Making It Up with Ellery Adams, author of Invasive Species

"I don't like when violence is trivialized in any genre... someone's dead, like the little jokes or the puns or the whatever, it doesn't work for me... I can't buy into that atmosphere. There has to be… it's not even a ripple effect. It's a freaking tsunami when there's a violent death. So let the storm come, you know, I want to see it. I want to feel it." — Ellery Adams 

Ellery Adams is the USA Today and New York Times bestselling author of over 40 novels, including the Books by the Bay mysteries, the Charmed Pie Shoppe mysteries, and the Book Retreat mysteries. She grew up on a beach near the Long Island Sound. Adams has held many jobs, including caterer, retail clerk, car salesperson, teacher, tutor, and tech writer, all the while penning poems, children’s books, and novels.

Among other things, Ellery and Carter discuss the fluidity of the horror genre, storytelling as a child, and setting a story in the 1980s. At the end of their conversation, they make up a descriptive story using a line from R.H. Herron’s Stolen Things. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Friends, hello. Welcome to this episode of Making It Up. Uh, this is my podcast where I sit down with other writers and we just talk. Um, you know, one of the reasons I started making it up was because I like talking to people. I love talking to writers, and I was very how do I put this delicately? I was very tired of being interviewed myself by people who weren't really good at it or didn't have any interesting questions. That sounds sounds fucking terrible. Um, that's very few, but I I won't, I I feel like I hadn't been on podcasts myself as a guest where it was just a conversation between two writers where and and one of the great things is my guest today at the end, she said this felt like just sitting in a coffee shop with a writer friend talking. I'm like, dude, that is exactly what I was trying to achieve. Um, so if that's the kind of conversation you're interested in, you are in the right place. And before I get to today's guests, I just want to shout out um our Unbound Writer Paris conference. So I am um, you know, I feel like I say this on every episode. We're very close to launching stuff. And I think this will all be launched by the time this episode airs. Um, so head on over to unboundwriter.com and you can navigate to the link to see our Parisian writing retreat, uh Mystery Thriller Suspense uh writing retreat with myself, Alex Finlay, um, and Clements Michelin, and with a guest appearance, a guest um instructor, Riley Sager, uh, as well as Abby Dunn, who um runs Crime by the Book. Man, this is going to be a retreat for the ages. Four one half days in the heart of Paris, um, with um best-selling uh mystery uh thriller and suspense writers. Just it's going to be immersive. We're gonna keep it to a small group of people, um, probably no more than 20. Um, so registration should be open by now. I've been working very hard on the website, which looks fucking great, I should say. I've worked really hard on it. Um, so anyway, if that's of interest to you, check it out now. Um, and there's also uh we're having um uh early bird rates until I think September or something like that. So if you want to get in early, you can right now we're doing the early bird rates. So today on the guest I have the amazing Ellery Adams. So Ellery Adams, you know, she has written something, I think she said she's working on her 47th book right now. Uh very prolific uh mystery writer, um known for not only kind of traditional mysteries, but also cozy mysteries. And what's fascinating about her, aside from how how how strong her work were body of work is, is that she decided to kind of branch out a little bit from the lanes that she was in and write something. And then we went into a deep conversation about this, um, what to call it, um kind of classified almost as like cozy horror. Um, so definitely darker than what she's written before. Her new book uh just came out, it's called Invasive Species, um, and takes place in the 1980s. Um, you definitely have to go to her website and read the description because it's amazing. Um, and just we we spent a lot of time talking about genres, definitions of the genres, publishers and agents' reactions to doing something outside of what you're known for, um, the pros and cons of it, the pros and cons of writing in the 80s, um, which we went into quite a bit. So it was really fascinating. Um, and hearing about kind of what she wants to do going forward, kind of in this space, um, as well as writing in maybe the space she's she's more historically known for. Um, so it was good, lots of good insights, lots of good tips on craft as well. Um, and at the end, we make up a great story, and she was she was fantastic. You could just see all the thoughts coming to her mind as she was speaking. So um really good story at the end of this one. Uh, this is a fantastic episode. This is my conversation with Ellery Adams. So you were um you were pitched to be my uh Megan, well Stephanie, who who I've come to love. She is great. Stephanie, Stephanie is great. Uh, how long have you at what point in your career did you say, you know, uh an outside PR firm is really helpful? Because I've done the same thing with every one of my releases.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Well, I I've kind of like got the the gist of you know pimping my own mysteries by now because I've written so many of them.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

And um, but this was a totally new genre, and I thought, you know, there's gonna be a lot of people who are gonna be like, stay in your lane, you know, we don't you shouldn't be writing this. This is not your normal genre. And you know, they did definitely come out and leave me nasty reviews on Goodreads, but that's just people these days. So I thought I'm gonna need to try to reach some new audience and preferably um in some ways a younger audience than maybe I've had before. And I thought, well, I don't know how to do that. You know, I'm not on TikTok. I'm terrified of TikTok, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

I feel like that's the place where authors go to get canceled if they say the wrong thing.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

So yeah. So um So this is your first time with an outside P PR firm. What's up? This is your first time then with kind of hiring your own outside PR firm.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

And I met Megan at uh Tucson Book Festival where she was there to support one of her other authors, and I just I loved her energy so much right from the beginning and her vibe. And I never knew I was gonna work with her back then, but I just thought, you know, man, I really like her.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

So yeah, totally. And and the thing of it is because I've been with a few different ones. I've been with K Publicity for about eight books now, and but they and they're also in charge of figuring out what's shifting every year and who to talk to and what things have the greatest efficacy. Um, which is for you and me, it's too much.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah, we can't figure that out. We try, you know.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Well, I I'm curious to talk about you mentioned lanes, and I it's a fascinating subject because you know, and please just correct me where I'm wrong or add some more flavor in here, but you have what like 40 kind of traditional cozy-ish mysteries. Um, so you know, you you have carved out a very deep lane, right? With with all of that volume. So I and and you know, looking at your your uh current book, Invasive Species, which just came out what last month, um, sure, I would looking at the description, I would say maybe it's a little bit of a different lane. I wouldn't say it's a massive departure. You're writing under your own name. Right. When you kind of had this idea, what was that conversation with your editor like?

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Well, my editor was like, what do you think about keeping your name or changing your name? And I said, you know, uh I've been building up the brand for 20 years, and I have faith that many of my mystery readers, you know, will be tough enough to move over and read this because there still is it's kind of like a story with teeth, but it's also a story with heart. So I figured if they're reading my books because they like the characterization and they like the heart, they can handle some cursing, they can handle some blood, they can handle some sex. Yeah, not all of them, some of them were immediately like this is I don't read these kinds of books, and that's fine. You know, everybody's got their T's. But I just had a lot of faith in my current readers that they would be able to take it. Um, I think the hard thing is when you tell somebody who reads a lot of traditional mysteries that you wrote something with horror elements, they hear the word horror and they think splatter, right? Splatterfest. It's gonna be Dexter with Rorschach pictures done in blood all over the wall. And I mean, horror is just like mystery, there's just genres within genres. And you know, what I was trying to convey was this idea is like this book is kind of a good gateway book for people to try horror because it's not like that, and it's more dread than actual scares, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Uh what I would say a thriller is.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

So, I mean, I write very dark thriller fiction, and I would I would probably contend that most readers think that there's more violence in my books than there actually is, because that sense of dread and that sense of anything bad can happen anytime is important to my writing, right? Um yeah, and it's also been labeled horror adjacent, and horror is probably to me the most fluid and ill-defined um genre that's out there because horror can just be in your own head. Um, it could be violence-free, really, and it could just be uh I I always felt uh horror kind of had elements of hopelessness to it, um more so than maybe darker thrillers. But I noticed on with your book kind of the term cozy horror.

SPEAKER_00 10:15

I'm like, that's right, which was something I'd never heard of before.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

I hadn't either, but I'm like, that's great because to your point, horror immediately has connotations to kind of the average reader, I would say. Um, so you like that that it kind of softens it a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

I really grew up with like creature feature movies, right? And those were like they I loved them because they had monsters in them, but I never felt unsafe.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

You know, to the and and again, that was like my gateway to horror. Now, of course, I'll read any genre of horror. I think horror is a fascinating genre because really it's just exploring the monstrosity of humanity, usually in the way that thrillers and mysteries also do. I think that they these are like kissing cousins, you know what I mean? Totally.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

Totally. Um is also very popular. So your ability to reach new readers, even at the expense of losing some, is probably a great gamble because yeah, the horror also has is very, you know, that word alone, as much as it can be a turnoff, is way more of a turn on for a huge generation of readers.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Right. And for them, I'm not her for some of them, I'm not horrific enough. Oh, of course. So um it is it's interesting to kind of like find your people out there. And I do love the I feel like horror is really having a moment right now, which is great.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Um, I think that having an actor win an Academy Award from a horror movie is huge, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:57

Huge. Well, I think back even to the 90s when Silence of the Lambs won Best Picture. I'm like, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Yeah, yeah, and it's been a long time really since a horror film was recognized like that. But I mean, it just goes to show that there's there's so much depth in just about any genre. And I think that we as readers make assumptions about genres, and we can really be wrong until we actually like pick up the book. And there's just so much crossover. I think that anytime someone's being killed, it is really just we're looking at darkness in in the psyche, dark darkness of society, you know, and and we and that happens in so many different genres, right? You know, and that's the stuff I'm attracted to. I'm attracted to dark thrillers, dark mysteries, dark horror, dark Greek retellings.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Um, I love it all. Totally. And that's what's so fascinating and and ironic about maybe the traditional cozy mystery is that it's fairly lar light, fairly heavy into kind of amateur investigation. And but underneath all of it, somebody died. You know, this really serious, heavy, if it happened to any of us, it would be the most major thing. And I think those readers are just like, you know, they that's just accepted. But then when you get into like, yeah, well, let's explore the actuality of that, then like, oh no, no, no, that's too much. But we're still talking about murder.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Right, right. And I think like I think in the beginning, when I first started writing, I was definitely writing cozy mysteries. You know, this is the this is the the tenets of a cozy mystery, and we got to stick to these. And then the more that I wrote, the more that I wanted to incorporate grittier topics, I wanted the the motives for murder to be really things that were reflected in society. And I wanted the murders to have an impact on a community as they do that was not light, you know, that showed that people were really broken by them and that as a community, yeah, you can try to heal from it, but you can't really ever repair the damage. And that's kind of dark for cozy's, and so a lot of mystery readers would be like, Well, we love Ellery Adams, but she's not a cozy writer anymore. And I think that's true. Yeah. Um, I think my current series is just, you know, traditional. And I don't compare myself to Agatha Christie because she's a plot-driven writer and I'm a character-driven writer.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Yeah. So um, yeah, and my thing is that I don't like when violence is trivialized in any genre. Totally.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Oh, no, you're speaking to the choir. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

Yeah. I that bothers me. And that's to me as a reader, is a total turnoff because I'm just like, someone's dead, like the little jokes or the puns or the whatever, it doesn't work for me. I can't buy into that atmosphere. Right. But there has there has to be, you know, and it's not even a ripple effect, it's a freaking tsunami when there's a violent death. So let the storm come, you know. I want to see it, I want to feel it.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yeah, that's I I a hundred percent have that same attitude. And I've preached a lot about this sex and violence being treated with such respect and with such consequence, um, that or even any violence. Like I, you know, I I turn off the TV if I'm watching a show and somebody gets shot in the leg and they keep running, you know.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Right. Like I did. Especially when they're shot in the knee. Right. I'm like, your leg would not function. Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

It drives me nuts.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

You'd be dragging your ass across the floor. You are not running. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

And I think the beauty of it is then, like to your point earlier, you can have this sense of dread without violence, and then the violence comes, and then you just go for it. You're just like, this is what really happens. Um, and that's that's my sweet spot. I think the I think the trouble we get into as writers, and you kind of mentioned this too about this town having the this neighborhood having these consequences. Um, you know, some people read us to escape, right? And then all of a sudden they're like, oh, this feels a little bit too real, but which is exactly the point that you're trying to write, because that's important to us as writers, and it's trying to find that spot between what's escapist enough and what's still scary, like this could happen to you. And and it's hard to for me, it's hard to hit that balance. I need I need feedback to know.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

And I think that escapism, you know, I definitely want to deliver that because I do see so much value to escapism. It's really good for our brains to just disappear for a while in a story. But I also I never want to like let readers off so easy where there's no emotional commitment to what I'm doing. So like if I'm writing and I don't feel emotional about it, then I'm failing. So like I get so caught up in it that if if one of my characters is really like devastated, and I'm not an overly emotional person, I'm pretty even keeled. So like if I'm crying while I'm writing it, I'm like, this is what this is what should be happening right now. Like this is what I want them to feel.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

I know it's it's so difficult. And I remember when I started out writing, having zero idea what I was doing, I was so fixated on that point of making things as real as possible that I wasn't selling my books weren't selling because my heroes were too weak, is what I heard a lot. Because I would think, like, you know, what would happen to this person? And I'm like, oh, they would get their ass kicked. This is what and and you know, so you have to start thinking, well, what would I do? And then you got to add like 30 to 40 percent more bravery and stupidity into that to make it a little bit more like anything can happen. And that's I mean, that just takes hundreds of thousands of words to just try to tap into that. It does, it does, and it's so hard to see it for ourselves in the middle of a book, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Um, yeah, especially the middle. I I've tried to explain the the muddy middle to people that that is a place where we often drown for weeks. I know it's the worst place.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Yeah, well, you that self-doubt that never quite goes away, and you're able to compartmentalize it the more you write, but yeah, it comes out of the middle because you've written just enough to feel proud of what you have, but then not enough to be like, is this going anywhere? Is there a is this any good?

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Is this any good? That's what I always ask. Like, is this too boring? Is this any good? Is the pacing too slow? And you know, I mean, I I think I'm working on book number 47 right now, and it's still the same thing every process. It's still, I don't know, maybe all writers just we just have terrible self-esteem.

unknown 18:59

I don't know what it is.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Yeah, I mean, it's funny. What I've evidenced from interviewing a lot of writers is there's that mixture of of low self-esteem, but also that weird confidence slash tenacity to get them writing in the first place, because most people think I could never do this, and somebody with low self-esteem would certainly think that, but somehow we all say, like, yeah, I could probably figure this out, which is it's a really weird combination. And you need both of them, I think.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Right to I definitely think that you need humility to write good characters, but then you also need arrogance to write good characters, isn't that weird? Totally, totally.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

I know, I know. And and you know, I'm on my probably writing my 14th or 15th book, and the same thing. Like, I never feel just this morning, I'm like literally a thousand words into something new, and I don't outline, so I don't know where it's going, but yeah, I don't outline either.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

I kind of like the idea of it's part of why we get stuck is we're like, oh well, now we've written out our idea and we're stuck.

SPEAKER_01 20:01

So I know, I know, but that's also I think the beauty of it a little bit is knowing that I I think the one thing you confidence gives you over time writing is you've written enough books that you get to that middle, you can acknowledge the feelings of despair and know that you've been there before, and also have the confidence to say, I'll figure it out because I trust my imagination. Um, where I get stuck is well, I know I'll figure it out. Well, I figure it out in a way that are is going to satisfy readers as much as say my last book or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 20:36

And that that's just a roll of that.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

And the truth is, some books are better than others, honestly. I mean, we we can't all of our books can't be the best book. You know, some come out and they're good, right? Some come out and they're like shining and awesome, and then the next one might be okay. I mean, you you just can't write the best book every time, it just doesn't work that way.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

No, and and I I would contend that readers aren't looking for you to write their best book. If you've developed a fan base, I think they're looking for you to write something that's you. And I and I think that's where we get stuck a little bit too, because I know I always sit down and be like, What could be like an amazing book? As opposed to what is expected from me? What am I good at? And how can I recreate that with a fresh story, but still have the elements there. Um, so it might not stand out as being like this, you know, award-winning piece of literature, but a good Carter Wilson book. Um I think we battle that a little bit, right? We're always trying to like, in our mind, like, this is a book they could be talking about first entry.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

I don't think I've ever said that to myself. I'm more like I'm visualizing scenes from like the Princess Bride, and I'm like, here comes the pit of despair. Right. Let's try to avoid that.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Well, now if we could write a book like that, then we'd be really.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Um, and so when you said like the idea. For invasion invasive species, it's a little hard to say, isn't it?

unknown 22:04

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Uh, was this your idea, or was did it come from the publisher saying, Do you feel like trying something different?

SPEAKER_00 22:13

Oh no, I mean, this it had been infestering, is really the word. It had been festering in me for a while. I really wanted to try to go down a different road, you know, totally different genre. I didn't know what genre I wanted to write. I just knew it's this is a crazy thing thing to say, but the book is very autobiographical. This is basically my childhood. I I did live next to a Mrs. Smith who never came outside. Um, she did have a really creepy garden where we worked and uncovered very strange things like a boarded up well and gravestones with the name scratched out. That's amazing. I was really scared of her. Yeah. I mean, she was legit. Um you know, and I made up stories about her when I was a kid because I was a storyteller and this is what this is what you do. Right. And you know, I was basically like lying about her on this on the bus, you know, just for street cred, like, oh yeah, you know, I saw Mrs. Smith in the window, but I didn't really see her, and she did this, and I was absolutely full of it, but I loved that sense, like all the heads on a school bus were swiveling, and I had this captive audience, you know, and I was I was like, this feels good, right? Like I knew I wanted to do that for the rest of my life, just like spin these yarns, which were just at the time lies, but um right, but I I she never really went away in my head, and I thought, well, I'd love to kind of talk about her, and I would love to kind of talk about how the female friendships on the street where I grew up absolutely just fell apart in the 80s because women started really judging each other for what kind of moms they were and if they were working or not working, and um of all the families that I grew up with, there was a hundred percent divorce rate on my street. Oh my goodness. So there was a lot of conflict, you know. And where was this?

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Where did you grow up?

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Long island.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Long island. Where in Long Island?

SPEAKER_00 24:18

What's up?

SPEAKER_01 24:19

Where in Long Island?

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Oh, it was a little town called Centerport. It's north shore.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

My partner's my partner grew up in Northport, East Northport.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

But she'll know this book, that's the harbor.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

All right, okay. All right, I gotta I gotta make sure she reads this.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Yeah, so if she happened to have been on like the swim team, we would have been on the the competing swim teams.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

But it's not actually called Cold Harbor, or it is no Cold Harbor.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

I just fictionalized the name. It's actually Centerport, which is the town across the harbor from Northport.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Yeah, okay. So okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

So I saw Jaws for the first time at Northport movie theater when we were supposed to be watching the fox and the hound, we snuck into Jaws. And that was just like that's great. And oh, that is so crazy. What a small world. But you were just saying all these friendships broke up in the 1980s when you know, as a kid, I didn't really pay attention to this stuff because I only cared about myself and my friends. But as I got older and I was kind of talking to my mom about what life was like, and you know, I always thought she was like kind of mean and kind of harsh and kind of stressed and kind of tired, and now I understand why, because she was dealing with three kids and dogs and cats and a house and a job, and it was too much. And women were literally like unraveling. And you know, she told me she was like, I was angry. I was angry, and there was nobody to turn to with my anger, right? Because we were all feeling this way, and like we weren't getting paid the same amount as guys, and you know, your father would work during the week, and then on the weekends he got to play. I never got to play, there was no play.

SPEAKER_01 26:00

It was still very 1950s-ish in a way, traditional household family, except for the divorce rate.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

Right, right. And the fact that inflation was so high that many women who wanted to stay home couldn't because they couldn't afford gas and heat and blah, blah, blah. So they had they had to go to work.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Um, and it just, I didn't really realize how much conflict was going on then. And when I thought back about her and her friend group and the different places they all ended up, I was like, you know, they were all really angry. And I was like, I want to take that anger and then that strange thing about Mrs. Smith, and I want to write a book about it, and I'm gonna throw in this Icelandic housekeeper because we did have a woman who would come watch us when my parents were out of town and she was from Iceland.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Yeah, oh, I love it.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

She was awesome.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

And the night, so I wrote one book in the 80s, it was my COVID book, and you know, so I said in 1987, I was 17 at the time, and and I, you know, I'm obsessed with the 80s, um, just because it was my coming of age.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Yeah, I love the 80s, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

It's to your to your plot here, you start to research the 80s, and you know, because you can't just rely on your own memory and you realize no heck no, yeah, like it was a pretty shitty decade. Like there was like there was some very unpleasant things happening in the 80s, um, which makes for great writing, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Um, and and like you, you probably don't remember you know the unpleasantness with materialism and that stuff, because we were kids, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

You remember going to the mall with your friends, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

We you remember your yellow sports walkman and and like you know and your swatches and oh heck yeah, you know, but when you look back at it from from this standpoint, now you're just like we were killing the environment, you know. Aquanet and Jacar Noir alone were killing the environment. We were capitalistic, self-centered, you know, all this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Literally the threat of nuclear war.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Yes, yes. We were polluting the oceans, like just dumping all kinds of crap into them with no care.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's it's for for writing what you've written, it's great. Um, and especially if you know your audience is of comparable age and they can appreciate it well.

SPEAKER_00 28:21

And that's the sticky part because it is a sticky part. I have learned that when you set something in the 80s and you have a reader who has no idea what the 80s were like, you might miss the mark with them.

SPEAKER_01 28:34

Yeah, which is which is frustrating, right? Um, because you look at the success of something like Stranger Things, right? Think about what we watched, um, or what we're capable. Like I can watch something that's set in the 50s, and I feel like I have a pretty good appreciation for it, even though I didn't exist then, but yet they don't afford that kind of intelligence to modern day, you know, entertainment consumers, which is I think a little nonsensical. Everybody, you know, kind of can know, but uh but yes, I've been warned the same thing, especially, you know, I had a co-written YA book set in the 80s, and you know, we're still trying to sell it. And they're like, oh yeah, but people who are in their 20s today who might read this, I'm like, well, they don't know that the 80s existed, they have zero contact for it.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Right, right. That's what we get told. The the thing to do there is, which I'm not sure if I completely succeeded at, is to just have characters where they can identify with something else. But I think because I had so many like women with kids who were going through this shift, a lot of Gen Z who don't know anything about the 80s other than like a couple of you know, very well-known things, um, but don't know about like the societal shift for women, they couldn't get invested in it because they weren't interested in the characters, they're too young to know what challenges they these women were going through. And the monster itself wasn't enough to keep them totally invested. And then the 12-year-old in it was some wasn't somebody they could relate to because she was 12 in 1982, and you know, right. So I I did not do a good enough job finding a character for them, having no anchoring in the 80s and having no anchoring with women who are going through all of this societal pressure to identify with for some of them.

SPEAKER_01 30:34

I mean, that's a blanket statement. I'm sure you did do it for a lot of readers, and you know, it just it's always a little bit of a crapshoot for sure. Um the flip side of that is that I there's some profound, cool things to do in in the pre-heavy technology era. Um, I love it because there's just especially as it lends to thrillers and horror, it just amps up the tension.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

Um, I love not having research, Mrs.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Smith. I don't, you know, if I go over there, I don't have a phone and a camera and stuff like you know. If I want to meet a friend, we just have to agree to meet at this place at this time and hope we show up. Like that lends itself greatly to to you know just propulsive um suspense.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

And speaking to your point, that also puts you outside more, and outside is where things happen. Yes, yeah, unless you're in a haunted house setting, right? You need to go outside, you need to go outside, and you need to lose track of time, and like darkness needs to come. And if you're in a small, small town like I was, we didn't have street lights. There was it would just fall, and you'd be like, Oh shit, I gotta get home. And now the neighborhood that is so familiar to me is now really scary.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

And no parental oversight because the presumption of safety that, you know, I don't know where that comes from, but you know, the the the cliche of like, you know, we were out until the dinner bell rang or whatever it is. Um it's true though, it's true, it's true, it's totally true. It is like, I mean, I remember even my parents when I was like 13, we went to London and they just told me to give me some money for a tube ticket, and they're like, just come back at dinner time in London. I'm like, all right, I guess I'll figure this out. I would yeah, I would never do that. I never would have done that with my kids because I no, me either not because I didn't trust them, because I would have been too scared, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:26

Right. And there was there was a presumption that we could handle it, and we usually did.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Yeah, we were fine, yeah, yeah. We might have lost a few along the way, but uh yeah, you know, that happens. So it just kind of going back to the idea that you did something different, um, which I you know, I think any author listening to this has such a a deep appreciation for, and yet it tends to and speaking from experience, it I know it tends to scare you know, longtime agents, longtime editors who are just like, can't we just keep doing what we're doing? It's working well. Um, there's also the expectation then, like, okay, well, if you're going to do this, it's also difficult from a marketing standpoint just to do a one-off, I just happen to do this. And some people get away with it, like John Grisham. Um, but so is that was there conversations where like, you know, this should be three or four books. Um, so you establish yourself in a couple different lanes.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

Well, so I I did a two-book contract with with uh HarperCollins, and the next book will be another standalone. It won't have anything to do with the 80s or Mrs. Smith. It is gonna be a contemporary in some of the sections and then throw back to um like the nine late 90s in uh in other sections. So it's like basically a college reunion type, and it takes place on Long Island again. Um, and it's more witchy demon possession kind of thing. So okay. There are phones, but not in all of it, which is great because I can use I can use it just to the extent where like the women who are all I'm in this whole like women turning on each other exploration mode right now. So they can say nasty little barbs and texts, yeah, and that's mostly what I'm using.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

And they really have to work at it because it's the actual buttons, yeah, yeah. I gotta mine them. The quirty keys, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

Right. And so the question is like what will happen after that? Because I do have more ideas. I think the challenge in marketing me and I I feel for the publicists is is what are these books? What are we calling them? Are we calling them horror? Are we calling them cozy horror? Because the next one doesn't really have the same vibes as this one, so it's much darker.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

But what's interesting, even on I'm on the Amazon page right now for invasive species, and it's listed as contemporary women's fiction, which oh yeah, but they always get everything wrong on it. I know I was about to say, like, that feels not necessarily true. I mean, like, even women's fiction as a label is pretty lame, right? You know, like what does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 35:09

Yeah, I I don't think any women's fiction author would look at this book and be like, yeah, she's one of us. They'd be like, no, no, she's not.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

But but when you when it says like for fans of Grady Hendricks, I'm like, that feels like a great comp. Great comp, right? Because and it's funny, I even kind of noticed like the book cover with your name, the the font of your name feels kind of Grady Hendricks to me in terms of the font. And I'm like, that's that's a great comp because obviously a very popular writer and who has wildly imaginative stories that don't go crazy dark, but give you enough. Um, so yeah, so that's perfect.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Yeah, so I mean, it's tough because I just got back from a very long and exhaustive tour, and I love talking to indie booksellers about placements and you know, just kind of like what they're seeing. And um they said, well, it's interesting because we're shelving this in horror, but we know so-and-so at so-and-so store is shelving it as new fiction. So, and then somebody else has it as fantasy. So they said it it's tough. These genre blends often will fall through the cracks because people don't know where to shelve it. And then when people go in to find it, they don't know where to find it or they don't know what they're looking at if it's in like general fiction. So it's tricky, it's tricky when you blend stuff. So next time, the next book is going to be like much more along the just horror lines, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Right. So I so you were never discouraged from your publisher of like, hey, maybe you shouldn't do this.

SPEAKER_00 36:56

Oh, my mystery publisher, the discussion about this novel took about five minutes. She she's actually since retired, my editor. She was a senior editor at Kensington, and she does not like dark anything. When I told her I was working on this, she was like, That doesn't sound like it's for me, but I hope it goes well for you. And I knew it wasn't. And you know, I have to give her right a first refusal that took two seconds. Right. So they, you know, she was like, Good luck with it. It's not for me. Uh gave me nightmares from like the first two paragraphs.

SPEAKER_01 37:31

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Which you know is not that scary. It's not that scary. But um, so then we put it out in the world and we we ended up at HarperCollins. So now I have two different publishers, and and the tricky thing about that is they don't care what the other ones are doing, you know, they've got their deadlines for you and their expectations for you. And if those two things happen to cross over, you know, you got to try to negotiate a few weeks of like just hold on one second. I'm editing this book.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

But and that's you know, kind of on the surface, that almost feels a little myopic in the sense of like you know, publishers are investing traditionally more than a story in more than a story, right? They want to see you, they want to develop you as a career author because it only helps them. So if part of your career is with somebody else, you know, they can't be necessarily completely agnostic about it because it matters. You know, if you went off and published something really different, um, like if you went hardcore erotica under your name with a different publisher, you would think, okay, that's a consideration for us and how we market you because you have the same name. Um, but it sounds like there's not any kind of can you know talk between them at all.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

No, not at all. And that's you know, that's where like a good agent comes in, and thankfully I have the best. So she makes sure that I have enough time to write what I need to write. And then also, you know, to go out on the road and promote. I don't know how other authors do it, but I can't work on the road. I'm too tired, I'm too burnt out. I mean, I'm an introvert, and after like every event, I'm like, I cannot even speak to anybody for like 12 hours.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Right. I know, I know. We always have, even on vacation, we always have the best laid plans for for productivity and just not being in the setting you're accustomed to. And I'm I usually only write an hour a day, so I can squeeze it in, but it's like so. People are like, Yeah, I'm writing on the airplane. I'm like, that sucks. I hate doing stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

Yeah, I can't stand it. Oh, and I always feel like it's not as good. Whatever I write when I'm trying to force it, I'm just like, I'm I don't have my coffee that I like, I'm not in the chair that I like, you know.

SPEAKER_01 39:46

I mean, it's that is it it is important. I think when you're starting out, you should and will have to write from anywhere. If you're in you know your car during your kid's soccer practice, whatever, because you need to establish the rhythm and the routine muscle. But after a while, you're like, I I've I've I've got my routines. So um, and I'm also curious, just with your with your just how much you've put out over the years, are you you're more you're obviously way more than a book a year person in terms of it depends.

SPEAKER_00 40:22

Like I I at one point I was doing three a year, and that was terrible. It was really terrible, especially since my kids were fairly young. Um, you know, I still had to like bring them my my son is dyslexic and he went to a special school, so I had to drive him there and pick him up um every day. And then there were like the regular kids' activities, and you know, those those all fell on my head because my husband didn't get home from work until really late. So trying to write three books in one year was insane. And at one point, my daughter said to me, like, you're you're always looking at your computer.

unknown 40:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

I thought, oh my god, I'm I'm missing them. So I dropped a series actually because I felt like I I needed to be more present.

SPEAKER_01 41:07

Right.

SPEAKER_00 41:07

And then I was like, ooh, two books a year is as I got older. I was like, this is still really tough. I'm not like I feel like my brain is not spinning as fast.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

And like how long are your books, would you say, normal word count, like average word count?

SPEAKER_00 41:19

Oh, 80.

SPEAKER_01 41:20

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so full-size books, obviously. Um and when you're doing two a year, is that concurrent or like at one every six months?

SPEAKER_00 41:31

So I'm trying to get I for a while I was in one every nine months, and that was comfortable. I like that. That gave me some time to do other things in life. Um, when I signed with HarperCollins, unfortunately, that that put me back in the you know, almost one every six months. But uh, I'm done writing the second one for them, and I'm hoping they want more because I have like two or three more horror ideas, and I would like to keep trying.

SPEAKER_01 42:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:02

Um, but I would like to get like every other year mystery, every other year horror, because it's just, you know, I I want more time with each book so it can be the best thing it can be. Like sometimes like we need to like walk away for three months and then come back and read it and be like, okay, I get where I was going with that, but I can make this better. I want the time to be able to like let it sit and percolate for a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

And I that's the that's the struggle, is we often don't get that time. And I know you can extend deadlines and that kind of thing. And I think what people also don't appreciate is that yes, I can write a book in nine months and have it, you know, several passes on it. Um, but usually in the middle of that, I'm getting edits for my last book. Yeah, that could be two or three months.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

You gotta do promotion, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:57

And I have a hard time working on two things at once because I get the stories conflated and I just, you know, I I get the tone mixed up, and um, and so I then will have to stop working, and it's literally two or three months to make edits, like really substantial edits a lot of times. So, yeah, right. And then promotion and all that kind of thing. It's uh you're not in a vacuum ever, ever, ever, ever.

SPEAKER_00 43:20

Exactly. So I feel like if if we all had a year per book, they would just be better books. Yeah, you know, which is kind of the goal.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

Yeah, I know. I I mean, I'm pretty for it. I'm I'm a year a book, is is usually what I'm asked to do. So it's it's it it it works fine for me. I think I think if I were slower than that, that would make me feel like I was almost missing out that I needed to oh yeah, I'd feel like that a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00 43:45

I'd be like, I gotta I gotta crank this up. That if I don't get one app per year, I'm gonna lose my audience, blah blah blah. But readers are, you know, I don't think I've a lot of publishers don't give them enough credit. Like an author can disappear for two years. Or, you know, like take Catherine Stock. Yes, she did write the help, but it's been like 14 years or something between books. It's not going to stop everybody from buying her new book. Some people haven't even never even heard of her, but she's still going to do just fine. Like, if if a writer is not around for two years, they're not totally gone. But I think there's this terrible pressure. Like if you're not on social media, if you're not producing work constantly, that you're just going to fade into the ether. And and I think that readers are more connected to us than that.

SPEAKER_01 44:33

I think that's true. I mean, it'll be interesting. My next book coming out in November, it will be 22 months from my last one. And my last one was kind of my breakout. So I'm like, I need, you know, yeah, I had this feeling of like it should be soon. Yeah. But and I was still doing a book a year, but you can't control publishers' schedules and how much volume they have per season and things like that. Um, but now that we're getting closer to it, I see like, yeah, people didn't forget, you know, people who like my books aren't going to forget it. Right, right. So I think how long we had to wait between uh seasons of The Sopranos. It could be like 16 months. I'm like, oh, I I remember exactly.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

I thought we forgot who Tony was in that time.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Right, exactly. Well, Ellery, we're gonna wrap up. Before we do, we're gonna do our little storytelling. Um, so I've got this is the making up portion of the show. I've got three books that I've picked at random from my bookshelf. We're gonna choose one book, we're gonna choose a random sentence from a random page. I'm gonna read that sentence, and that'll be the first sentence in like a two-minute long short story. We'll just alter these sentences and when it goes completely off the rails, I'll call it. Um, and and we'll see how dark we get. It usually gets pretty dark, so we'll see. Okay, but no pressure, it could be about whatever we want it to be. Um, I've got RH Heron's um uh stolen things. Great cover. Um, my friend Wendy Walker's What Remains. Awesome, and I've never even pulled this one off the shelf before, but I've got uh the Da Vinci code.

SPEAKER_00 46:01

Oh, okay. So we could be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

I went to the I actually stood on my chest to get the very there's a shelf even above what you can see. Oh, really? Okay, I just pulled three from from there. So choose one of those.

SPEAKER_00 46:12

Um, I'm I'm gonna go for the first one. I really like that cover.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Stolen things. So give me a uh a page number between one and three fifty.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Uh I'm gonna go for my lucky number, which is 27.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Okay. I'm gonna quickly scan page 27 and see. Um you do whatever you want to do with this.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

Um, oh boy.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

And mom was never dumb, she wouldn't let it go.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

She kept bringing up the story of finding the old woman in the backyard.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

For years and years and years we knew none of it was true, probably because we also knew mom loved to drink. But it wasn't until in my 30s when I returned home for Thanksgiving that something made me realize there was some truth to the story after all.

SPEAKER_00 47:17

I think even though she put down her glass of Crown Royal and it was her third one of the night, and she was in tale telling mode, I could just sense there was some truth in the air. And it was the way she described that old woman's hand. I couldn't get the picture out of my head.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

But she read the doubt on my brother's face. And maybe it was the alcohol, and maybe it was just decades of being dismissed that made her finally scream out, if you don't believe me, grab a shovel and I'll tell you where to dig.

SPEAKER_00 47:59

I thought she was full of shit, frankly, but my brother looked at me and said, I dare you. And even though we were too old for that, it still works. And so I said, Fine, you hold the flashlight, let's go. And we went to the garage and we grabbed the shovel, and mom came trudging behind, but her demeanor had totally changed. The challenge in her voice had turned to fear.

SPEAKER_01 48:26

It was just as we stepped into the backyard that a soft sprinkling of rain began, which felt just perfect for the mood. And she took us into the far back corner of our three-acre estate, a place covered with autumn leaves and the smell of peat. And she trudged around in the wet, stuck her foot next to an old tree stump, and said, Right here, the ground should be soft.

SPEAKER_00 49:00

I noticed right away that there was a strange scattering of mushrooms only in that part of the ground. They weren't anywhere else. Our dog had followed us. His name was Leighton. Leighton whined as I held up the shovel and approached the area where mom told us to dig. And for a moment I thought, this is a mistake. What am I doing out here? Why am I out here? It was cold. A little tendril of sharp wind crept down the collar of my shirt. It seemed to go deep through my skin, between the vertebrae of my spine, whispering, mistake, mistake. But I dug the blade of the shovel into the ground anyway.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

I think we call it there. That was great. That was great. You were fantastic. You just ran with it.

SPEAKER_00 50:00

I want to know what this woman looks like now. I was well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:03

And I'll tell you, it's funny. I listened to that entire story, and the detail that really makes that story is are the mushrooms, right? Like that's that the power of that imagery of a mushroom, which has so many different meanings to it, um, holds so much weight. And those are the things that really make stories good. I think when you're like, what's what's the deal with the mushrooms? Right, right. That was fun. Well, what a pleasure to to meet you and talk to you and hear about your books. You too. This was great.

SPEAKER_00 50:32

This was just like hanging out with a friend over coffee.

SPEAKER_01 50:35

That is that is the intention of this book. Oh, you did it.

SPEAKER_00 50:38

Nailed, nailed it.

SPEAKER_01 50:40

Awesome. Well, again, what a pleasure talking to you, Ellery. And I hope to meet you in person sometime.

SPEAKER_00 50:45

Same here. And I can't wait to read your next book. Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 50:48

All right, take care.

SPEAKER_00 50:49

All right, take care. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_01 50:54

All right, that is it. That is my conversation with Ellery Adams. That was a great one, and it was a fantastic storytelling. Um, I kind of think she knocked it out of the park. I think she was really prepared for it. Uh, she knew what she was doing, she was really good at it. Um, if you want to check out Ellery or everything about all of her 40 plus books, uh, you can just head to her website, which is ElleryAdamsbooks.com. And if you're interested in learning about my books, pre-ordering my next book called When They Find Me, which releases in November, head on over to CarterWilson.com. And if you're interested in that Parisian suspense writing retreat next year or any one-on-one private coaching, you can go to unboundwriter.com. All right, friends, that is it. That is it for this episode of Making It Up. Another one out just next week. As always, I love the fact that you listen to this. I appreciate it. Feel free to email me at any time with any suggestions or or guess that you might be interested in on. You can just email me at CarterWilson.com. Until next week, take care.