68. Building a Creative Life That Lasts with J.T. Ellison

In this inspiring episode, bestselling author J.T. Ellison shares what it really takes to build a creative life that stands the test of time. 

From honoring the seasons of your writing career to navigating burnout and rediscovering joy, J.T. offers candid insights into the mindset shifts, boundaries, and community connections that keep creativity sustainable. Whether you're in the trenches of a first draft or navigating the ups and downs of publishing, her wisdom is a reminder that longevity in the creative world isn't about hustle—it's about alignment, intention, and protecting what matters most.

Find more on J.T. Ellison here and here.

Find more in Nicole Meier here.

Transcript

THE WHOLE WRITER EP 68 - JT Ellison

[00:00:00] JT Ellison: I have to ask myself, why are you writing this book? Why are you writing this story? What was it about it that got you excited in the first place? And then it's like, okay, I remember. I remember that spark. I remember going, Ooh, that would make a really great story. And then you go back to the page the next day and try again.

[00:00:19] JT Ellison: You have to discipline yourself and understand there's a process. Every writer has a process with every book. The writing of the book has the sign waves. It too has these great days and the awful days. What marks a professional is you. Don't let the awful days outweigh the good days.

[00:00:47] Nicole Meier: Welcome to the whole writer. A place where we talk about what it means to show up as a writer, not just a better writer or a more productive writer or a published writer, but a whole one. Someone who's grounded in their voice, in their community, in their creative path, even when the world tells them to hustle, compare, or conform.

[00:01:08] Nicole Meier: I'm Nicole Meier, a multi published author and book coach who believes that nurturing the person behind the page is just as important as refining the words on it. Each week we'll explore the terrain of riding life with honesty, warmth, and practical wisdom, creating space for you to write from a place of wholeness rather than depletion.

[00:01:28] Nicole Meier: Whether you're drafting your first manuscript or publishing your fifth book, you'll find conversation and companionship for the journey here. So settle in, bring your questions and your curiosity, and let's discover what it means to write and live with authenticity and purpose. Hello, listeners. Welcome back to the whole writer today.

[00:01:51] Nicole Meier: I am so thrilled to have you here because we have a special guest. And when I say special, I am saying that this person really drew me to them because of her generosity of spirit, what she shares for writers, and just her creative energy. This is really what the whole writer's new focus is about, is not just about the work that's being produced, but the creator behind the work.

[00:02:13] Nicole Meier: So I'm thrilled to welcome JT Ellison. 

[00:02:16] JT Ellison: Hi. Hi. Welcome. Very kind of you. Thank you. I sitting here grinning. Nobody can see it, but I'm smiling quite large. It was very sweet. 

[00:02:25] Nicole Meier: Well, before we get to all good things, I thought I would share your bio with everybody, so hold tight for a minute. Listeners. JT Ellison is the New York Times and USA bestselling author of more than 30 Psychological thrillers and Domestic No novels, and the Emmy Award-winning co-host of a word on words on Nashville PBS.

[00:02:46] Nicole Meier: She also writes Contemporary Fantasy as Joss Walker, including the award-winning Jane Thorn series with millions of books sold across 30 countries. Her work has earned critical acclaim, prestigious awards, and multiple TV options. JT lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens, one of whom is a ghost where she's crafting her next suspenseful tale.

[00:03:09] Nicole Meier: So thank you and welcome, and I wanna hear about those kittens. 

[00:03:13] JT Ellison: Oh, they're so sweet. Yeah, we lost, so they were twins. They were so identical we couldn't tell them apart, except one had one white toe and that was Jameson and the other Jordan is her sister. And literally it took us until they grew up to be able to tell them apart.

[00:03:29] JT Ellison: Jordan grew a really fluffy tail, so it, oh, you would've to look at the tail to see who it was. And we lost Jameson a couple of summers ago just as I was putting together the proposal for the book that is coming out in August this year. So literally the night before we had to let her go, I wrote that proposal and the book was actually called her last night for a very long time.

[00:03:53] JT Ellison: Oh my gosh. So she has imprinted on our lives in many ways, and her sister is still here. I'm sure she'll probably start chirping somewhere along our conversation. Wow. 

[00:04:06] Nicole Meier: I love knowing that. Yeah. Very, very sweet. Oh my gosh. Okay, so I wanna talk about your books. I wanna talk about how you inspire writers.

[00:04:16] Nicole Meier: But before we do all that, can you tell us a bit about how you arrived at your love of thrillers and crime novels? It's really 

[00:04:24] JT Ellison: funny because I trained, technically as a writer in the literary world, I got a degree in creative writing and wanted to go on and get an MFA. My thesis advisor very clearly told me that I wasn't good enough to be published.

[00:04:42] JT Ellison: And so I listened to her and I left writing for eight years. I went and got a degree in politics and met my husband and got married. And it wasn't until we moved to Nashville that I couldn't find a job. I didn't have any friends. My previous cat passed away and what was I gonna do? My creative instincts finally took over.

[00:05:04] JT Ellison: And I read an author named John Sanford, who is a really, really major crime fiction author, and something just clicked and I said, if he can do this, so can I Not Realizing that the man is a Pulitzer Prize winner crime journalist, who actually maybe knew what he was doing versus me who is, you know, my experience with crime is Law and order.

[00:05:29] JT Ellison: I ended up doing a lot of research and in the research that's where I found the passion for it. I did ride-alongs with the Nashville Police and homicide and overnight patrol and did autopsies, interviewed profilers. Just really the research of it drove me into why I write those kinds of books, and it's a fascination with the psychology of why we do bad things to one another.

[00:05:56] JT Ellison: Why are we cruel? Why do we break the law? Why do we hurt people? I'm really fascinated by that. 

[00:06:03] Nicole Meier: I am so impressed that you not only did ride alongs at night because my cousin is a detective in Los Angeles County, but that's scary. Yeah. But you also were present for autopsies. 

[00:06:14] JT Ellison: Yeah. It's really funny. I actually met a medical examiner and death investigator.

[00:06:19] JT Ellison: I was at a Karen Slaughter event. Oh wow. I mean, one of my heroes. I was so excited to meet her, and I ended up meeting these girls in line and they were like, oh, you're jt. I had published several books at that point, so they were like, JT Ellison, you know, blah, blah, blah. They started chatting and one of 'em said, listen, you really need to come and do an autopsy because it's clear that you haven't.

[00:06:42] JT Ellison: Wow, you're kidding. I was like, oh, okay. You know, I'm doing virtual stuff online and reading about it, but I had never actually seen one, and they did. They had me in and it was, I. The most spiritual experience I think I've ever had. Once you open up a body and you see that we're all exactly the same inside, it makes you understand that there has to be a concept of a soul.

[00:07:09] JT Ellison: There has to be something that makes us who we are, and it was both 

[00:07:15] Nicole Meier: horrifying and beautiful. Wow, that makes me feel a little choked up hearing that. What a beautiful confirmation of something like that. I. 

[00:07:24] JT Ellison: I mean, it's not what I went in there thinking was going to happen and it was my biggest fear was there was going to be a man my father's age or a kid, and they don't do autopsies the way you think of on tv.

[00:07:39] JT Ellison: There's multiple people being autopsied at the same time. They move around from person to person and it's this choreography. It's of people moving around these bodies and. There were four. The day I was there. There was a child, there was a man my father's age, there was a woman my age, and then there was a 19-year-old who'd committed suicide.

[00:08:01] Nicole Meier: Oh my gosh. 

[00:08:01] JT Ellison: And it was just, like I said, horrifying and beautiful, and a confirmation that there's more out there than what we might 

[00:08:11] Nicole Meier: know. Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that. And it reminds me, so I'm reading a very bad thing right now, which is your latest novel and I love it so much. I'm having so much fun with it.

[00:08:20] Nicole Meier: But I think you do share that, that they do an autopsy and there are multiple bodies in the room and I, it kind of really shed a totally different light for me as a reader. 

[00:08:30] JT Ellison: Yeah. Everything that we see on TV is not remotely accurate. It's just not accurate, and they could portray it a little bit better, but.

[00:08:40] JT Ellison: I think the mystery is maybe a good thing. I think people really need to know what happens. I wrote a piece about it. It's out there. It's called I see Dead people. Okay, because so clever. But yeah, there are things you don't need to know. I think about that experience. There are things that I held back for sure.

[00:09:00] Nicole Meier: Yeah, I bet. Okay. Well, switching gears a little bit, I wanna share something with you. That is my personal observation. So my first book was written loosely about Ray Bradbury, the iconic author. Yeah. And he wrote very sort of dark, scary subjects, subject matter in his books. But he had this very. Light, uplifting way of reaching writers, fellow writers, new writers, and I feel the same generosity of spirit with you.

[00:09:28] Nicole Meier: You write about dark, twisty things, but yet the way that you reach the creative community is this very light, uplifting way. So I see a little bit of a similarity there that is possibly 

[00:09:40] JT Ellison: the nicest compliment anyone's ever did. Wow. Thank you. It's funny, I actually saw something about from him earlier.

[00:09:49] JT Ellison: Today somebody posted a meme of ways you can like break the social media scroll. Yeah. And it was Ray Bradbury's advice about reading for a thousand nights. Oh cool. Read a short story, read a poem, read an essay every night for a thousand nights across every genre and subject. And you will be still stuffed full of information that you won't wanna waste any time with anything else, which I thought was great advice.

[00:10:16] JT Ellison: That's funny that you bring that up today. 

[00:10:17] Nicole Meier: Very cool. Okay. Listeners, I hope you're taking notes 'cause I recommend that too. 

[00:10:22] JT Ellison: It is. It's really helpful. You should always read before bed. Yeah. You should never scroll before bread. You should always have a book or an essay or something. Absolutely. A lot of people reached a hand down the ladder when I was coming up and if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have had the career that I've had.

[00:10:41] JT Ellison: And I feel like it's incumbent upon me to pay that forward. To try to let people know that they're not alone in this writing. Such a solitary endeavor. Even if you're screenwriting and you have a room full of people to talk to, it's still a solitary exercise. You're still cooking things up in your head that you have to put down on paper and share it in a way that people can connect to it and understand it, and that takes a lot of effort, but it takes a lot of internal intention.

[00:11:12] JT Ellison: We as a community get to come together in our virtual water cooler, which is the internet. Both a blessing and a curse. Absolutely. I love being able to meet people. I hate that we get lost in the endless scroll because it is ruined. Our attention spans, it's ruined our attitudes. It's divided families.

[00:11:34] JT Ellison: It's really gonna turn out to be as bad as smoking. Another 10 years, we're gonna see that this was poisoning us. I saw it earlier. I've always kind of felt like that. I've had a love-hate relationship with it, and I've always looked for other ways to connect with people. And so that is what I try to do. I try to encourage and I try to assure and I try to demystify because people think, oh wow, you've got a great career.

[00:12:02] JT Ellison: You've written over 35 books, and that somehow makes it. Different and less difficult and more on this pedestal of, oh, look at this. And it's not that. It is a struggle every day. Yes. It is not easy. And anybody who's telling you that it is, is lying. 

[00:12:21] Nicole Meier: Yeah. 

[00:12:22] JT Ellison: And anybody who's telling you Do it this way, this is the only way to do it, is also lying.

[00:12:28] JT Ellison: And I just want people to understand that nobody's handing anybody anything right now. You gotta fight for it. You gotta get in there and fight for it. 

[00:12:37] Nicole Meier: Yeah, and I'm happy you brought that up because you know I've been saying lately it's passe almost to think of there's a specific formula for whether how you reach people or how you write your book.

[00:12:46] Nicole Meier: Yes, there are ways to strengthen both your community and your manuscript, but it really has to be the way that works for you. And this is a great segue for me to ask you about creative progress. So with your 35 novels and also you interviewing other authors. You say you encourage people to get out of their own way when it comes to the creative process and their progress, so could you talk a little bit about what you think is really blocking people's creative progress right now?

[00:13:15] Nicole Meier: Comparing themselves to other people? 

[00:13:18] JT Ellison: Comparison is the thief of joy. It really is, and that is the poison of social media. We curate our lives and we show people only what we want them to see. It's always complimentary and it is very easy to get discouraged seeing other people's success, and I'm putting success in quotes because what may look like success could be a massive failure and they've gotta shine on it and making it look good.

[00:13:51] JT Ellison: You just never know, and it's very, very, very difficult to be in the arts to be in any sort of creative endeavor. To see other people who you think are doing better than you, who are getting more than you. You know, they got that review, they got that interview, they're in that bookstore, they're on that tour, and it's really easy to get really down on yourself and be like, wow, I have any of that.

[00:14:15] JT Ellison: So I'm not a success. And it's just not true. Everybody is on their own path. Every book of every author is an individual episode. Right? Is the same from book to book to book. I like to point out, if you've got a career, then it looks like a sine wave. It goes up and down and up and down and up and down.

[00:14:36] JT Ellison: That means you have a career. That to me is success. That sine wave is success. That means they're doing it again and again and 

[00:14:44] Nicole Meier: again. That is a great analogy. And listeners, she is making the sign, you know, of a rollercoaster with her finger saying the INE wave. And that is so true, and I think that. These days, more than ever, it's about the season of life you're in, or season of writing you're in.

[00:15:00] Nicole Meier: It's about what's right for one title may not be right for another title, and that just wasn't shared, you know, maybe 10 years ago. It just had to be this formula in a specific way, and you're either making it or you're not. So for the people who want to get off the comparison train. Do you have one sort of small step they could do?

[00:15:19] Nicole Meier: I'm sure you're gonna say log off of social media. Well, 

[00:15:22] JT Ellison: I mean that's a given, right? That get offline is a given. Yes. Set limits. You don't have to give it up. Just set some limits. So you find yourself there four hours into your workday, you're still scrolling. Put the limits in. I do that. I look in the morning and then I shut it off and I don't look again until after dinner, you know, if something happens.

[00:15:41] JT Ellison: Obviously I look, I'm not perfect. But I think what you need to always be thinking of is finishing. If you finish, then you've got a product that can be sold. If you finish, then you have something that someone can read, and that's how I actually measure success. Not buy book sales, not buy reviews, not buy any of those other kinds of things.

[00:16:09] JT Ellison: They're nice, they're wonderful. It's How many things have I finished this year? How many projects have I taken to completion? Written the end, and then got to edit because that's when the real work starts. So that's the way I've had to wrap my head around that. 

[00:16:26] Nicole Meier: That's such good advice. Think about it in through the lens of finishing, what have I finished?

[00:16:31] Nicole Meier: Look, this was my aim. Now have I reached it? Exactly. 

[00:16:35] JT Ellison: Then you're in competition with yourself. Yes. You can't be in competition with somebody else. If you are focused on how do you finish your own work. I love that. It's 

[00:16:46] Nicole Meier: so simple, but so powerful. It really, really is. Okay, so this makes me think of perfectionism.

[00:16:52] Nicole Meier: We've all faced it. How has your relationship with perfectionism changed since book one to book 35? When you're talking about finishing something, do you have a different relationship with it now? I do. I 

[00:17:05] JT Ellison: have a different relationship with every book. Because you never know what is going to work and what isn't.

[00:17:12] JT Ellison: In the grand scheme of how many readers have picked up my book and loved it or hated it, you never know, and you're always living in the future. So I'm writing the 2026 book right now. I'm comparing the writing of that to the 2024 book, which did really, really well and everybody loved, and it was very twisty.

[00:17:35] JT Ellison: I mean, you're reading it right now. Yeah, I'm loving it. It feels like this monumental triumph to me right now, an impossible to achieve. When if I stop for a moment and remind myself. It was horrible writing that book. It was so hard. I had so many problems. The book before it had done well. So how was I gonna live up to that?

[00:17:58] JT Ellison: That's where my perfectionism issues come in with the idea of, okay, this book really landed and what I'm writing is stupid. This is ridiculous. Nobody's gonna wanna read it. What am I doing? That never goes away, and if it does. I will be very excited to hear that because I've never been able to wrap my head around it.

[00:18:20] JT Ellison: Nothing's ever good enough for me. I'm always trying to level up. I'm always trying to make the work better, and I think that's just natural. If you're not trying to do that, then you don't care. Absolutely. Right? Absolutely. 

[00:18:35] Nicole Meier: And you, everybody cares. You have to care. Everybody cares. And I love that you're saying that because.

[00:18:41] Nicole Meier: Yes, we're hard on ourselves. Yes, we're unsure. You know, we are writing in a silo to some degree, and so we don't know this is even the, the right premise. I have no idea. Right. But I always like to come back to the intention behind it, the joy behind it. I always tell people my very first book was my most amateur writing, but I still get the most people saying how much they loved it because I know there was so much joy behind writing that manuscript and it kind of infused into the work.

[00:19:05] Nicole Meier: So. I like to think of it that way too, is yes, I always wanna be better and oh my gosh, I don't want my writing to be lackluster compared to the book that did well. But could we see what kind of level of joy is in there? 

[00:19:17] JT Ellison: Level of joy and personal passion. When you have a passion for the story you're telling, then it comes through.

[00:19:25] JT Ellison: So when I hit that perfectionism. I'm sitting here going, what are you doing? This is ridiculous. Nobody's gonna ever read this. I have to ask myself, why are you writing this book? Why are you writing this story? What was it about it that got you excited in the first place? And then it's like, okay, I remember.

[00:19:44] JT Ellison: I remember that spark. I remember going, Ooh, that would make a really great story. And then you go back to the page the next day and try again. You have to discipline yourself and understand there's a process. Every writer has a process with every book. The writing of the book has the sign waves. It too has these great days and the awful days.

[00:20:07] JT Ellison: And what marks a professional is you don't let the awful days outweigh the good days. Oh, I love that. We 

[00:20:15] Nicole Meier: need to write that up on our wall in our office. 

[00:20:17] JT Ellison: Don't let the awful days outweigh the good days. If they do, then you've got a problem and then you're probably blocked, and then that's a whole different topic of conversation.

[00:20:27] JT Ellison: But. I don't know about you, but that one line that you write that you're like, that's good. Yes. Right. I'm a golfer. It's the one shot around that, like the perfect shot and it lands on the green and it gets near the hole and you're like, that's what brings you back. Yes. Every time. Same with writing. That line brings you back to the page.

[00:20:48] JT Ellison: It's like, oh, I wanna experience that again. 

[00:20:50] Nicole Meier: I love that. So good. Okay, so we've talked about the progress in writing. We've talked about writing alone, we've talked about perfectionism. Now I'd love to hear from you, do you have a trusted circle of creatives that you lean on throughout the book writing process?

[00:21:06] Nicole Meier: Has it stayed the same for so many years as it kind of different depending on what you're writing? It has been the same for a really long time. 

[00:21:14] JT Ellison: My first book came out in 2007, which feels like yesterday. I don't know how that is almost 20 years ago, which doesn't seem remotely possible, and it took some fits and starts to find my people.

[00:21:30] JT Ellison: And there is unfortunately attrition in this industry. The longer you're in it, which is. Awful because there are some really great authors that peeled off over the years and they've only written one book, or they got dropped by their publisher, which was ridiculous because they weren't performing to that standard.

[00:21:48] JT Ellison: Those kinds of things. That's always sad. The people that I have around me, they've been around for a long time. It was Nora Roberts that said, you need three to five people in your career. In your life that you can trust with everything. Everything from story to numbers, to talking about agents, to talking about advances, all of that.

[00:22:12] JT Ellison: And I've had the same group of people for a really long time and I trust them implicitly. One of them does read for me. One of 'em is a sounding board. The person that I call and be like, I have forgotten how to write a book, and she's like, oh, you are at that point people that know you well enough that they too can see your process for what it is and can.

[00:22:35] JT Ellison: Be the encouragement that you need or you know, lash the whip and say, stop, you're procrastinating. Go to work. Right? You know, you need that. They're truth tellers. They're truth tellers, and that is what you need. You need three to five truth tellers who will not pull punches with you, who will be honest.

[00:22:54] JT Ellison: They will either critique you if you need critiquing, they will hold you to account if you are off doing something you shouldn't be doing. They see you online and they're like, Hey, you've been online for like five hours. And, and you get to say, well, so have you, but Right, right. People that will really hold your feet to the fire.

[00:23:14] JT Ellison: And I love that. I love finding, I. That group and it was very curated for me and I love them. I love them to pieces. 

[00:23:24] Nicole Meier: That's so great. And I want listeners to be encouraged that if you don't find those people at the first go round, I remember my first couple of critique groups. I was like, these are not my people.

[00:23:33] Nicole Meier: So it's okay if you don't hit the lottery ticket when you first meet a group, but it will get there if, like you said, you curate them, you're intentional. Are all of your three to five people writers and are they the same genre? 

[00:23:46] JT Ellison: They're not all writers, one of 'em is not, and they are in different genres and different worlds entirely, but they are, you know, they're soul sisters.

[00:23:56] JT Ellison: Oh my gosh, amazing. Yeah. And it took a while to find them. It absolutely did. And trust me, you're gonna make mistakes. You're gonna trust the wrong people. 

[00:24:05] Nicole Meier: Totally. 

[00:24:06] JT Ellison: I mean, that's just human nature, right? Yeah. You're gonna trust the wrong people and they're gonna do something that just break your heart and that just helps you find.

[00:24:14] JT Ellison: What you do need from the next one. It's just like any friendship, you go into it cautiously, just go into everything cautiously. I maybe jumped in with both feet a couple of times that I should have been a little more cautious. 

[00:24:28] Nicole Meier: Well, we wanna support other creatives and other writers, and so we get excited for them.

[00:24:32] Nicole Meier: That reminds me over the weekend, I had a client reach out to me almost in tears because she has a book deal and she shared her cover comps with her writing group. And of course the one that doesn't have a book deal in the group just kind of lashed out at her and said, these are terrible. And I said, well, she's competitive.

[00:24:47] Nicole Meier: She doesn't have a book deal, and you do. And it just broke her heart. That sort of, that person revealed themselves. So that does happen. It happens to all of us. It, it is 

[00:24:55] JT Ellison: an awful truth that the more success you have, the smaller the group is, it's really hard and it's hard to lose people and you lose the ones you would never expect to lose, which that's just the way it is.

[00:25:09] JT Ellison: It's a difficult world in the arts. No matter what art it is, whatever creative endeavor you are in, there's gonna be people that get left behind and they're gonna be people that succeed more than you. It's a spectrum. You just have to remember that and try, truly try to be kind to the people that don't get the opportunities that you have and don't resent the people who do.

[00:25:34] JT Ellison: Yeah. 

[00:25:35] Nicole Meier: Absolutely. That feels like a really good lesson to share with emerging authors. Is there any other lesson that comes to mind? You know, when we're talking about nurturing people that are coming up and just about to share their work with the world. Anything else over your years? It seems like a lesson you've learned that you like sharing with writers?

[00:25:52] Nicole Meier: Yeah. Bite your tongue. The world does not need 

[00:25:54] JT Ellison: your opinion.

[00:25:58] JT Ellison: Trust me when I say the world does not need your opinion. Because no matter the opinion, you're gonna alienate half of your audience. Your future employers are going to see that you have alienated half of your audience. Be kind, be kind, be supportive. Don't attack, don't question. Readers are allowed to have their own opinions, and that is none of your business.

[00:26:26] JT Ellison: Yeah. Which is, it's hard, right? It's really hard to get those negative reviews. It's really hard. My feeling is if you believe the bad, you have to believe the good. And we will only ever see the bad. We can get 1,005 star reviews, but it's that one, one star that we're upset about and we wanna engage and ask, what did we do wrong?

[00:26:49] JT Ellison: Or, how dare you And no walk away. Don't ever engage a reader over a review their opinion or anything. Just don't, just don't. 

[00:27:00] Nicole Meier: Yeah, I think the same goes for if you get a rejection from a query letter or a publisher passes with notes that feel negative, don't engage, don't lash back, because people still do that to this day.

[00:27:12] Nicole Meier: They write back and tell the agent why they were wrong or get very defensive, 

[00:27:18] JT Ellison: and I, oh, I don't mean to laugh because this is your heart and soul that's being judged. This isn't just a story. This is something from you, something organic that has grown. It's like having your baby laughed at, you know, somebody comes up to you in the store and, oh my God, that kid is so ugly, right?

[00:27:37] JT Ellison: You, what would you do? You certainly, you would say something back. It's really hard to be criticized, but you have to grow a thick skin and you have to learn how to walk away from that and just let it be easy to say, hard to do. 

[00:27:53] Nicole Meier: I get it, but I'm so happy you brought that up. That follows up to my other question I wanna ask before we start talking about your next book that's coming out.

[00:28:00] Nicole Meier: 'cause I definitely wanna talk about that is, you know, I've already mentioned at the top of this call how much I love that you uplift other writers. Is there an unexpected way that lifting up a writer has sort of enriched your life or brought sort of a happy consequence that you didn't see coming? So many.

[00:28:18] JT Ellison: I end up with really interesting friends through all of this and there is. Better than encouraging somebody when they're down and seeing them actually listen to what you say, apply that and then succeed. I mean, there's nothing that makes me happier than somebody that I have mentored. Getting a deal and then having the book come out and having it be a huge success, and it's like, oh my God.

[00:28:45] JT Ellison: I knew it. I knew it. That is still fun. And then there's just people that I've met along the way that have become friends, and then you meet up in real life and you go and have a drink at a conference, and it's really, really cool. I love it. 

[00:28:58] Nicole Meier: And it is at the end of the day, the writing community is a small community.

[00:29:01] Nicole Meier: You do run into people time and time again, like you said, at a conference or online, so I agree with that. Yeah. 

[00:29:07] JT Ellison: And it's, you know, a rising tide lift all boats. It's a cliche for a reason. Yeah. When I started, we weren't holding each other up in the same way, especially the female writers. The publishers were pitting us against each other instead of encouraging.

[00:29:24] JT Ellison: Now, when you go out on tour. There's somebody that comes and does it in conversation with you in your genre, and so you meet them and they bring their fans and everybody benefits that, not how it used to be. And pitting us against each other was really difficult, and I think we've taken so much power away from them in the way we support one another.

[00:29:48] Nicole Meier: It's fantastic and share information. And it's not all behind the gatekeepers now. I mean, that has really empowered one another for sure. Yes. And it makes their jobs 

[00:29:58] JT Ellison: easier too, because once I started, oh my gosh, I knew zero. I knew nothing. I didn't know that there were awards for writers. I'd never met a writer.

[00:30:09] JT Ellison: I was so. In a vacuum and you go back to that passion of the first because you're in that vacuum, and then you start learning the industry. And the industry is just a weird place. Publishing is a very odd industry in general. It's the one product that you get to use and then give back what we sell. That just doesn't make sense, right.

[00:30:32] JT Ellison: You use the product and then you can give it back, right? No, I didn't like it. That's weird. Then you add in everybody's emotions around. Oh, the book has just been returned. Oh, look, we get, I don't know if you've ever gotten a mass set of returns and senior royalty statement. I have. Yeah. That can be really emotionally draining and upsetting.

[00:30:56] JT Ellison: But when you have other people that say, oh, hey, that's no big deal. They always order more than they need. They know that those returns are coming. They've built it in. It's okay. Don't jump off the bridge. It's all good. There's a lot of power in that. Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:31:12] Nicole Meier: Okay. Speaking of books, let's talk about your book that's coming out this August.

[00:31:16] Nicole Meier: Is that right? August 1st, last seen. Okay. Last seen. Give us a quick 

[00:31:21] JT Ellison: highlight of the premise. So it is the story of Holly James, who is a young forensic scientist who is having a very bad day. She has lost her job. She is in the middle of being separated slash getting divorced and gets a call from her father that he has fallen and needs or help.

[00:31:42] JT Ellison: She goes home to help him, and that night finds out. The story he has told her his whole life about her mother and sister dying in a car accident when she was six is not true. Her mother was murdered. Her sister is the one who did it. 

[00:32:00] Nicole Meier: Oh my gosh. Can't wait to get my hands on. Yes. That is so great. That is your superpower.

[00:32:08] Nicole Meier: The whole plot twist. I mean, you just have that nailed. I don't know how you do it for 35 books, but that's incredible. I. 

[00:32:14] JT Ellison: The pitches are not hard. The writing of the books are hard. That's what's difficult. Oh my gosh. We can wait. I'm excited about this one. It's very dark. It's different from you're reading Very bad thing, which you know, has eight points of view and is a really big story.

[00:32:29] JT Ellison: This is a very small insular. There's only two characters that we really hear from and there's a monster narrator, which I absolutely love. So it's really dark and intimate and spooky. 

[00:32:42] Nicole Meier: I love it. I love all your covers too. That just makes me so happy when I see your beautiful cover art, so that's exciting.

[00:32:49] JT Ellison: Amazing, amazing. I've had several publishers and several artists over the years, and they have all just really nailed it. They really get what I'm doing. 

[00:32:58] Nicole Meier: I. We're sisters in a way in publishing, 'cause I was under AUB for Lake Union. So we were you, you're, you're under a different imprint, but yeah. So we're loosely related.

[00:33:07] Nicole Meier: Under the same publisher. 

[00:33:09] JT Ellison: Yep. I love Thomason Mercer. It's a very different model Yeah. Than the traditional New York publishing. It's a different model, different goals, different everything. Totally. But it's a lot of fun for me because at this point I'm interested in the readers and. That is something they provide.

[00:33:28] Nicole Meier: Well, we've got readers listening right now, so tell everyone where they can find you and again, remind them the date that your next book comes out. 

[00:33:35] JT Ellison: Okay, so last scene comes out on August 1st, and you'll be able to get it anywhere that you want to buy books and my website's, jt listen.com. I also have a substack called the Creative Edge, where I blog weekly and I'm also live.

[00:33:51] JT Ellison: I've been live writing the experience of writing. Last scene. So that's actually a paid subscription model for that, that I hopefully will turn into a book, a writing book, my version of Bird by Bird. 

[00:34:03] Nicole Meier: Oh my gosh. Well, if you do that, we have to have you come on again, listeners, I highly recommend following JT everywhere, especially her substack.

[00:34:10] Nicole Meier: It is just a beautiful light amongst all of the other stuff that's out there. So thank you so much for being here today. I just love talking to you. Thank you. Me too. This has been great. Well, thank you so much, and listeners, tune in next time to the whole writer.

[00:34:29] Nicole Meier: If you want to check out my coaching programs for fiction writers, visit nicole meier.com. That's M-E-I-E-R. And if you like this episode, I'd love you to take a minute to leave a rating and review for this podcast. This will help more writers like you to discover the show. And to get going on their writing journey.

[00:34:50] Nicole Meier: Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, happy writing everyone.