Sunday Smatterings

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Hi there, chickens! Welcome to Sunday Smatterings on this glorious Memorial Day weekend. Let's take a look at the latest bookish!

Here's what happened on the Internets this week:


Enormous Smallness: The Sweet Illustrated Story of e. e. cummings and His Creative Bravery. “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
 

Creative Incubation. This hit me hard. It’s so true. Create that space for yourself. Without it, your work will suffer. We all need a room of our own without distraction.


How Things End Ending really is almost harder than beginning. But necessary. You don't want to leave a trail of half-eaten sandwiches around the house... though your mice will love you, your readers won't!
 

Ready Player Productive: On Virtual Reality and Cognitively Demanding Work. Very interesting to consider. There's nothing from Cal Newport that isn't fascinating. 

 

In an 8-Hour Day, the Average Worker Is Productive for This Many Hours. I know my mental productivity is limited to a solid three hours, mostly in the afternoon. Makes sense the business world should start cutting back.

 

The Gorgeous Reality of Having People Not Like You. "Caring too much about what others think of you stifles your ability to take risks and disrupts your social satisfaction." Love yourself. The rest will come. It doesn't matter if you're liked. Be true to you.

 

Marie Kondo Shows How to Tidy Your Office. When’s the last time you cleaned your office? I need to get on this...

 

What Makes a “Great American Read,” Anyway? The brilliant mind behind NPT's A WORD ON WORDS, Linda Wei, tells us. Have you voted for your favorite yet??

 

Tiny Luxuries.  Amazing what we can do when we’re mindful.

And closer to home:

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The ebook for ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS (Lt. Taylor Jackson #1) is on sale for $1.99! This a great deal for anyone looking to get lost in a book this holiday weekend.

Revisit Book #1 in J.T. Ellison's heart-racing, fan-favorite Taylor Jackson series!

When a local girl falls prey to a sadistic serial killer, Nashville homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson and her lover, FBI profiler Dr. John Baldwin, find themselves in a joint investigation pursuing a vicious murderer. The Southern Strangler is slaughtering his way through the Southeast, leaving a gruesome memento at each crime scene—the prior victim's severed hand.

Ambitious TV reporter Whitney Connolly is certain the Southern Strangler is her ticket out of Nashville; she's got a scoop that could break the case. She has no idea how close to this story she really is—or what it will cost her.

As the killer spirals out of control, everyone involved must face a horrible truth—that the purest evil is born of private lies.

Download the eBook

KINDLE 
NOOK 
iBOOKS 
KOBO 
GOOGLE PLAY

 

That's all for now! I hope you have a wonderful rest of the weekend and that the sun is shining wherever you are. Blessings and deepest thanks to those we've lost. 🇺🇸

xo,
J.T.

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J.T. Ellison

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 25 novels, and the EMMY® award winning co-host of thJoss Walkere literary TV show A WORD ON WORDS. She also writes urban fantasy under the pen name Joss Walker.

With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim and prestigious awards. Her titles have been optioned for television and published in twenty-eight countries.

J.T. lives with her husband and twin kittens in Nashville, where she is hard at work on her next novel.

Friday Reads

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What's on your reading plate this weekend, chickens?

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J.T. Ellison

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 25 novels, and the EMMY® award winning co-host of thJoss Walkere literary TV show A WORD ON WORDS. She also writes urban fantasy under the pen name Joss Walker.

With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim and prestigious awards. Her titles have been optioned for television and published in twenty-eight countries.

J.T. lives with her husband and twin kittens in Nashville, where she is hard at work on her next novel.

What an Author Reads While Writing

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What An Author Reads While Writing

I know so many writers who don’t read while they’re creating, and I can’t even imagine such a thing.

I’ve learned, for better or for worse, that if I’m not reading, I’m not writing.

I can track my Goodreads logs against my daily writing goals, and see the wax and wane. The more I read, the more I write. The sheer joy of story is what drives me to the page, day in and day out. 

I’m not at all concerned that another’s voice might slip in, or an idea, a concept, a character. My voice is strong enough in my head that these things don’t happen. 

I read widely, and I read a lot, a minimum of 2–3 books a week. Right now, I’m listening to a literary novel on audio, reading a mystery novel for a blurb, reading a fantasy ebook for fun, and leafing through a cookbook. So 4 books at once, not at all unusual. In a few weeks, I’ll be transitioning to reading short stories for a project I’m working on, but I’ll still have at least one audio and one ebook going.  

I reread, too, books that I know evoke a certain sense of joy or wonder for me — Diana Gabaldon, especially. 

Do these books influence my writing? Not my voice or my story, per se, but, as an example, I was reading Gabaldon while I was writing THE IMMORTALS and that book feels lush and full to me. While I was writing LIE TO ME, I needed to give myself permission to get really dark, so I read John Connolly and Karin Slaughter. 

I also get in moods — I want big sweeping fantasy trilogies, or light, happy books. I burned myself out on crime fiction, I think, and will have to ease my way back in. I love suspense, though, unreliable narrators and stories that examine women and their place in the world. As a matter of fact, of the 40 books I’ve read so far this year, only 4 were written by men, and two of those had female leads. Nothing against my male author brethren, I'm just more into women's work right now.

Girl power, sisters and brothers… : )

Writers, do you read while you write? Same genre, different genre? And for you readers — can you read more than one book at a time?

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J.T. Ellison

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 25 novels, and the EMMY® award winning co-host of thJoss Walkere literary TV show A WORD ON WORDS. She also writes urban fantasy under the pen name Joss Walker.

With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim and prestigious awards. Her titles have been optioned for television and published in twenty-eight countries.

J.T. lives with her husband and twin kittens in Nashville, where she is hard at work on her next novel.

What Book Turned You Into A Reader?

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I'm curious, what book turned you into a reader? And when? I know many readers who came late to the page, and many who started when they were little. It's always fascinating to me to hear how you got into books.

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J.T. Ellison

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 25 novels, and the EMMY® award winning co-host of thJoss Walkere literary TV show A WORD ON WORDS. She also writes urban fantasy under the pen name Joss Walker.

With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim and prestigious awards. Her titles have been optioned for television and published in twenty-eight countries.

J.T. lives with her husband and twin kittens in Nashville, where she is hard at work on her next novel.

Your Tuesday Funny

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J.T. Ellison

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 25 novels, and the EMMY® award winning co-host of thJoss Walkere literary TV show A WORD ON WORDS. She also writes urban fantasy under the pen name Joss Walker.

With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim and prestigious awards. Her titles have been optioned for television and published in twenty-eight countries.

J.T. lives with her husband and twin kittens in Nashville, where she is hard at work on her next novel.