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Ellison’s Taylor Jackson Series
A Mind-Bending Adventure
An exclusive Authorlink Interview with
With Bestselling Author J.T. Ellison
By Paige Crutcher
April, 2012
J.T. Ellison has been captivating readers for years with her best-selling Taylor Jackson series. Novels full of nail-biting tension and heart-racing suspense, Ellison doesn’t hold back. Her thrillers are potent, hard to put down, realistic mind racers that are guaranteed to keep readers up long into the night. Recently Ellison has switched gears. She’s gone from writing inside the perspective of tough, driven Taylor Jackson, to as the brilliant, engaging Samantha Owens. Fans of the series have long fallen for dedicated and empathetic Sam, Taylor’s best friend and ME. A DEEPER DARKNESS is a foray into Sam’s complex world full of loss, intrigue and subterfuge. It’s a mind-bending, gut-wrenching, powerful whirlwind that is sure to delight enthrall.
“She has… problems, and I mined my own mild OCD to make her major issues come alive. ”
—ELLISON
AUTHORLINK: You’ve recently switched from being inside Taylor’s mind, to delving into the character of Sam. How do you make the transition? Is it seamless, or do you have to prepare yourself?
ELLISON: It wasn’t seamless, but I have to admit, Samantha is a lot more like me than Taylor. Taylor is the embodiment of my hero complex. Sam, on the other hand, is very real, very relatable, and much more an everywoman. She’s terribly vulnerable in this book. I see her as a heroine more than a hero, if that makes sense.
Sam has also suffered a tremendous loss, something I sadly know a little about. I’m not good at working through my emotions, especially grief, so I ended up using my feelings of sadness and isolation to capture her state of mind. She has… problems, and I mined my own mild OCD to make her major issues come alive. That, and multiple daily plays of Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt, which became the theme for this novel, and got me in the proper frame of mind as I started each writing day.
AUTHORLINK: You write novels that affect the reader, as well as captivate them. In A DEEPER DARKNESS you touch on the flood that devastated Nashville, and bring the atrocities and loss that occurred to life for the reader. How difficult was using something that had personally affected you in one of your novels?
ELLISON: The floods were so incredibly frightening to me because we live in an area that lost all power, phone and cell service and access to news, but luckily, the water stopped at the house next door. We were cut off for three days. At one point we ventured out and found the top of a hill and made some calls, and that’s when we found out about the deaths, the missing, the water rescues happening less than a mile away. It was terrifying, but I knew immediately it would become part of a novel. I had to show my city some love. What was tough was going back and rereading all the reports, including my own blogs, reliving it over and over. But of course, so many lost so much, that hardly seems a sacrifice on my part.
The other part of the book was influenced by a friendly-fire incident in Iraq. The son of my high school English teacher was killed, and his story haunts me, so I felt compelled to write about it as well
“I use a great program called Freedom that turns off my wireless access. I set it for 120-minute chunks about three times a day”
—ELLISON
AUTHORLINK: What is the biggest distraction for you when writing, and how do you overcome it?
ELLISON: The Internet, by far. I’m a research hound, and I do a lot of social networking. I use a great program called Freedom that turns off my wireless access. I set it for 120-minute chunks about three times a day, and that gives me the peace and quiet I need to get my words done. Now, if I could only get it for my iPad and iPhone…
AUTHORLINK: Sam Owens is extremely relatable. She’s authentic like Taylor, but she’s also damaged. Would you say she’s the anti-Taylor?
ELLISON: Not the anti-Taylor, per se, but her conscience. The white angel sitting on her shoulder, competing with the red devil on the other side. Sam is Taylor’s compassion, empathy, humanity. Not that Taylor lacks those things, but Sam is just more… womanly about it. She is (was) a mother, and mothers have an indefinable quality that makes them natural caretakers. Sam has always been the one who hauls Taylor back from the precipice, while being very careful not to allow herself to get too near the edge. She is a scientist, so she sees things rationally, whereas Taylor is prone to acting on her emotions. So when the abyss comes for Sam, she is wholly unprepared, because she’s always been so very careful not to put herself in harm’s way.
“JI listen. I watch. I absorb. And then I take the very real things I encounter and twist them into highly charged situations.”
—ELLISON
AUTHORLINK: Real life is messy, complicated, and layered. How do you build a novel so that it conveys each of these facets – creating a believable and palpable world?
ELLISON: I listen. I watch. I absorb. And then I take the very real things I encounter and twist them into highly charged situations. Even the quietest moment has tension, has conflict, if you know where to look for it. World building is something I love, and I would like to try my hand at one that isn’t as real as the streets of Nashville and Washington, D.C. Just to see if I could. I think that’s why of many of my short stories are horror-themed, I’m just playing with new and different worlds.
AUTHORLINK: A DEEPER DARKNESS is a powerhouse novel. It captures the reader’s imagination from the first paragraph, and grips them from start to finish. When you’re writing, do you lose yourself as easily inside the pages of the story (like a reader does)?
ELLISON: Absolutely. That’s the best part of writing, really, ending your day in a place you never expected when you sat down and let your fingers fly. I used to be loath to outline for that very reason, but I’ve discovered that outlining takes away some of the wasted time trying to decide where to go next, and doesn’t inhibit my imagination the way I expected. I like to read books that happen quickly, that have a sense of urgency, and if I can catapult myself along the journey as I’m writing, it’s my hope the reader is given a ride as well.
“I like interacting with readers, and I’ve met some of my dearest friends through social networking. ”
—ELLISON
AUTHORLINK: You’re an innovative author, and it seems as though you really love what you do. Do writing, marketing, and creating new doors that open down new written avenues ever feel like work?
ELLISON: You are too kind. I do love it. I was meant to do this. I spent years in jobs I couldn’t find satisfaction from, even the exciting and high-powered ones. Something was missing. I always heard this voice in the back of my head that said, “You were meant for something different. This isn’t you. This isn’t right.” Now I see that voice was the Muse calling me, trying so damn hard to break out of the stifling closet I’d jammed her in when I quit writing after college. Writing isn’t easy, and yes, sometimes it does feel like a “job.” But it’s the job I was meant for. When I started writing again, that sad, lonely little voice in the back of my mind changed, becoming my inspiration instead of my jailer. She’s quite the little cheerleader these days.
The marketing side can have its drawbacks—I think every author would like to be able to stand back and just write, away from the daily needs of the career—but for most of us, that isn’t possible anymore. We are compelled to allow access into our writing worlds, and truth be told, I like interacting with readers, and I’ve met some of my dearest friends through social networking. So it’s all worth it in the end.
AUTHORLINK: How did you feel when you typed those final two words: The End?
ELLISON: Jubilant. Sad. Scared. Jubilant. Sad. Scared. Jubilant. Sad… then the husband comes home and we open a bottle of champagne and all the doubts and fears are erased for a blessed moment. Then you go through the writer’s many stages: this sucks, this isn’t half bad, this is actually pretty good, WOW, I think I’ve written a masterpiece, this sucks, oh dear God must I read it again, would you please take this thing out and burn it, it’s okay, it’s getting better, this is the worst piece of tripe anyone has ever written, hey, I got a Starred review…. On and on and on. The worse I think the book is, the better it’s received. But it’s hard to have faith in something you’re so close to.
“Sadly, when I finished the book, I dove into a creative tailspin that took months to come out of. . .”
—ELLISON
AUTHORLINK: What is the most poignant discovery that emerged from researching and writing A DEEPER DARKNESS?
ELLISON: I was really, really scared to try writing a book that didn’t have Taylor at its center. I didn’t think I could do it. So finding some faith in myself as a writer was a big deal in this process. Finding Sam’s voice, because I wanted to be true to her character, and not have her just be an offshoot of Taylor, nor a formulaic female protagonist. The loss of Sam’s children echoed rather fervently for me, and the senseless loss of David Sharrett’s life, at the hands of his own Lieutenant, who left him bleeding in a field, when he might have been saved – all of these played a huge part in the writing process. I went to his grave at Arlington National Cemetery, which was very hard. All those gravestones. All that loss for our freedom. It tore me apart, but made me so very proud.
Sadly, when I finished the book, I dove into a creative tailspin that took months to come out of, simply because I got scared. Scared of what was possible. Scared of how much of myself I put into the book. Scared that people would see I wasn’t the rough tough Taylor Jackson, but the soft and easily hurt Samantha Owens. I worked through a lot of crazy emotions with this book. It made me a better writer, and a better person. And when I came to the page to write again, the process was more fun. Easier. Happier. I think every writer has a book that sends them into a tailspin. This was mine.
“. . . there is nothing that makes me happier than a long day at the keyboard, spinning lies out of thin air.”
—ELLISON
AUTHORLINK: What is it about the love of the craft, of writing and building a written world, that inspired you to persevere – to never give up?
ELLISON: Honestly, it’s not just my own desire to succeed, nor the addiction to writing, love of the craft, or the compulsion to write stories that drives me. I have my husband, my parents and a cadre of friends, fellow writers all, who are there for me when times get tough, when I can’t see the forest for the trees. Who send me links, who listen to me moan, who drag me to my yoga mat, who allow me to process what each book puts me through. I wouldn’t be the woman, or the writer, that I am without them. They are the world to me. And the knowledge that there is nothing that makes me happier than a long day at the keyboard, spinning lies out of thin air. Even when it’s hard, and it can be very hard, there is nothing in this world I’d rather do.
About J.T. Ellison:
J.T. Ellison is the international award-winning author of seven critically acclaimed novels, multiple short stories and has been published in over twenty countries. Ellison is a member of several professional writing organizations, including International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers of America and Writers of America. She has an active following on Twitter under the name @Thrillerchick, and a robust Facebook community.
She lives in Nashville with her husband and a poorly trained cat, and is hard at work on her next novel. Visit her at: http://www.jtellison.com/
