanted. I had a very distinct voice. I still do. You can read papers I wrote when I was a kid, and you can hear that voice. It’s always been there. Working for Papa Bush Jenny Wheeler: Tracking back, I’m curious which president was in the White House when you were working there? J. T. Ellison: Papa Bush. I’m old. We were in DC when I was a kid. Such a young girl. My mom worked in the Reagan White House, so it was the natural extension. Jenny Wheeler: Were you there with Kuwait? Was that senior Bush? J. T. Ellison: Yeah, I think so. I was not there during that. I was still in school because I went back and forth. I interned several semesters before I graduated and got a job, and he was only in office for another year when I was there. But I was at school and I did get a phone call from somebody in the know who said, you want to turn on CNN, something major is about to happen. I turned it on, and I hit tape, so I’ve got us rolling over the border on a VHS tape somewhere, back in the day. Jenny Wheeler: As we mentioned at the beginning, you also share hosting of an Emmy Award-winning TV series, A Word on Words in Nashville. How did that opportunity arise? J. T. Ellison: A Word on Words has been on the air for over 40 years. John Seigenthaler was the one who started it with Nashville Public Television, and every Sunday morning he would interview authors. It was a 30 minute in studio show. John is amazing. Sharing popular books podcast He was absolutely astounding. He read all of those books. He was so incredible at bringing people in and pulling out their stories, and when he passed away, the station didn’t want the series to go away so they re-imagined it as something called an interstitial. We call it the show between the shows. We have a short piece that shows about three minutes of us interviewing the author, and then we have a transcript of the full 30-minute episode that you can go and read. It’s incredible, and to have been asked to carry on the literary legacy that John Seigenthaler has left in the city was absolutely one of the biggest honors of my life. I love it. Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books We won’t send you spam. 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[data-style="minimal"]{padding:20px;width:100%;position:relative;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-header{margin:0 0 27px 0;text-align:center;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-subheader{margin:18px 0;text-align:center;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-guarantee{font-size:13px;margin:10px 0 15px 0;text-align:center;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-guarantee > p{margin:0;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-powered-by-convertkit-container{margin-bottom:0;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-fields{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-wrap:wrap;-ms-flex-wrap:wrap;flex-wrap:wrap;margin:25px auto 0 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-field{min-width:220px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 0 15px 0;-webkit-flex:1 0 100%;-ms-flex:1 0 100%;flex:1 0 100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} We’re six seasons in right now, and we are having a ball and I get to read books I wouldn’t necessarily read. Obviously, I like crime fiction. I like thrillers, so I get to read much more broadly and that’s done nothing but great things for me as a reader and me as a writer and me as a person. Jenny Wheeler: Talking about your career, is there one thing you’ve done as far as your writing career is concerned more than any other that’s been the secret of your success? Is there one thing you think, that’s really how I came to break through. Never feel like you’ve ‘arrived’ J. T. Ellison: Maybe I don’t feel like I’ve broken through. Somebody was telling me yesterday, hey, you’ve arrived. And I’m like, no I haven’t, I have not arrived. I don’t ever feel like I’ve arrived. I think that probably has a lot to do with my ambition to try to be a better writer and be a better person and be a better reader and bring more to my stories. I never want to write the same book twice. I love the challenge of coming up with something unique and different. I keep my head down and I do my work and I think that’s really more of it. It’s a job. It’s the best job in the world, but it’s a job, and I show up. I am the one authority figure I don’t want to defy. Jenny Wheeler: What do you enjoy most about that job and what do you dislike most? Field of Graves – one of the books in J. T. Ellison’s Taylor Jackson Nashville detective series J. T. Ellison: I love that moment where I look up and it’s been two or three hours and I have several thousand words and the story has gone in a direction that I had no idea was going to happen. When I end up in a place I wasn’t aware of. I’m not a big outliner, but I usually have pretty good idea of what is going on. But when I go off in a totally new direction and I’ve been in that flow, in that zone, that’s fantastic. Rivaled only by receiving emails or letters from people saying that the book took them out of themselves for a moment. I got something recently, somebody’s mother was dying, and she read one of my books while she sat with her mother in hospice, and said it lifted her away from the situation. I can’t think of a higher compliment to pay an author, that I was able to create something that gave her some respite. That’s incredible. When the dots don’t connect What do I hate? I don’t like the word hate, so I’m going to say that again. What I don’t like about writing are those moments when the book is not working, when you’re not connecting with the material, like what happened with Her Dark Lies. That was agonizing for me that I couldn’t get to know my characters. They wouldn’t reveal themselves. And so you’re banging your hammer against the rock, hoping something will chisel away, and it doesn’t. Sometimes there are days like that. There are months like that.  Sometimes it just doesn’t work and I’m much too stubborn to let that stand. Jenny Wheeler: Turning to J. T. as reader, this is The Joys of Binge Reading and we particularly like to focus on books that are going to be entertaining, that are going to take people outside of their normal worlds for a time. The last 12 months I think there’s been a boom in that kind of reading because people want to be a little bit more light-hearted and escapist. Are you a binge reader and who would you like to recommend? What J.T. is reading now J. T. Ellison: I am a huge reader of anything I can get my hands on. I am a huge, huge binge reader. The series I think is probably my favorite is Daniel Silva’s Gabriel Allon. That is one I really make time for, no matter what. If there is a new Gabriel Allon book, I am marking that day off on the calendar and sitting down and reading it. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by Victoria Schwab – a “must read” for J. T. Ellison Same with Diana Gabaldon. Anytime one of her books comes out, that’s it, don’t even bother. Victoria Schwab is another one. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a masterpiece, it truly is. To see an author of her age – she is so young to have written a book so wise and so moving. It’s incredible. I loved it.  I have a few books to talk about. I’m reading The Push by Ashley Audrain right now, which is wonderful. My laptop is sitting on top of The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins and J. Elle’s Wings of Ebony and Alex Bracken’s Lore. Anything that Leigh Bardugo does, I am there for. I can go on and on and on. Jenny Wheeler: You also belong to quite a few writer organizations, don’t you? The benefits of critique groups J. T. Ellison: Yes. International Thriller Writers and Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. Sisters in Crime is the first organization I joined. I was in their Guppies group, which is for unpublished writers to meet each other and talk. I swear the Guppies are the reason I got published. I was able to elevate my work to the level that a New York publisher looked at it and said, okay, now there’s something special here. That’s all on them. J. Elle’s Wings of Ebony another J. T. Ellison favorite Jenny Wheeler: We are coming to the end of our time together, J.T., but we like to look back down this tunnel of time. Circling around, at this stage in your career, if you were doing it all over again, what would you change, if anything? J. T. Ellison: I think if I were looking back, I would tell myself that it’s okay to say no, because I don’t do a really good job of saying no. I want everyone to be happy, I want to help everybody, I have a tendency to over-yes. I’m a yes woman, and I would definitely try to set some boundaries for myself earlier on so that I was able to learn how to say no easily and comfortably and not feel bad when I did it. That’s definitely something I would redo if I had a chance. Getting serious about productivity Jenny Wheeler: Is that related to your career decisions, or more like saying yes to having people over to dinner and that kind of thing? J. T. Ellison: No, it’s definitely more on the career side of things. I mean, there’s a lot that goes into writing a novel that has nothing to do with writing a novel. One of my favorite productivity guys, he’s a more of a philosopher, his name is Cal Newport, talks about deep work a lot, and I spend a lot of time doing that and thinking about how I can spend my creative time on my creativity. He said on his podcast a couple of days ago, that it’s very interesting – the better you are at your job, the more people want you to do things that are not what you’re good at with your job. That lands for me in a number of ways. I have done a lot of things from the very beginning – blogging, setting up social networks, being a social butterfly – doing all those things that are more loyalty builders than they are necessarily to sell books. Finding the right work balance But if I could have spent a little more time on my creative endeavors, what would that have looked like? Would I have another couple of books? I know I’ve written 25 books and that’s wonderful. Could I have written 30 if I wasn’t doing a lot of other things? It’s a hypothetical exercise to go back to anything and try to change it.  I really wouldn’t change a lot because I love where I am and I love the career I have, and I love the readers I have, but maybe I wouldn’t have done quite so many of things external to my creativity. Daniel Silva a long time J. T. Ellison favorite author The Order is Book 20 in the Gabriel Allon series Jenny Wheeler: Have you cut back on those as your career has advanced? J. T. Ellison: No. I’m working on that right now. I feel like there’s an expectation of, I’ve always done this, why would I stop it? I’ve always blogged. Why would I stop blogging? I blog for myself really, but there comes a point where, if I’m spending an hour putting together a blog versus the hour I could be spending working on the manuscript, it sometimes feels out of balance for me. When I start feeling that way I pull back and do everything I can to balance myself out so that it’s 90% creativity, 10% nonfiction. Sometimes it gets 50/50 when you get into a book launch and then it’s a hundred percent non-fiction and no creativity, but that’s to be expected. What J T has planned for next year It’s the off times when I think it’s really important to protect your creative time and learn how to say no to things that sound fun at the moment, but maybe are going to have a larger impact on what you do down the road. Jenny Wheeler: I’m sure many writers would very much sympathize and agree with what you’ve just said. Never Miss out! Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts. Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular books We won’t send you spam. 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Hopefully we’re going to smooth out a little now that there’s a vaccine available. What will your next 12 months look like? What projects are you working on? J. T. Ellison: I am, of course, writing another book. That’s what I’m always doing, and it’s a standalone. I’m not going to tell you what it’s about because even though I’m halfway through, I’m very attached to the story. It has a lot of personal components for me, and I haven’t figured out how exactly I want to talk about it, so I’m not. Where J T can be found online I’m writing a novel. I just finished a short story that is going to come out at the end of the year in an anthology that Suspense magazine has done. It’s a really cool analogy, all female thriller authors, it’s thematic, it has a number – everybody had to have a number in their story – and some of the proceeds are going to charity, I believe for breast cancer research. I may be wrong, don’t quote me on that, but I think that’s what it is. That was a really cool project, and it was a big creative departure for me, the story I wrote. I’m very excited to have it out there. From one day to the next I never quite know what I’m doing, but I do know I’ve got some other projects in the works and I highly recommend people stick around and pay attention to, because there are going to be some fun announcements coming. Jenny Wheeler: That sounds great. I know you enjoy hearing from your readers. Where can they find you online? J T Literati and other social media J. T. Ellison: As I mentioned, I’m a social butterfly. The main things I do are – I’ve got a newsletter you can subscribe to on jtellison.com. My handle is @thrillerchick on Twitter and Instagram. I have a wonderful private group on Facebook where we talk about books and life and all kinds of interesting things. That’s called JTEllisonsLiterati and you can get to that from my website or through my main Facebook page. I spend most of my time on Instagram and the newsletter and in the literati. Jenny Wheeler: We will put links to all of those places where people can reach you in the show notes for this episode, so they will be there online for evermore. JT, thanks so much for your time. It’s been wonderful talking. J. T. Ellison: Jenny, it’s been a delight. Thank you for having me. Jenny Wheeler: And we’ll watch for those future announcements with anticipation. J. T. Ellison: Yay. Lots to do. If you enjoyed J. T. Ellison you might also enjoy Michael Robotham’s international thrillers LISTEN TO MICHAEL ROBOTHAM Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]