In the Handbasket Today

Morning, all!

I've been interviewed by the brilliant, talented and always stylish Laura Benedict over at her blog, Notes From the Handbasket. We discuss THE COLD ROOM, writing creepy scenes, and the correct response to happening upon bird-eating spiders.

Check it out here!

Update on 2010-05-01 20:18 by JT Ellison

Check this really cool analysis of the story behind THE COLD ROOM from today's Barnes & Noble Mystery Blog, written by Jedidiah Ayers...

Laura Benedict interviewed writer J.T. Ellison about her latest Taylor Jackson thriller, The Cold Room, on her blog yesterday. It’s the fourth title featuring the Nashville homicide detective and she’s up against a serial killer known as the Conductor, who kills his victims bloodlessly—once abducted, he starves them inside a glass coffin—before, (ahem), consummating the relationship. It’s, yeah, disgusting and horrible and creepy, but as Benedict puts it, “creepy is just what I look for in a killer novel.”

From their interview:

Laura Benedict: You've talked about how, after writing the first chapter of The Cold Room, you were so surprised (alarmed?) by the story's content that you had to take a step back from it for a while. What made you return to it?

J. T. Ellison: I was completely creeped out. The very idea of a man, so seemingly normal, revealing his true self—and that self is a very, very frightening human being—gave me chills. And the line was so innocuous on its surface, so simple and straightforward... I think I was a little surprised by my own capacity to tap into this guy’s mind so early in the process of a book. Normally it takes me a while to get into their heads, but Gavin, he was there right away.

But the Conductor isn’t through with them. Not yet. He proceeds to stage artistic scenes with his victims something that has also been happening across the pond. Is the Conductor working in Europe too? Are there more homicidally enthusiastic art collectors working in tandem? Competing?

Makes for a gripping book, but one so far outside of reality that you don’t get too uncomfortable reading it, right?

I dunno.

Craig McDonald's book Toros & Torsos created a link between some grisly murders early in the twentieth century (climaxing in the 1947 killing of Betty Short, the Black Dahlia), and the surrealist art movement (check out the can't-look-away Exquisite Corpse). Recently, McDonald, whose books are always rooted in lore and scholarly, “informed supposition” posted on his blog about new disturbing evidence that his own imagination is never going to trump reality. (Shudder) Who wants to end up matching a Dali anyway?

Any other wild premises that have caught you off guard when their true parallels have been revealed?

Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.

My Book, The Movie

Marshal Zeringue, of the fabulous CAFTAR network, invited me to play a wonderful game - who would I cast if the Taylor Jackson books were made into a movie? I think we might be on to something, especially for our new characters McKenzie and Memphis. Here's the transcript from My Book, The Movie:

J.T. Ellison is the bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Taylor Jackson series, including All the Pretty Girls, 14, Judas Kiss, and The Cold Room. She was named “Best Mystery/Thriller Writer of 2008” by the Nashville Scene.

Here she sketches out some casting options for a big screen version of The Cold Room:

"I normally shy away from giving detailed ideas of who I think would be a good actor or actress to play my characters would they get made into a movie, because I don’t like to put someone in the mind of the reader before they have a chance to decide on their own.

But my wonderful readers have lots of ideas about who should play homicide Lieutenant Taylor Jackson, and FBI Profiler John Baldwin. Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron and Blake Lively are all favorite contenders, though I’d have to throw Amanda Righetti into the mix as well – she’s got the exact profile I imagine for Taylor. And Baldwin is always a clean-cut up Hugh Jackman, or Thomas Gibson, though Baldwin’s green eyes are one of his commanding features, so I’m not sure the perfect actor has been picked for him yet. I’ll throw a new thought out there… Depending on how he ages, Chace Crawford wouldn’t be a bad choice.

The Cold Room has a couple of new characters in it, namely Renn McKenzie, Taylor’s new partner, and James “Memphis” Highsmythe, the Viscount Dulsie, and Detective Inspector for New Scotland Yard. McKenzie is hard – he’s serious, and not everything he seems on the surface. Someone like Leonardo DiCaprio would be a good fit.

Memphis, on the other hand, leaps off the page at people. I based him on a very physical version of Daniel Craig and features of Trevor Donovan, but my editor, with no reservations whatsoever, immediately saw him as Simon Baker. We’re both big fans of The Mentalist, and ever since she said that, I haven’t been able to get Baker out of my head when I’m writing Memphis.

So there you have it. An Aussie to play an upper-class Brit. I bet he could pull it off!"

Learn more about the book and author at J.T. Ellison's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: the Taylor Jackson series.

The Page 69 Test: The Cold Room.

The Sordid Junk

...that goes through a writer's brain...

Steve Weddle, from the cool blog DO SOME DAMAGE, interviewed me this past weekend in Charlottesville at the Virginia Festival of the Book. Enjoy!

JT Ellison interview with Steve Weddle from Steve Weddle on Vimeo.

(And yes, I am Italian.)

Morbid Elegance and Elmer Fudd

I'm Kim Alexander and this is Fiction Nation. The book is The Cold Room by J.T. Ellison.

It's a great pleasure for me on a personal level when authors I like have continued success and I get to help document it. I first talked to J.T. in 2008 with her debut thriller, All the Pretty Girls, which introduced us to our heroine Detective Taylor Jackson, the city of Nashville, and the special brand of crazy upon which J.T. draws to create her villains.

Since then, (the very normal and quite delightful) J.T. and I have talked a few more times, and with each conversation she becomes more assured, she gives Taylor more trouble, and her bad guys get exponentially more depraved. It's been fun to watch!

In The Cold Room, J.T. has outdone herself in terms of sheer out-there horrific behavior. Her villain is a necro-sadist, which she explains is different from your garden variety necrophiliac in that the latter doesn't require his (I'm going with 'his') victim to be dead; only really, really quiet. (I knew Elmer Fudd wasn't quite right.) The passages set in his lair are disturbing and fairly graphic — how could they not be? And why do the same kind of crimes start turning up in Europe? Taylor has to track this guy down, and because of the trans-Atlantic element, a super-hot yet troubled and mysterious man with a past AND a hot English accent is suddenly teaming up with her and her longtime squeeze, FBI agent Baldwin, and English dude has decided Taylor is The One, Full Stop. Will she relent to his English hotness? Will she be sensible and stick with Baldwin the hometown favorite? Most importantly, will she find the bad guy before he chills again?

J.T. complained that the research was gross and the topic gave her nightmares but the story wanted to be told, and if you've got the stomach for it, her hard work pays off with morbidly elegant plot twists. She's got more coming up for Taylor, and I shudder (in a good way) to think what she's going to do for an encore to The Cold Room.

Hear my interview with J.T. Ellison on Fiction Nation, on Book Radio, Sirius 117 and XM 163.

January Magazine on THE COLD ROOM

Jim Winter takes a look at THE COLD ROOM.

J.T. Ellison’s latest Nashville-based novel, The Cold Room (Mira), finds her series homicide detective, Taylor Jackson, chasing an unusual serial killer. He starves his victims to death, violates their bodies and then poses them in elaborate re-creations of famous paintings. What bothers Jackson and her FBI profiler boyfriend, John Baldwin, is the scope of these slayings. It appears he has struck also in London and in Florence, Italy.

Ellison doesn’t hide this murderer from her readers, nor does she obscure the existence of a second serial killer, this one in Italy, called Il Macellaio (“The Butcher”). Our Nashville slayer is a graphic artist named Gavin. Nice guy. Drives a Prius. Admires the hell out of Il Macellaio. Also admires a famous photographer known simply as Tomasso. Gavin imitates the latter in his art work, and the former in his style of killing. So similar is his technique to that of his Italian counterpart, that Gavin’s crimes attract a British profiler to Nashville, one James “Memphis” Highsmythe. Memphis would be welcome on the investigation, if he didn’t have the almost pathological hots for Detective Jackson.

The Cold Room combines The Silence of the Lambs with The Wire. Jackson is a strong, capable investigator who, as we see in several subplots, is having to cope with institutional dysfunction. She’s been demoted from head of the Murder Squad and placed under Lieutenant Elm, a former New Orleans cop obsessed with administrative detail and with a hair-trigger temper. In the meantime, she and her former teammates are dealing with the aftermath of events in Ellison’s last novel, Judas Kiss (2009). She’s been reduced in rank from lieutenant and saddled with a new detective, Renn McKenzie, whom she suspects isn’t worthy of her trust.

Jackson is hard-nosed and a workaholic. Walking into a room, she is immediately in charge, her fellow officers snapping to, not really accepting her lowered status. I like her new partner, too. At first, McKenzie seems to be a stereotypically green upstart, but Ellison fleshes him out as he is exposed to two bizarre murders and a third attempt in less than five days. McKenzie evolves nicely as a result, and will probably make a welcome addition to this series.

The Cold Room character I found grating, however, was Memphis Highsmythe. He could have been an amazingly complex figure, someone dealing with his own grief. Instead, the New Scotland Yard detective came off as a self-centered jerk, unfortunately gifted with investigative talents rivaling those of Jackson and Baldwin. He was supposed to provide a complication for that couple, but in almost every scene, I wondered when Jackson was going to whip out the mace, the taser or the Louisville Slugger. Highsmythe is the kind of guy women find it easy to strike out at in return for their advances.

But if Highsmythe is the low point, then this novel’s mystery, and Taylor Jackson herself, represent its high points. The case of Gavin and his online friend, “Morte,” grows increasingly complex as this tale moves along. Jackson handles the investigation smoothly, sweating more over her relationship with Baldwin than her woes in Homicide. If anything, pursuing her quarry revitalizes the detective.

Author Ellison has done a fine job chasing serial killers. Now, if she’d just learn to throw a drink or two at annoying British detectives...