Deep Questions with Cal Newport - Ep. 225: Should I Become A Thriller Writer? (w/ J.T. Ellison)

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

Get your questions answered by Cal! Here’s the link: bit.ly/3U3sTvoDEEP DIVE: Did Alan Turing Invent The Computer? [5:25]INTERVIEW: Thriller writer J.T. Ellison  [25:23]Thanks to our Sponsors:policygenius.comeightsleep.com/deephensonshaving.com/calGet a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at  stamps.com/deep. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show!Thanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, and Mark Miles for mastering. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions. Episode 225. I'm here in my Deep Work H.Q. joined by my producer, Jesse. Jesse, as you know, I've been excited about this episode. It's featuring an interview that I've been wanting to do for a long time, which is an interview with a full-time working New York Times best-selling thriller writer.

Yeah, you've been talking about this. I don't know why I've had this stuck in my head for a while, but I have. So the interview is going to come up later in the show is with my friend J.T. Ellison. You can find out about at J.T. Ellison.com. She's a New York Times bestselling author of more than 25 novels that collectively have millions of copies in print. So she writes standalone thrillers. I have some of the names here, including It's One of Us and Her Dark Lott. I think she got started with her Lieutenant Taylor Jackson series,

a detective thriller series, which began with all the pretty girls. She also writes the Dr. Samantha Owen series and is an Emmy award-winning host of a author TV show based out of Nashville called A Word on Words. I've actually appeared on that show, I think last year and enjoyed that as well. Anyways, here's the reason why I wanted to have a thriller writer on the show. I'm very interested in this world. I talk to J.T. about, first of all, her path from leaving a job here in D.C. As a political marketer or something like this, or maybe an aerospace defense marketer, I don't know, a Beltway inside the Beltway style job left, moved to Tennessee, became a thriller writer. I wanted to know about that.

I pushed her on why exactly did you succeed? So what was it specifically? We get into the details that you did, that the 10 other people trying to become thriller writers at that same time didn't do that meant you succeeded and they didn't. So we really get into the details of what actually makes the difference in finding traction in a career or just being someone who occasionally does national novel writing month and then gives up. We get into the economics of the world of thriller writing and how that's been changing. What's it really like to be a full-time writer?

We get into the weeds about social media and even. email list and the struggle to be a full-time creative and also manage an audience. She explains to me who Colleen Hoover is and tries to bring me in on that phenomenon, which I never quite understand. We get into our habits. How does she write? When does she write? How does she manage her day?

And then, best of all, the real reason why we did this interview, at the end, I say, OK, JT, imagine that there is a million-dollar bounty that you can reap if I successfully me, Cal successfully sell a thriller novel. What's the advice you're giving me? What's the game plan you're giving me to ensure that you win that bounty? What's your insider track, experience-based game plan? If you really want to succeed at selling a thriller, what would you recommend to someone like me doing?

And so we get that advice. But here's the bigger picture. Whether you're interested in thriller writing or not, the context for this interview is that JT lives, what looks like to a lot of us, a deep life. She does something that's interesting and unique and radical and has a lot of control over her life and her circumstances.

She's crafted a really interesting life. I mean, she's doing ride-alongs with the Nashville police and going out to Quantico to learn about body decomposition. She spent a lot of time with survivalists researching another book she wrote. She writes all day. She's friends with all these cool, really famous Thula writers. I mean, it sounds like a really interesting deep life. and I like the idea of occasionally doing these interviews where we decode an actual deep life.

Here is what went into it. Here is how the transition occurred. Here's what makes it sustainable. Here's the joys and also the sorrows of the reality of these type of trajectories in life. So I think it's just a good general case study of deep living. But also is an excuse for me to finally write the book. and Jesse knows the book I'm going to write. It's going to be called the last name of the wind.

So sort of like a response to the name of the wind. And throughout the book, I'm going to inaccurately reference. I can't remember his name. Now here's the real irony. Now I can only remember the name of the person who actually wrote name of the wind, which is Patrick Rufthes. Brandon Sanderson, if you're new to this show, you're probably about to be old to this show,

because everything I just said right there makes no sense. But you know what? Jesse gets it. I get it. We have like seven older fans who know what I'm talking about here. So this is for you guys. Anyway, so we got that interview. I'm looking forward to it.

Before we get into that, though, I have a deep dive I want to do. That's on a topic that's completely different. So the topic I want to discuss might seem unusual at first, but there is a backstory here. I will quickly tell you. Here it is. did Alan Turing invent the computer? All right, why are we talking about this? Well, it goes back to last week.

I was a guest on Sam Harris's podcast making sense. I don't know if you've heard that one yet, Jesse. But it's an episode that's creating quite a stir, not because of me, but because the episode begins with a 45-minute monologue from Sam, where he explains why he decided a few days before that episode posted to quit Twitter. So here is where if we had a applause sound effect, a confetti and applause sound effect is where we would hear it. So Sam quit Twitter and it sort of made sense to attach his announcement about that to

this interview I'd recorded with him a few weeks earlier because obviously when you talk to Cal Newport, you're going to hear a lot about tech and society and not. not a necessarily very positive view of Twitter. Now, interestingly, in that interview, later in the interview, and we're talking about Twitter, Sam is cataloging a lot of his concerns about it, and I took a swing and made a pitch in the interview directly. Sam, you should quit Twitter. Now, I don't get to take credit for that. Sam actually specifically addresses this at the end of his monologue.

He says, as you will hear, I already had doubts when I was doing this interview and Cal was pushed me to quit it. I didn't quit Twitter because Cal told me to, but he was one of the voices in my head when I made the decision. So I'm going to take, let's take a partial W. Yeah. On that, Jesse. But anyways, obviously, I'm glad he did it not just for his own sanity, but I think because it's a role model. As longtime listeners, no, my issue is not with the existence of these social media platforms. It is with the assumption of ubiquity.

That, I think, is what the problem is. The idea that everyone has to use the platform, that's what I might. I don't care that Twitter exists. I care that it's a big deal that I don't use it. And so when we have more high profile people like Sam opt out, it opens up that possibility to others, others who maybe feel like the cost or outweighing the benefits. It makes it easier and easier for those who follow in his wake to say, you know what, I'm going to do something similar.

I got a lot of heat when I originally left Twitter. Sam, who's way more well known to me, is getting a huge amount of heat. right now, but more of us who go through this, the easier it will become for those who follow. So I think that's all good news. Anyways, it's a long interview. A lot of it were dealing with tech issues, a lot of tech in society, a lot of tech criticism. Very interesting stuff. A lot of new theories you haven't heard me talk about before.

Worth listening to. But earlier in the show, Sam and I wandered across a bunch of esoteric topics. It just sort of popped to our head as we were chatting. and one of the topics that came up relatively early in the conversation was this thought experiment that Sam had considered before where he was thinking if I could go back in time somewhere between the 1930s the 1940s and let's say kill a single individual if my goal was to delay as long as possible the development of the modern computer

which individual would you kill Now obviously that's a maybe a violent construction for what's an actually very interesting question who was probably most singly influential responsible

for the development of the modern computer. I thought that was a cool thought experiment so we got into it. Now one of the names that often comes to people's mind when they think about the invention of the computer

is Alan Turing. And as Sam and I talked about I think Turing gets too much credit as a initiator of the development of modern digital computing. I'm a huge Alan Turing fan. I teach Turing to our doctoral students at Georgetown.

I know his work very well. He's the father of theoretical computer science, an incredibly influential thinker, and a very original thinker. But his role in the invention of the computer, I think, has been inflated in recent decades. He would not be, in other words, my choice of who to go back and rub out

if I was trying to delay the development of the computer. Now, I'll tell you soon who I think that person is. But first, let's return to the question of Turing. So what did he do that became so connected to computing the modern minds? Well, it really comes down to the notion of the Turing machine. If you want to understand the notion of the Turing machine, and I promise you, I'm not going to get into Professor Mode here. I'll be very brief.

But if we want to get into the notion of the Turing machine, you have to go back to this paper he wrote called Oncomputable Numbers and their connection to. the Einstein problem, which is a German name for a problem that was posed in the late 19th century by David Hilbert. Now, this problem had nothing to do with computers. This is from the 1800s. But what it asked is, can we come up with what they would call back then an effective procedure? Today, we might call this an algorithm, but back then they would call it an effective procedure. That is a step-by-step series of instructions for solving any math problem we might want to solve. Does every math problem have a step-by-step way to solve it?

This was a big question of mathematical logic. A lot of people were working on it, and Turing came up with an answer. And the way he came with an answer is he said, let's have a formal definition of an effective procedure, and that's when he came up with this thought experiment of deterring machine. It's a set of instructions, an infinite tape, a reed head that can move from position the position on the tape, read what's there, look up in the instructions what to do, maybe overwrite what's there, move one direction or the other.

Turin made this argument that this abstract machine, in theory, could implement any possible effective procedure. So every effective procedure has a corresponding Turin machine. He then did a bit of mathematical, logical tricks where he said, look, we could describe any such Turin machine with a sequence of whole numbers. And we could just put those whole numbers together and just get a really big, big whole number. So every Turing machine, and therefore every effective procedure has a corresponding whole number. Now, it might be really big. It might be a couple hundred thousand

digits long. But just conceptually speaking, there is a way to label every possible effective procedure with the whole number. Then he looked at what do we mean by a problem? And he focused in on a subset of problems you might try to solve. These were called decision problems. He did a little bit of mathematical logic. And he argued every problem can be represented by a real number. That is a number, a decimal point number that has an infinite number of decimal places. You know, 1.0146, 5, 7, 8, often to infinity. And in fact, there's a one-to-one correspondence there that you could take every real number and that exactly describes a particular decision problem. This was a big deal because there is a well-known

result, going back to Cantor, now we're going back to the 19th century, that says there are many more real numbers than natural numbers. There exists no way to map every natural number onto a real number such that you've covered all the real numbers. The impact of that is, okay,

if we map every possible effective procedure to the problem it solves, there will be many problems left over that aren't being mapped to by an effective procedure, math, math, math, logic, logic, logic. And the conclusion is there's many more problems out there in the universe

and there are algorithms or effective procedures that can solve them. Most things that most problems out there can't be solved by effective procedures. This was the question that Hilbert was trying to answer. Turing answered it. So this was all about logic, mathematical logic,

foundational math that was going on right then. None of this had to do with computers. The reason why we connect this to modern digital computing is you can say Turing's notion of a Turing machine is an abstract notion of a computer because you have this that the tape could have on it instructions that a Turing machine could run. He talked about in his original paper something called

the universal Turing machine where the input on the tape is a description of another Turing machine and it simulates it. So you do have some of the conceptual basics there of a computer reading a program and executing it. Okay, fair enough. Also, we do know that von Neumann at Princeton was familiar with Turing's work. He met Turing when Turing was visiting the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Von Neumann later advanced the Von Neumann architecture for modern computers, which is the one we use today. So there's a little bit of an influence there as well. But the idea that Turing single-handedly sort of introduced this idea

that we could have these universal computing machines, that's just not true. Before Turing even did this work, well before this work was well known, outside of esoteric mathematical circles, we already had general-purpose analog electronic computers. We had, for example, Vannevere Bush's differential analyzer at MIT. In the mid-1930s, we began to get the very first ideas being proposed for making fully electronic computing machines.

As the war went on, there was a huge push to have more advanced electronic computing. They were using these to calculate artillery tables and to help aim at the aircraft guns in some sort of cybernetic sense. There's a huge research effort for this. And while it's true that Turing after the war, got involved. involved in a project in the UK to develop an electronic computer. This was one of at least a half dozen ongoing projects, many

of which finished sooner. I think the ENIAC at Penn, for example. There was a Van Neumann's project at Princeton. There was a project going on at Harvard. A lot of people were working on this problem. They didn't need Turing to do it. The final thing people point to

is they saw that movie about whatever it was called the imitation game. And like, well, didn't he invent these sort of computing machines to break the Enigma code? No, those were developed by the polls. The Polish code breakers developed those. Turing was just building a more advanced version of those machines. They had more funding.

So they used to the initial work that the polls had put into breaking the enigma and then expanded it. I love Turing, but he didn't invent the computer. So who would I go back and rub out if I was trying to delay the computer? I would say Claude Shannon in the early 1930s. Claude Shannon in the early 1930s wrote the most important master thesis that anyone has ever written before. It was called a symbolic analysis of relay and switching circuits. This master thesis is what figured out the entire field of digital electronics. This was the really key breakthrough that everything else was built on.

Shannon had been interning at Bell Labs where he was seeing electromagnetic relays. Phone networks use electromagnetic relays to automatically connect calls using electrical signals. He was also studying for a degree in mathematics at MIT. He put those two things together

and he said, wait a second. You can take purely logical statements expressed in Boolean algebra and you can implement them with electronic circuits using these electromechanic relays. So you can take an arbitrary mathematical

specification of a logical circuit and build it. Anything you can come up with, any Boolean algebra statement you can come up with. We have a systematic way of building that with wires and magnets.

We can build an electronic circuit. I have a quote. He said this later in life. It just happened that no one else was familiar with both of these fields at the same time. So he happened to be

in both worlds, math phone company came together. That was probably the single biggest innovation because once we realize we can build arbitrary logic into electrical circuits, that's what opened up the whole hope that whatever idea we have that we want to implement, whatever adding circuit or logic circuit,

or whatever we need to implement our conceptual design of a computer, whatever we can come up with, if we can specify it mathematically, we can build it. So if we're going to follow this sort of oddly martial exploration of early computing, Shannon in the 30s, getting rid of Shannon in the 30s would probably have a bigger impact

than getting rid of Turing in the 30s. So there we go. So I geeked out with Sam and I thought I would use this as an occasion to geek out with you as well. We're going to shift gears completely and get to our interview with J.T. Ellison. Let's talk about thriller writing.

Let's stop talking about electro circuits. But before we get there, I want to briefly first mention one of the sponsors that makes this show possible. I want to talk in particular about our friends at Hinson shaving. You've heard me talk about this before. It is one of my favorite personal hygiene products, rather, that I've come across in the last couple of years. What it is is a precision manufactured aluminum shaving razor. It is manufactured by a company that is previously known for their work on manufacturing high-precision aerospace components.

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All right. Well, I'm here with J.T. Ellison. J.T., thank you for coming on to the podcast. I've been telling people, oh, my audience is really interested in genre fiction, writing, making a living as a writer. But the reality is really just, I'm very interested in this topic. And so, like, secretly I'm using my podcast as an excuse to, the genre. just pick your brain about all things about being a professional fiction writer. So, so thank you for indulging me here. Absolutely. Thanks for wanting to be interested in it. It's, you know, I still think you've got a novel in you. I feel it ready to come out.

Yes. You say that and my, my nonfiction editor feels like a disturbance in the force. Something is not right here. You've got time. I got time. That's right. That's right. So what I was thinking here is three parts. I wanted to start talking about your story, which I think from my audience perspective, is actually like a nice deep life case study. Then I want to get into the weeds with the publishing industry and how that works and where it's going. And there's some stuff we've been talking about on on the show that we're going to get the real scoop on from you. And then I have some advice questions towards the end about people looking to do something similar in their lives.

lives. Let's imagine there's a 40-year-old professor nonfiction writer. Let's just call him Kyle, who wants to write a novel. So we'll get there. We'll get there later. So I want to start with your story, in particular from what I understand, your story picks up, you're around my neck of the woods at first. You're a denizen of D.C. and politics, and go from there to thrill or writing. How do you typically relay that story of DC to bestsellerdom? Yeah, it is kind of an circuitous route, right? My parents moved us to D.C. when I was 15, and I went to Langley, so I lived in McLean, and my mom worked in the White House. My dad worked for Lockheed Martin. And I, you know, I was an English wonk.

I absolutely loved it and knew that I wanted to be a writer and English was always my best class. And so I went to school to get a creative writing degree. But living inside the Beltway, you can't not get bitten by that bug. It's such an unique place. You have to be plugged into it. You have to be interested in it. And so I also majored in political science. I had a dual major. And when it was time to go to grad school to go get my MFA that had been the plan all along, my professor said, you are not good enough to get published, which I listened to. And at the time, I probably wasn't. But, you know, what are you going to do when someone you respect just flat out says, you don't have it.

This is like an English professor, a literature professor at college. Yeah, it was my thesis. Your thesis is fine. And was your thesis literary? Like, what was he judging? It was. It was short stories and poems and, you know, all the things that you need for an MFA program. And yeah, so I would, all right, I'm interested in politics as well. I'm going to go to graduate school. And so I went to GW and got a degree in political management thinking that I would run campaigns. worked in the White House, which was a lot of fun. Worked post-White House in aerospace marketing, as you do when your dad works for Lockheed Martin and your candidate loses. You don't have a lot of choices in the market at that moment. And then we moved to Nashville and I turned into a bad country music song.

I couldn't find a job. My cat died. I finally went to work for a vet and ended up having back surgery. three days in, I blew out my back and had to have back surgery. And while I was recovering, I went to the library and asked if they had any new authors for me to try. And she said, have you ever read John Sanford? I've always been a big thriller reader. She said, have you ever read John Sanford?

I said, no. And she gave me the first three pray books. And I was three books in and went, this is it. I'm going to try this. And I told my husband, I want to write a book. And he said, go for it. I think I was driving him kind of crazy anyway, not having anything to do. And that was it.

I wrote that first paragraph and went, wow, I'm home. So a little eight-year gap. I mean, you said once, I think on the Oprah Network documentary, there was some transition point where you're like, I'm now doing this full time. And you said it was the most peaceful moment I've ever had. What was the transition point? Was it writing the first paragraph? Was it publishing the first book? When did you get that piece of I'm doing this full time?

And that makes me happy. It was the first period on that first paragraph. I literally burst into tears because I had been gone from what I was meant to be doing. I meant to be a writer. That is my path. It's always been my path. And I diverged and did a lot of really cool things. But I chafed it the bit through the whole thing.

I don't play well with others. I don't like being told what to do. Being a writer is absolutely perfect for folks like me who, you know, have a lot of ambition, but don't like people guiding them through that. But yeah, and I got lucky really fast. I mean, I'll be honest, I wrote what I thought was a novel and sent it all over New York. And turns out it was actually a novella. And you're not supposed to submit directly.

You're supposed to get an agent. I just literally had no idea. But then I found out and realized, okay, I went back and rewrote it, made it a real novel, submitted, was looking for agents. My agent found me, which was fabulous. And then he submitted that book to seven publishers, and they all rejected it. And I got to loop back to the college moment of you're not good enough to get published. I'm like, well, maybe I'm not. But he said, write me another book, and I did.

And that one sold in a three-book deal. And the rest is history. And that all happened in about a two and a half year period. So it happened very quickly. I got really lucky, really fast. Interesting. Well, let's do the Tim Ferriss thing here, which is backing up to, you said, I discovered, after you sent a novella around, I discovered this is not how it works. This is not a novel.

What has discovered mean? I mean, did you, where did you get, did you get insider information? I want to know about how you figured out, oh, this is how the industry works, that refocusing of your effort. It's just, it's so embarrassing to, you know, look back on that now. I was such an enthusiastic kid. I did go to a book signing. I went to my first book signing and met an author named John Connolly, who I absolutely worship. Just he's incredible. And he, very kindly, I went determined that I was going to talk to him. And when I did, I said, can I buy you a drink? And he says, well, we are all going out for drinks. Why don't you come with? And I grabbed my husband and off we went. And John was so incredibly gracious with me. He explained a lot about how to get an agent, offered to send my book to his agent when it was ready, asked me the elevator pitch,

which I completely botched. And he was like, okay, you need to work on that. And he just extended me so much grace. And that is something I have found in this industry. After that night, I met a couple other people that were there to see him. One was a woman who had a critique group. And she belonged to an organization called Sisters in Crime. And they have, you know, their own critique groups within that.

It was an online forum that you could get. get in and actually talk to other writers. And suddenly I went from working in a vacuum alone in my house to having a community. And it was incredibly fulfilling very, very quickly to suddenly know, wow, there are people out there doing this. And they taught me a lot. I mean, the critique group really taught me how to write. I might have a degree in writing, but I didn't know how to write.

Because that's what I'm interested in is how you. figure out, like, literally how to craft a book in a particular genre. And so was it the critique group? Is this, I mean, I've heard you talk about interviews before, like, learning how to make dialogue naturalistic was a, like, a big turning point. Was this the type of feedback that was coming out of the group? Like, what was the instruction that helped you actually learn this specific craft? There were two huge things. One is a process and one is craft. The process part was we had to show up with 10 pages every other week. So I started getting that discipline of having to write and have new work every two weeks to go in

for them. And then you read it out loud and they critiqued it. And, you know, they said, why is this character doing this? Why would she, you know, why is Taylor not talking to Baldwin? You know, all of those little nitty-gritty details that as readers and writers, the story wasn't working for them. And I would go back and I would work on it. And then I would fix all that and move forward. And it propelled me through the first several books that I wrote, learning, you know, and then the first time you get copy edited, that helps a lot. That helps a lot. All the little things that you don't realize you're doing, all the MFA mistakes that, you know, I would have been making in a more literary novel that don't fit into the thriller, that was, you know, that was

very eye-opening, very eye-opening. So I had, I've always had this theory, which I don't know if it's correct or not. So tell me if I have the right framework for understanding the fiction publishing world. So it seemed to me that there's two thresholds. Like, so there's a, a amateur professional threshold. So that's the threshold of you've learned a craft. like you're it's actually if you read this it wouldn't catch your attention as an editor is like oh this is not a professional thriller writer it has to craft right the idiom right everything right

um and then there's this other threshold of okay is this particular idea or this particular author something we want to that catches our attention is that a good way of thinking of it like it's a dual threshold thing you have to get above amateur level plus then have the whatever the idea that catches the attention absolutely and and i have a absolutely absolutely perfect example of that. One of the best rejections I ever got was for what was the novella at the time. And the editor came back and said, this is great. The writing's great. Characters are great. I love it. There is nothing that elevates it past every other submission that I get. Whoa. Ouch. You know, that is really a painful thing to hear. But it all

also gave me that, okay, what do I need to do to level this up? I got to level up if I have any hope of making it into getting an agent, getting a publishing house. You know, the 1% of authors get agents and 1% of the agent and submissions get deals. It's a very small number, which is amazing considering the millions of books that are published every year. All that creativity out there. Wow. But, okay, I'm getting a sign. The, I deconstructed. After that happened, I sat down with the Sanford novel and a Lee Child novel, a Tammy Hogue novel, Erica Spindler, Alex Caba, and a couple others. And I de, I used my, my good creative writing degree, and I deconstructed the novels and looked at how does it open. Who is coming into the scene? Who is the scene about? Why are they there?

What is the plot point? How are they moving the thread of the plot from this chapter to this chapter to this chapter? I started getting a better sense of it, a much better sense of it. And so I went back and tried it and that time it worked. So just to get the timeline straight, there's the novella and then the group that you met through John Conley that was during the writing of the first full-length novel that got rejected. All right. So you said the agent, some of the editors liked the novella, but you hadn't gone through the writing group process yet. So was that not yet completely in the right form? Or it sounds like you kind of already had that figured out by the time you wrote the novella. It was already passing the muster of this is professional writing in the genre.

I don't think it was. I don't think it was. I think, you know, A, I'm completely ripping off my mask of new. be, right, sending it directly to these editors, that they even respond. I mean, that I, you know, I would go to the mailbox every day waiting for that self-address stamped envelope to come back. It was so, so incredibly exciting. And then they would come back and they would say, hey, this is good, but, you know, keep trying. Keep working on it. I, of course, did submit that novella to John Sanford's editor, who is now a friend of mine, you know, now all these years later. And I told him

about it and he was like yeah i don't even remember that i'm like oh thank god because i did it under a different name i did do that under a different name so but you know when it was a full-length novel when it was it was clearly a franchise character um at the time so this was 2005 um when when all this was really happening and my first book came out in 2007 so this was in 2005 i had joined a group blog called murderati where i wrote a weekly column every Friday. I was part of the the Guppies and the Sisters and Crime group. I was part of the critique group. I had just plugged in to this community and I was reading everything I'd get my hands on to see how I could become a better writer. And I got a lot of encouragement from a lot of people early on. And, you know,

I probably would have quit if I hadn't had that community. I would have listened to that critical a voice that started when I was 21 and I would have walked away. But everybody pushed me just to try a little bit harder and to be a little bit better. And it worked. So if the, so the first novel, the first novel was rejected, but was good. And then the second one had a three book deal. If we did some sort of differential analysis, what's the key differences between novel manuscript number two and novel manuscript number one? plot to start with. It was the same characters. It was definitely plot. I elevated the plot. I elevated the number of characters and their side stories and all of that kind of stuff. And I brought in a character later on to introduce him into the series instead of starting with him. And that really just kind of helped. It was the franchise character, Taylor Jackson. and it was a much darker book.

So here's why that book didn't sell. This is the God to Honest Truth. The killer had a reason that was organic. And in the second book, he was just cruel. It was just genuine cruelty. The first one wasn't quite dark enough because there was a redemptive thread there because he didn't have control. It was doing things because of us, a physical reason.

That was the huge difference. And that's what they wanted it dark. They wanted, especially in that moment, female authors who could write really dark stuff. And that was what the market wanted. And that's what I gave them. It was really dark. I mean, the darkest of my books won an award. I'm like, I can't believe you guys are sick.

This is creepy. It's genuinely a creepy story. What are you thinking? But, you know, when you go there, when you're willing to go there, and that was the difference. I went ahead and went there. So then what happened? Okay. So once you're in the door and you have your first deal, and from what I understand,

multi-book is pretty common for new writers in genre fiction, right? If we're going to sign you, we want to sign you for multiple books. Especially if you're doing a series. Yeah. Okay. Right. I mean, this was like Stephanie Myers signed a three-book deal with Twilight, which was, you know, the best $750,000 deal probably that was ever signed in the history of publishing. Yeah. So what's it like once you're in the industry? Is it, okay, now as long as I keep doing this once a year, this is a sustainable career, or is it incredibly precarious? What's it like once your foot's in the door in that type of thriller writing?

So the first thing, when my agent called to say that we had gotten an offer, the first thing he said is they want to know if you can write two books a year. Two a year. Two a year. And I said, of course I can. I'm going to jeopardize this opportunity by saying no. So, yeah, I can write two books a year. And I did. So I wrote two books a year for several years.

That's why 2007 to 2022, I have my 25th book is getting ready to come out. So I've done way more. I usually write three a year. And it was not, I don't want to say it was easy, but because I was in one world, one set of characters, a series, it's carrying on. It wasn't as difficult as if I was trying to write a standalone twice a year, standalone being something that doesn't have continuing characters. So, and that was that was the mom.

I mean, there were folks like Alison Brennan that they were, they would release three of her books at once. They would do one in January, one in February, one in March. They just got as much product out into the marketplace as they possibly could. And you built a readership really quickly. And that was then the base of everything that they did after that. So what's the, that's interesting. I'm interested in this, in that model. I mean, so it's the model there, the more books, the more you can build a readership,

but also it's the more you're monetizing each reader you already have. So if I become a fan of yours on your first book and you're publishing three a year, the publishing company is getting three book sales out of me every year. So, yeah, so it's at the model. Like actually more content in fiction, it maximizes the revenue. It's at some sort of optimal point. Right. So it's an upside down triangle.

You know, you get this one, little bit of readership out of your first book and then they follow you to the second book but then there's a whole new readership that gets the second book so they go back and by the first book. Then by the third book same thing. You've got all

of these first tier, second tier fans and now the third tier are new to it and they go back and do one and two. What's interesting is publishing has gotten away from this model. I mean they just don't do this anymore. Even in fiction even in genre. They're not the traditional houses aren't doing that anymore.

Yeah, they have slowed everybody down. And it's the indie authors who are doing the fast releases. Well, yeah, that's, yeah. Because they get it. Interesting, interesting. Because, okay, I have two follow it. I mean, I want to get back to your story in a second, but this industry insider stuff is interesting to me. My first observation is very different in nonfiction.

There's a different fear in nonfiction. There's an audience fatigue. People will not follow a nonfiction author like they will a series in fiction. I mean, they'll follow in the sense that I'll read Malcolm Gladwell when his new book comes out because I like Malcolm Gladwell. But if he publishes three books this year, that's too much Malcolm Gladwell. So there's a weird, like, refractory period with nonfiction where you can you can overstay your readership. Like, I've read something by you. Why do you, the publishing houses pull back from that model was to say it's just the capital flow or,

the, you know, the expense. Is this a contracting industry? I'm trying to understand what their motivation might have been. Part of it was e-books, which kind of put a spike in the mass market paperback format. So you get, you know, the traditional, you would come out with a hardcover, and then 11 months later, the mass market would come out in preparation for the next hardcover, right? That's the, that's the Grisham model, the one a year Grisham model. For those of us, who were doing the fast release, I started in mass market. Harlan Coben started in mass market. Laura Lipman started in mass market.

That was my plan all along, right? Ten mass markets and then write a big hardcover standalone and make the jump into the big leagues, right? But e-books came along and really messed with that. They changed the entire structure of how publishing works. And so there really wasn't as much of a market for mass market. I mean, you can go to the grocery store now.

Some of the grocery stores still have a book section, but most of them don't. And the drug stores, you know, Walgreens used to have this huge wall of mass market. That's where I used to get my books. You know, I would go whatever to pick up a prescription at Walgreens and buy two or three of the thickest books I could find at the cheapest price point. E-books created a cheaper price point. Kindle made it very attractive to read on a device, thousands of. of books at your fingertips and it's an incredibly romantic idea. And it really kind of changed the

trajectory for a lot of us that we're doing that quick release. And was it, it was changing the discovery mechanism. So in a pre-ebook mass market world, you would go to a books, you would go to a place where you were seeing books. And so there was physical discovery. E-books changed that model as digital discovery. And now people are being driven to books through other forces, not just seeing it. So it's much harder to have an author be discovered. Was that part of the dynamic going on? Sure. Sure.

And we had the attrition of the review space, too. That truly was damaging. And, you know, we go from the Indies to the big box stores. And then the ebooks come along. And then Amazon figures out how to capitalize on that. The big box stores start going away. Borders closing. Well, borders closing really hit all.

lot of us in the genre world hard. That really, it just cut everybody's sales in half immediately. And so that's, you know, the music industry went through the same sort of changes as the publishing industry has. But it seems to have recovered a bit. The trade paperback is really popular format for a lot of genres. You know, the new Colleen Hoover that came out. that sold 810,000 copies first week. Go, Colleen. Trade paperback. It's a lower price point.

It's people love them. It's, so the industry has been in flux since I've been in it. It has changed dramatically month, the month, year to year since I started. So if we go back to, let's say, like, 2007, 2008, it's pretty early into your career as a full-time novelist.

What's your life like back then, day to day? Day to day. So I signed my first deal just in time to attend the very first international thriller writers conference that was out in Arizona as a writer, that I got the badge that had writer on it. And that was, you know, the most incredible moment. I mean, talk about suddenly feeling like you belong, right? It's the secret handshake.

Now you're an author, now you're there as a peer to the people that you love. And I met all of the people that I read. I went up to Tess Garrison and I was completely tongue-tied and I said, Tess, you're my biggest fan. Just really embarrassing, embarrassing stuff. I always have been a little bit of a puppy when it comes to all of this. I get really excited. But I met Lee Child and Lee Child and I hit it off. And we had a small group of writers called Killer Year, a small collective.

This is where we're going to get into the Crichton stuff later. So remind me of this. A small collective of mass market writers who we knew we weren't going to get the kind of attention that the hardcover debuts were going to get. So we banded together in a marketing organization called ourselves. killer year, went into that ITW, that conference with t-shirts, bags, just all the swag, and got the attention of the industry. And the international thriller writers board said, you know what, this is a really cool idea. Can we adopt you? We're like, yes, you can. So we became the debut authors of the international thriller writers. They now have an annual program for. We're like, yes, you can. We're

or debuts that is based on the killer year model, that they bring in all the new writers, they get to go to the conference, they get to stand up at a breakfast and introduce their books and introduce themselves to the industry. It was really a magical thing. And it changed how the publishers do marketing. We suddenly started seeing, oh, hey, we can put authors from different houses together and market them in one way. It was really cool. It was really cool. It was a really cool thing. So I was involved. I was one of the founders of the killer year.

I was blogging at Murderati. I mean, I was going hard and fast, right? In two books a year, you know, just making up for lost time. I was making up for lost time for sure. And were you doing at this point, I've heard you say four hours, like four hours a day? So was there a strict one to four? Thousand words a day, one to four in the afternoon. It's just sacred time, sacred space.

that and this was just before Facebook came and ruined all of our lives. I shouldn't say that. I mean, I've met, I've gotten a lot of really great friends through social media and a lot of phenomenal readers. And it's a wonderful, wonderful tool. You're in a safe space. You're in a safe space to ding social media here. You don't have to worry about that. Zuckerberg is not listening to my show.

You know this. You know, I have a love-hate relationship with social media. I hate that we have to do it. I love the people that I know there. The Facebook came along right as I was getting my first book out. So I was the last book in killer year of 2007. Mine came out in November. I was the last one. Everybody else was already out. And Facebook had come along 2006 as we were starting the month. market everything. So we put all of our effort there and started growing these huge followings on Facebook. And that's part of our marketing plan was how we were going to get the books out. It was, I saw early on how detrimental it was to my mental health, how detrimental it was to my creative life. And that's when I instituted, okay, no matter what, every day, one o'clock, everything gets turned off. And I write from one to four. Yeah. And that's the only way I was able to keep up with everything that I was doing.

I did business in the morning and creative in the afternoon. And so at a one to four every afternoon, how long, so that would take how long to finish a novel? You could, if you're doing two a year, I guess the answer is four or five months. Four months. Okay. Yeah. It was a, it was a month of research because what I was doing was very research heavy at the time. I was having to go out with, you know, write-alongs with the cops and medical.

examiners and all that fun stuff. FBI agents. It's cool. So a month of research and kind of thinking about what I was going to do, what the story was, four months of writing, a month of editing. And the research, like you would do this and the one the four as well? Everything's within, yeah. No, that was, that was usually in the morning. Because I was also writing one book, editing one book, and promoting one book all at the same time. I always had three books in, in very stages of what was happening. So when you say business in the morning, that includes researching the next book and publicity activities for the last book. So you're gathering. What about outlining, figuring out the plot? Is that something you would do as part of your one to four time in the

immediate lead up to writing for a book? Or is that also happening in the morning or outside? It's, so I'm a pancer. I am very, very loose with my outlines. I outline a little bit more now that I'm doing standalins. But back then, it was, it was just go sit down, read what I wrote the day before, edit that. So it was just that little small loop back to refresh my memory of, okay, here's where I was yesterday, and then plow through. And, you know, I could do, I mean, I can do a thousand words in an hour if I want to. If I'm really, really focused, I get in that flow. And it's like, okay, the words are just flying out of me, which is the best state to be in. It's, you know, I always love those days because you end up somewhere where you didn't know you were going to go.

It's really fun. But the, you know, so it would take probably an hour to do the, you know, edit what was there. Look at, you know, sometimes I'd go back two chapters. I used to write very linear stories. So it was really easy to, okay, this is what happens next, next, next, next. As I've matured into my creativity, I don't do that anymore. I write what I feel like writing that day. it keeps it a little more exciting.

They're usually multi points of view and many, many, you know, going back and forth in time and stuff. So that it's a lot easier not to go in a linear fashion when you're doing it that way. But you're saying you might be, you might spend up to the first hour sometimes editing what you wrote the day before. That's when you, yeah, okay. And that's you tighten it up or say maybe even I don't like the way this is, in retrospect, this has pushed me. a direction that is going to be hard to get back from. So let's roll it back. It could be pretty drastic, I assume, on some days.

Oh, it can be because you know, you're like, okay, and nothing happens. I'm ready to go. Nothing happens. It's like, all right, you've gotten off track. So you have to go back and figure out where you got off the train tracks. So what do you have to figure out in advance for this genre? Do you have to figure out there's like a, the ending, the twist, the, you know, is there a skeleton you have to figure out.

Here's the words going to be set. Here's the twist. Here's the five beats. How much has to be figured out before you say I can start writing? For me, I have a tendency to just start writing. Interesting. And then figure it out later. Because I just, I like to kind of immerse into the story.

So I'll probably get 10,000 words down. I'll usually know who the character is going to be. I'll know who. I won't know who the killer is. is. Interesting. Or who the villain is. You know, as I've gotten away from those kinds of books, I'm doing something different now.

So I don't normally know who did it unless it is a serial killer and it's from their point of view, right? Then I know who did it. But I often don't know how. I don't know necessarily why I'm discovering that as I go. That's the fun part of it for me. I know it probably gives a lot of people hives, the idea of just let it happen. But I was going so fast. And I was so, in my defense, I was so immersed in the world of these characters and in their lives and all of the things that were happening that it wasn't very hard to just slip into their shoes.

And okay, that kind of writing is very reactive. You have, especially cops, any sort of law enforcement, they're trying to prevent something bad from happening again. Something bad happens. They come in and try to stop it from happening again. That's not rocket science formula to sit down and work out on a day-to-day basis. Yeah. Well, so when you're doing the research where you're spending time with FBI agents, medical examiners, the Nashville police, is that all just about? about picking up tools for the toolkit, like lingo, things that happen, things people do, equipment.

This is just filling the toolbox so that when you're then writing, you can say things right. Or you're like, oh, let's use whatever, such and such tool that the coroner uses the cut open skulls. I know what that's called. Why don't we put that in there? So you're not researching. I'm writing a book where the serial killer is a circus clown, and I need to understand. and how the circus works or something. It's more just all right now, this particular lead is part of the Nashville police force.

Let's just understand that world. I'll draw from that later. So character is king in genre fiction. Yes, you have to have a propulsive plot, but the characters are what keep people coming back to a series, right? They fall in love with the character. They want to see what they do. And in order to develop good characters, I had to become intimately familiar with how the police force worked. I had to become familiar with how a medical examiner, you know, you're right.

It's the toolkit. It's the lingo. But it's also their how they react to certain situations. I mean, cops have a tendency, and they've got gallows humor, they have a tendency to either get really religious or become alcoholics. because what they see on a day-to-day basis is horrific. And I mean, just the things I saw on the few ride-alongs, I did eight ride-alongs, just the things that I saw there, the first overnight ride-along, you know, I went into it again, puppy, very excited, this is amazing, it's going to be so cool.

And the very first thing we did was roll up onto a stabbing. and the man who had been stabbed, bled out in front of us, died. His friend that had stabbed him, they caught him, put him in the back of the car. They've got the murder weapon. We went, you know, here he is. This man just murdered somebody and he's sitting behind me in a car and we drive to the courthouse and they book him. And, you know, I got to see literally from start to finish.

And I went home at six in the morning and I sat down on the couch and I looked down and I had his blood on my boots. And it got real for me. It wasn't, oh, this is really cool. I'm writing about cops. It became a very intense experience. And everything that I did from that moment on, I wanted to make sure that I had it right. And that if a cop picked up one of my books and read it, they would say, this is. is our life.

So it did become a little less flip for me as I started doing that work. I mean, just as a technical question, to even set up a ride-along like that, the key is I published a book or I have a deal to write a book with publisher X? That's basically the stakes to asking a police department. Well, again, not exactly how I called. I called down to Metro Nashville to the homicide office. And, you know, I've got a hook, right? Has there ever been a serial killer in Nashville? And the guy that answered, he was like, why do you want to know that? Can we get your name and phone number because you're starting to start. Yeah. He's like, are you auditioning for this role? Why? So he immediately, he's like, why don't you come in?

Why don't you come in and have a conversation with me? Turns out he was a writer as well or wanted to be a writer. And so he saw an opportunity to learn from me just as I saw an opportunity to learn from him. We'll get back to our interview with J.T. Ellison in just a moment. But first, I wanted to briefly mention another sponsor that makes this show possible. And that is policy genius. You know you need life insurance. hope you never have to use it, but you know you need it. If you don't have it, the reason is

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Just go to Stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the page and enter the code deep. All right, note that. Let's get back to our interview with JT. So what's the economics, or at least then? We can talk about how that's different now, but what were the economics of being a two or three time a year, mass market original thriller writer like in that first decade of the 2000s is that a I can you can make a stable living off of it is it precarious is it winner take all like what's that industry like or what was it like it is I mean the faster you go the more you get paid right

so that was also driving me like okay you know the I get paid they break your contract at that level, they break your contract into three payments. You get paid for all three books as an advance at once. So, hey, great, we get a nice little chunk of change. Then you get paid on turning an outline and then you get paid when you turn in the book. The higher advances, they break them into fourths, the even higher, fifths, sometimes six. It just depends. You know, you get paid on hardcover release and mass market release. And it just, it, you've, you've seen publishers marketplace in the, the, so I, I got a, was it a very nice deal for my, my first, I mean, I, again, great agent lucked out, got a decent

chunk of change to start. Yeah. More than a lot of my peers, which was phenomenal. And I wrote really fast. And I, I met my deadlines. And that made them want to buy more books. So I had all three books done before my first book. came out and a new deal before my first book came out.

So I had six books under contract before my first book came out. Interesting. That wasn't necessarily like everybody else. That was a little unique. I mean, that's interesting aside, by the way, that the publisher's marketplace code words. And for the listeners who don't know, there's a publisher market, they announced deals and they have this terminology of good deal, nice deal, very good deal. But it sounds like actually someone who's writing.

in a genre, those deals mean a very different thing than for a nonfiction writer. Because if a nonfiction writer gets a very nice deal, that might be spread, you know, that might be their money for two years or two and a half year. If you can get that all in one year. And then so what's the key to debt, you make your deadlines? What else goes into continuing to get new contracts? If you want to stay as a full-time writer in the genre, is it they're just happy as long as you're reliable to keep putting books in the pipeline?

Is it sales numbers based? It will keep you as a writer, but we're going to adjust those advances up and down every time based on the last numbers we have. What's that reality? It's all about the readers. If you don't connect with the readers,

you don't get another deal because you don't sell books and you've got to sell books. I mean, that's just, that's the bottom line. You have to be able to turn a little bit of a profit for the publisher.

And that means building a readership And that means outreach into the community, doing, you know, touring, all of the, all of that kind of stuff. But yeah, I mean, the readers are king, right? If you aren't getting a readership, your career is going to fail. And that's very difficult. There are people, though, that got a readership and their careers failed anyway. You just, it's, there's some sort of alchemo process that, that, you know, happens. And I don't know what it is and I don't know why some careers work and some don't.

I think mine worked because I was rather relentless about it. I just kept shoving editorial in front of them that was good. It was getting good reviews and the readership liked it. I wasn't going to take no very an answer. I had already been deterred once. I wasn't going to be deterred again. But that also meant I did a lot of work that wasn't creative work. I did a lot of going out on tour, going to conferences, building relationships. One of the most important things is supporting other authors in the genre and sharing their work with your people and say, you know, hey, if you like my stuff, you're going to love Alison Brennan and Lisa Unger and Mary Kubica. You've got to read them too.

And that, you know, we all did that for each other. the rising tide lifted all boats. So back then, what worked for building an audience? What did you do in your first five years? Facebook. So how? Facebook like I got to. What does that mean though?

How do you build, like in 2008, how do you build a Facebook group? Like, how do you get new people there? You post funny things that people liked. And you commented on other people's posts. We had the blog. We had that murderati blog. I was also writing short stories. that were getting placed all over in all of the magazines and all of the online magazines,

the zines that were going on. I was hustling. I hustled, right? I didn't sit back and just write the next book because at that time, the people that were just sitting back and writing the next book weren't being rewarded. They were getting dropped because, You know, of the 13 that started in Killer Year, only one or two of us is actually still traditionally published. Most are indie, and several just don't have a career at all.

They're gone. Interesting. They disappear. So you're big on. And that's, that attrition is real. So you were big on Facebook. You're doing short stories. And then Twitter.

Okay. And you think this all was, and then were you capturing, and we've talked about this before offline, but you, you're capturing readers at all, like in a new, you? email newsletter? Newsletter. Just and I've always, because it's the only thing I owned, my blog and my newsletter were the only things I owned and I recognized that early on because, you know, I got to $5,000 on Facebook and what are you going to do after that? You can't have any more friends, no more people.

Then they made the author pages. Oh, okay. So we moved everybody over to an author page and it grows from there. But yeah, the newsletter has always been, I would literally share. show up at a signing with a notebook out in front of my books and say sign up for my newsletter. And that, that worked. I mean, I've got a pretty robust newsletter list. And I send out a monthly, still, I send out a monthly newsletter.

And that's, that is the main focus of everything that I do. Is that the core right now of what, you see everything else as, in terms of channels, as bringing people to the newsletter. And the newsletter is the core thing that's going to alert, you. your existing audience, there's a new book to keep them interested, to keep them buying? That's what I try to do. Yes. That is what I try to do.

It is especially around release. The publishers really do depend on us to, as you've very eloquently put it, rent out our audiences to them for free, which drives me crazy. Because I'm in a, I've got so many books that are being downpriced that I, I, I'm, I've got a sale going every week. And, you know, the publisher wants me to be out there saying, hey, this book's for sale. And it turns into buy my book, buy my book, buy my book. You know, and that's just not what I'm about. I'm about sharing my work with people. And, you know, hey, if they get a deal on the side, cool. But I'm much more interested in the discourse between myself and the reader. And that's something we've talked about that I have a difficult time

stepping away entirely from some of these places because there is, is an age breakdown. The older readers who are my core loyalist from Taylor Jackson days are still Facebook people. And I can't, I mean, they get my newsletter, but I can't migrate them to a blog. The Instagram people are my new, that's my new audience with my standalones that are more domestic suspense than the psychological thriller. So I'm writing, I'm appealing to different audiences in different places, but the one constant is that newsletter. So is Instagram more slice-a-lifie than Facebook? It changes the type of content you're putting out about yourself? Yeah. And that's, I'm not comfortable with it. I'm actually a really private person and Instagram, you know, yeah, there's a lot of pictures of my cats.

That seems to be the cat posts do really, really well. And, you know, the performance. part of it is just, I'm just not, I'm just not really good at that. That's, I'm not comfortable with that. Um, I've got people that help me with it. Um, right now actually, because Instagram has switched over away from pretty pictures to reels to compete with TikTok. I hired a film student to do my reels for me. She's brilliant. She sends me a script and, you know, I want you to do this. You know, I'm over here doing the van of white thing. Is that going to sell books? It's not going to sell my books. I can't sell my own books dancing on TikTok. Right. I mean, that's always been my feeling about this. I can sell somebody else's book, though.

And that is important to me to be a good literary citizen and share other people's work with my readers and maybe, you know, help them find an audience. A lot of people reach down. the ladder and held out of hand and pulled me up my debut year. And I try very hard to do the same for them. And we've talked about that offline before too. It seems to be true with a couple notable exceptions in writing. Social media is very good in terms of book sales for its ability to have other people talk about your book. But it's only so effective in directly selling your book to someone. This seems to be some sort of reality of it. It's like a great tool for people

to discover stuff. And so, like, social media has probably sold a lot of my books. So I wanted to talk briefly about advice. I'm thinking through now someone who wants to get into this type of writing. So I have, like, a few questions here. So one is just, what is the reality of changing to this less books per year model? Is this less financially viable as a career or as the market adjusted somehow, even though you're publishing less books, that you can still make a living if you're starting today. It all depends on that advance, right? So the very first bit of advice is write the book they can't ignore, right?

Write the book that it's not going to be a derivative of what Colleen Hoover is doing. Write that book that you are passionate about, that you absolutely, you know, is unique. You've studied the market. You read everybody in your genre. You have an idea of what the market wants. This is what the indie authors are doing. very interestingly. They go in, they deep dive, they know exactly what the niche market will bear. They know what the tropes are that they need to hit in that story and they hit them and they sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

If you're going to go on a traditional route, you need a book that is going to blow their socks off. They're not buying a lot right now. It seems like they are, but it does feel like they've pulled back quite a bit on how much they're buying and how much they're buying. for. Interesting. So that big advance, you know, I've got several friends who are, you know, major authors who are getting millions in advances and they say get all the money up front. Get as much as you can. You're never going to earn out. For somebody like me, I'm not getting that big. I'm getting decent advances. I, you know, I'm certainly making a living at it. But I've also earned out all of my contracts. So I'm getting royalties on top of advances. And you can have a pretty decent living off the royalties as well if you're selling enough books.

So as the market, it seems like before there was more of a division, there was the multiple times a year genre writers, and then there was the once a year writers where it wasn't series. So there was the Grishams and the Crichtons where, hey, different characters every time, whatever. And those were bigger, they're like hardcover releases once a year and it's more falling. So is the industry kind of contract, it's contracting? and saying we're basically just shifting towards more people who can make a go at the Kryton Grisham model of the Blockbuster model, you have a chance of it being massive because we need 1% to be massive.

And so that's what they're looking for now. Right. And John is usually, John Grisham is usually the 1% massive. So his book came out this week and he moved 90, what, 91,000 units and hardcover in the first week, that's a decent first week, right? That's a tent pole. That's, and that's, that's kind of what happened. When I was coming up, there was a number one bestseller for each of these little niche genres. And then everything, you know, went horse, went vertical. And it was only the same 10 people that if you go back and look at the list in 1970, 1980, 19, 2010, same names,

the Stephen Kings, the Danielle Steele, Nora Roberts, you know, these huge franchise authors are holding up the industry with unbelievable sales. And they are paving the way for the rest of us to be able to have careers because they're making enough

that they can, the publishers can then take a chance on somebody. Would you recommend at like 2022, not starting with a series, with like a lead, a detective series, and instead trying to do like the big concept, Crichton thriller? That's, you know, I feel like the market has moved away from series. I have a series title that I have finished that I'm not publishing right now

because, you know, the market wants standalones. My publisher has moved me to standalones because that's what the market. It's, when I say the market wants it, it's much easier for the sales team to go in and say, I've got a brand new JT. Ellison novel. It's called It's One of Us. It's about infertility and this crazy DNA story. And it's nothing like anything you've ever seen. And they'll go, okay, cool, I want to buy a ton of copies for my store. Versus going in and saying, hey, JT has the ninth book in her series and, you know, it's got a huge readership and everything, but the odds of us getting new readers on the bandwagon aren't as big.

The hypothetical person I have here in mind that we're advising is it's not not the kid coming out of college. I think it's you in 2005, the equivalent of I'm 10 years into a job. I'm, you know, it's Clive Custler when he was still working out the ad agency and thinking he was going to write thriller. So there's like a shift going to happen. And, okay, so our first loose piece of advice is this is not the time to be the next Michael Conley or Lee Child. You might want to come in and have standalone.

Second piece advice is knock their socks off. So what elements could knock their socks off? Is it something like plot that hits you in the face, a new type of character or setting? Is it style? What are the elements you might control that you're trying to get that huge effect out of for the agent who reads it? the editor who reads it. I think the best way, again, I'm big on researching the market, right? I think that's always incredibly important. I would spend a little bit of time on Netflix and HBO Max and all the other streaming services and look at what books are getting picked up

because those have a universality to them. And that is something that you absolutely need right now. You need a diverse cast. You need ABCD storylines. You need characters who are, actually connecting and it can't just be that main character. You need other characters that people can latch on to and feel comfortable with or feel uncomfortable with. You have to have a story that's going to connect with people and that you do through characters. I mean, it is absolutely, the plot needs to be great. I think we've conditioned the readers for a twist. So I sometimes pull back away from doing something like that, specifically because, you know, when people zig, I like to zag. And, you know, if you're coming up right now and you're, you know, you've got a job,

you want to write a book. Nenomahriamo just started. So you're going to be, you know, laying down those 1,600 words a day trying to put a draft together. It needs to be something that they haven't seen before. And they've seen everything. There's only seven plots. Every story is derivative. of. So how do you take that and make it into something spectacular? And that's what you have to do. You have to level up from everything that you're reading, everything that you think you know about this, then put it on steroids and turn it up to a level. Right.

So you have to have, you have to be able to identify. This is the element that I'm leveling up on. And I'm just putting this as a test against the famous, you know, one big name authors of the last 40 years. and that actually kind of flies every time. Stephen King, I mean, he really up the violence of horror. I mean, those Stephen King books were. I can't read them. I mean, I can't read them.

They freak me out too. Yeah, I mean, if you thought the movie, it, like, freaked you out, go read that book. I mean, it gets weird. I mean, it gets dark. But he ramped that up. I'm thinking Crichton real early on was let's have a computer print that. and talk about the specific, you know, the specific scanning electron microscope stats in the Adronoma Street. So he got really technical.

Clancy did the same thing, right? Clancy was like, let's just get obsessive about the propulsion system on the submarines. Grisham brought in this sort of hyper-reality of the legal practice. Yeah, like Turo had kind of brought in, you know, hey, legal thrillers and there's something cool in court. cases and Grisham is like this is what the hour you know if you're the new associate at a law firm these are the mechanics of your life and the job interviews and how many hours you're billing so everyone kind of you're right there's a level up Andy Weir brought in this new new type of hard sci-fi like contemporary hard sci-fi like super hard sci-fi but not me explaining this future technology in the foundation series Asimov like this is set three years in the future and let me really get into the physics or whatever like you're not. everyone's doing so anyways everything's passing your test basically so what are you leveling up what are you what are you pushing what are you pushing to a new place what can people describe of like oh like a you know a cal newport book has blah like it's there's a thing okay that's that's good advice

um that's that's that's part of it and the other is they're not precious about them i mean every single author you just named what do they have in common they get up they get their coffee they get in front of their computer, they write their words, they bang out the story, they turn it in, and then they turn around and do it again. What's the most efficient slash effective route from I have no formal writing training, I'm just a reader, to I'm going to be able to write something when I supercharged some element to level up, but I'm going to be able to actually deliver, craft something that could be sold and seems good. what's the route from A to B for the read everything you can get your hands on, familiarize yourself with the market, institute a writing habit

that you're sitting down every day writing the book. You can't sell a fiction novel on proposal like you do with nonfiction. Nonfiction, you come up with a grand idea, you pitch it, they like to shape it into, you know, okay, this is what we're going to do. Fiction, you've got to finish the book. So you got to finish the book.

You, a lot of people go ahead and hire editorial, especially when they're starting out. So I would not discourage that. What does that mean? That means having somebody other than your mom read the book. You pay them by the hour to like an editor. Pay them by the hour by the word, usually by the word. You can get anywhere from, you know, 200, 400, 600 on up.

You join the organizations and get a critique group. get a critique partner, get somebody who will tell you the truth about it, then will say, hey, this is a brilliant idea, but you aren't at the level to write it yet. You need to read Stephen King's on writing, which is probably where everybody should start. You should read Stephen King's on writing. And if that book speaks to you, because it whispers a secret language, right, in between those lines. And if you hear that and it speaks to you, then, okay, you're probably a writer. Go get Elizabeth George's right away.

That's going to teach you how to build characters. That's going to teach you how to develop a plot and just some of those very basic parts of building a novel that you have to learn. You know, I've done it so many times now. I even go back to these books. Elizabeth George's. What book is that? Right away. Elizabeth George is right away.

Okay. Elizabeth George. Okay. So that's more nitty gritty. Here's how you make characters. Because you need the best story you can possibly tell in the best format you possibly can tell it. You know, so you say you are going to write an Andy Weir-esque kind of story or you're going to go Ernest Kline, ready player one. You need to have something wildly unique in that spot that they haven't seen 50.

thousand times before. How would you sequence the, these three things? So would you, let's say Stephen King, if that speaks to you, then Elizabeth George, would you then do paid editorial? And would you do that on what? Like, let me see if I can get three chapters and work with this person until I learn, like, I get three chapters to something that that person says, okay, that's good. And then you go to the critique group or do you start with the critique group?

I'm trying to build out here a really mechanical. timeline or sequencing. But it's art, cow. It's art. You can't necessarily apply a timeline to art. But in all seriousness, I would say the most important thing is to finish the book. And then you can start thinking about editorial. Then you can start thinking about critique groups.

But you have to write the story. Write the whole book. You got to write the whole book because you can't do anything with just chapters. Now, obviously, if you can find, if you join mystery writers of America or international thriller writers or RWA used to have romance writers of America, used to have an absolutely astounding new writer program. And every organization, every writing organization has something for the new writers, for their debuts, to try to help them learn.

Take some classes. There's absolutely nothing wrong with saying, hey, I know I want to tell a story, but I don't know how to do it. Go to a writer's conference. Go to international thriller writers. If you want to write a thriller, here is the best thing to do.

If you want to write a thriller, international thriller writers in New York, every summer, it's summer camp for thriller writers. You will meet every major name in the industry, and they have a whole day session called Craft Fest, where these loop, humanaries teach classes on how to write. Do that.

Fascine. If you can go craft fest, you will walk out with every tool you could possibly need to finish a novel. Interesting. I mean, it's a really cool experience. And I'm like this. Now things are coming together. King George's. Okay.

Sorry. King Elizabeth George's Craft Fest. Write a whole manuscript. Do the work. Now shred it, right? So between some balance of critique groups and editorial. kind of shred it, work it, rework it. Make it the best.

It can possibly. When do you know you're ready to query? Yeah. When do you know? I mean, that is the question, right? That is the question because, you know, we can work on a book. We're never done. Let me put it that way.

You're never done. Even books that are already out. I could fix things in them. So when you have a consensus from the people around you who are reading the book and say, you know what, this is pretty good, I think it's ready. When you yourself have given it everything that you possibly can, then you can go ahead and start looking at trying to get an agent

and going on submission and putting together the dreaded query letter. And again, the organizations are another brilliant resource for how to do that. And I always tell people in nonfiction, there is a way this works, please don't invent your own process. Just do the thing to, do the way it's supposed to work. Don't think that you're going to be the first person to think.

Like if I put it in a nice envelope and send it to an editor, they're going to read it and it's all bypass the agent or whatever. Don't make the mistake that I mean. Don't be like JT. Ellis. Yeah, okay. Don't feel like JT did. And then if you query it, okay, So we query, let's say you query widely and it doesn't get picked up.

Do you start the next day on Novel 2? It depends on what happens in the query process. Now, some people will get back actual notes. If you've sent out 50 queries and you don't get any response, something's wrong with your query letter. If you send out 50 queries, you get 20 requests for partials. You send those out and you get nothing. Something's wrong with your work.

If you're lucky enough, you'll get someone who gives you a little bit of insight and says, this is why this doesn't work. They don't often do that. It is very much, you're kind of out there on your own trying to figure out, okay, well, that didn't work why. There is definitely a moment where it's like, okay, this book is not going to work. You know, that's what happened with my first one. My agent was like, it's not going to work. We can rewrite it all you want, but it's just intrinsically something about it's not landing for them. something else. I have a friend that did that eight times. Eight times she sent books out on submission and it was number eight that landed her the deal. And, you know, she would get back the queries. They would say, you know, send us your next, send us your next book. She just wasn't quite there. But she would send it out and send it out. And that perseverance is what you need. Because this could be a very demoralizing industry, right? Even at your level, even at my level, I get rejections all the time. And I often tell people, I don't know if you agree with this or not, I also say, look, agents are desperate for clients.

They want clients, they need deal flow. Publishers are desperate for books they can publish. So if something is getting rejected, don't get into a mindset of these gatekeepers don't know anything and let me figure out, like, my in-round. Like, they really want, they really want you to be a writer that they could sell. Deal flow is everything. And so, yeah, when they're saying this is close but not quite yet, they want you to succeed. They want, I mean, they want you as a client. They want clients.

They want clients who are moving books. And so if you think about them being on your side as opposed to rejecting you because they just don't understand your arts, at least psychologically, maybe that makes it makes it a little bit easier. But that is, I mean, I think that is exactly the mindset that we have going into this when we're querying. It's like, oh, they just don't understand what I'm doing. It's like actually they are pretty good arbiters of what the market will bear and they know what they can sell. They want to do a sell. This is a very future looking environment. They're trying to anticipate where the trend's going, right?

Everybody hops on the trend, but in the meantime, the agents are bringing in the new stuff. Like, here's the next thing. You want to be writing the next thing. Yeah, yeah. You want to be the next thing. You want to create your own market. That is, and it's hard to do. That's why I say I like to zig.

I like to zag when people are zgging because it's like, oh, no, I am not going to go jump on that bandwagon. I'm going to go try to do something else. And you're saying that's very different in the indie market right now because it's a, it's such a fast turnaround that you can jump on trends. You can say here's a trend. And in six weeks, I can have something that's like perfectly matched. It's like you just finished Colin Hoover. Here's like exactly the same book. I have four of them right here.

So that's the difference between those. worlds. Well, this has been, I've gone, we've gone a little over, which I appreciate you Tolerating, but I think this has been fascinating, JT. I mean, we've learned a lot about your story. We've learned a lot about the publishing industry. If people want to find out more about all these great series, over 25 novels, which is amazing. You started right, your first book came out after my first book, around the same time. And yeah, and I'm writing number eight, and you're on 25. So I'm very impressed. Where do people find out more about this? they can come to JT Ellison.com.

Everything I have is there. They can sign up for the newsletter. And, you know, there are outlinks to the social medias if they want to find that as well. But sign up for the newsletter. That's what I'd recommend. Sign up for JT's newsletter

so she doesn't have to dance on TikTok. All right. Thank you, J.T. Thank you, Cal. All right, Jesse, well, there you go. That was my conversation with JT. Ellison, would you say you're about to quit and go become a thriller writer?

Are you inspired? I just always come back to like Neil Stevenson and just how he thinks about all the stuff that he writes about. I'm currently listening to one of his books on audio, Reimdy, and I'm just like flabbergasted with every paragraph. Yeah, you're a big Stevenson fan. I like Stevenson. I just think about everything. There's so much detail. Well, so this was one of the cool things that came out of this interview.

not cool for the industry, but just cool bit of knowledge, that there's this real divide, which I don't really understand so well until I talk to J.T. In the world of fiction writing, and let's put aside now literary fiction, the, you know, Jonathan Franzen trying to win awards type writing. But in the world of like more genre type fiction writing, you have this, the world of the Neil Stevenson's and the John Grishams, the people who can write one book a year or one book every few years and people know them and we'll wait for them and they have a big audience that'll buy them. Then you have this whole other world of the sort of genre, romance, thriller,

detector thrillers, all these subgenres like where JT lives. And man, I was surprised by how much they have to write. The fact that her first book deal was for three books a year. It's crazy. Like they just write. Like it's like this huge. And it almost, there's this interesting separation. And I'm sure if you can jump from one to the other, that's from the three books a year to the Stevenson, like one interesting book every two or three years, is probably the ideal. But I didn't realize how much of the fiction world

is actually much more really high volume, that you have like a personal relationship with an author who's constantly putting out books and you're constantly reading. I mean, that must be a cool connection these readers have with their writers. But man, definitely harder. On the other hand, if you're Stevenson, every paragraph has to be good, right? This is my last book in the last three years.

If that doesn't work, you probably live under the fear of like, I might have just lost half my audience. If it's one of three books, it's like, I like your characters, I like your world, and I'm just staying with you all year. So, I mean, maybe it's a, you know, the grass is always greener on the other side,

but it's interesting that there's such a divide there. It's kind of similar with YouTube, too. If you think about it, you have some channels that put out videos every day that are, you know, and then the other ones like Mr. B. who like a grand production and puts out like once a month. Yeah, and you're right. It's the same tradeoffs.

So if you can do just one great one, in some sense, that's nicer to not be on the treadmill of having to produce every day. But if it's not so great, you could lose that audience pretty quickly. What would it take like three bad Mr. Beast videos before it's been three months

until I've seen anything interesting from this guy and I might move on? Where if you do two videos a day, who cares about three videos. Three days later, there'll be 10 more or whatever. Yeah, interesting. It's the volume versus big swing. And then I think the award caliber writers probably have it worse.

Because there, it not only has to be good, it has to be critically acclaimed. Like their whole thing is built on, this needs to be like a critically acclaimed book. That's why people are buying it. So then the pressure becomes impossible. Those are the novelists, I think, who frees the hardest. are those who won the man Booker or won the Pulitzer and are like, oh my God, I have to deliver at that caliber

so they're just completely, completely freeze. Interesting world, though. I also like the specificity of some of her advice. You know, get an editor, pay for an editor. I like that. That's like knowledge, work coaching. You're trying to get into this industry. You need to be working with someone back and forth

well before you're going to be ready to actually submit something. I thought that was really interesting. Or a writing group that'll do that for you. But as she was saying, it can be hard at first to find those writing groups, but you can pay people by the hour who know what they're doing,

who'll go through your chapter. And I think her advice of like get a chapter to a point where a professional who you're paying says, yes, this is good. This is professional quality. It's like a cheat code. It's probably the fastest way to build up your writing chops to the right level of professionalism needed to actually deliver on whatever idea you have.

Yeah, that's a good point. I thought that's cool because often, so often we just hear the vague stuff. Follow your dreams. Write every day. You know, do national novels, writers month or whatever. We don't get to the details of, okay, but how does that writing get good? What type of writing is going to actually sell? So I did enjoy that reality check from JT.

The one piece of advice she left off, which I think we agree is critical, is to build a, Brandon Sanderson style underground hidden supervillain layer in which to do your writing. Yeah, then he'll invite you over

and then you can write the sequel. Then we'll write the sequel. Let's just say you don't write name of the wind without having a really great place to ride it. Jesse, I never miss an opportunity

to alienate and confuse our fans. So there you go. All right, enough of that nonsense. J.T., thank you very much. J.T. Ellison.com. That's J-T-E-L-L-I-S-O-N.com. To find out more about her, I appreciate her coming

on the show. Thank you, everyone, for listening. We'll be back next week with a normal Q-N-A episode of the podcast. And until then, as always, stay deep.