Friday Reads 8.7.26

I Need Clones, Losing a Mentor, and "Hey, Kid, Want Some Candy?"

Hi, hello, happy Friday, and welcome back to another week of random thoughts on life and books. I hope your week was fabulous. A quick bit of business—these posts are always free, but for subscribers, so if you aren’t already, please join us!

It’s August. AUGUST. Deadline month. Second deadline month. Book release month. PR swinging into high gear month. Anniversary month. See how many balls JT can juggle until she suffocates under the weight of her own expectations month.

And it’s hot. Not as hot as it has been, though, thank all that’s holy. We were melting. The cardinals were not impressed, the hummingbirds were drinking a feeder a day, and the pool was bristling with noodles so tightly spaced it was hard to see the bottom.

But it’s now starting to cool in the evenings, into the 70s. It’s one month until fall, which makes me very happy. I am a cozy fall girlie.

Hey, I have a fun surprise for you today. I will be live, chatting it up with my pal Jayne Ann Krentz, today at noon central. We’re going to talk about her two new books, ENTER THE NIGHTMARE and THE SHOP ON HIDDEN LANE, pen names, writing styles, and whatever else tickles our fancies, and you know we’ll probably touch on our favorite gothics. Would love for you to join us!

Live with Jayne Ann Krentz TODAY at 12 pm CT

Jayne is one of my mentors. I adore chatting with her because I always come away with a heightened understanding of storytelling. I think you’ll enjoy hearing her unique perspective, too.

In less-than-great news, I lost one of my other writing mentors last week. I’ve been in that odd state of shock where you can’t quite wrap your mind around the loss of someone. It doesn’t feel real. Del Tinsley was instrumental in launching my career. She adopted me after a signing for John Connolly back in 2003. It was the first time I ever attended an author signing, the first time I met fellow authors. I was a newbie with a plan, and she saw something in me, and that was it. Literally, she became my other mother, my mamasan, my Dutch uncle, my mentor. She got me into Sisters in Crime, brought me into her writing group, was my biggest cheerleader on DorothyL, taught me how the industry worked, listened to every bit of drama, cheered every success, mopped away too many tears to count, hugged me from below (she was short!) and shared my love of cats. I hadn’t seen her in a while, which is an even bigger bummer that’s quickly turning into a huge regret. I fear we think the people we love will always be there, and sadly, they won’t. So if there’s someone you haven’t seen in a while and you’re thinking about them, reach out. And raise a glass tonight to a lovely woman who loved crime fiction with a passion rarely seen, who was feisty as hell, a fantastic writer and copyeditor, and kind to the bone.

She would be happy to know that the end is in sight on my new book, and would be the first to say HOW many books are we up to, Chicken Little??? We both delighted in my career, and I miss her, a lot.

And because life is nothing if not cyclical, and because it was Del’s favorite thing to do, it’s been a very good week for books. First, I got to chat all things Nashville with Ashley Winstead and Lauren Nossett to celebrate Lauren’s launch of INDIE DARLING. It’s a great book, and Ashley’s HOT GIRL MURDER CLUB is stellar, too. I really love both of their leads, and here’s to more girl power law enforcement characters!

My pal Kerry Lonsdale has the finale of her beloved series release. EVERYTHING WE FOUND can be read as a standalone, so I encourage you to get it, STAT. Kerry’s a beautiful world builder, and I love her work.

I absolutely loved Liv Constantine’s newest, PROMISE ME NEVER. It is a Rebecca-esque story with so many twists my head was spinning. Brava, Lynne!

Ahead of watching the new Sense and Sensibility—a personal fave of mine out of Austen’s canon—I scored a copy of Georgia Oakley presents: Sense and Sensibility. It is so cool to see the story through the director’s eyes. It’s illuminating to see how she approached this beloved tale, and I’m loving revisiting the book, too.

The amazing Riley Sager is back with another killer thriller, THE UNKNOWN. I started it, was completely sucked in, and was happy that I didn’t have to sleep with the lights on…yet.

Sarah Pekkanen has a new book out too that looks incredible. THE WOMEN IN WHITE is a paranormal thriller, and I love, love, love that it ties right into my discussion today with Jayne.

Oh, and there’s this really cool book that’s coming out in three weeks that I think you might like. It’s called YOU KNOW WHY, and it’s a dual-narrative story about two women who smash-cut into each other’s lives at an airport. Oh yeah, I wrote it. Grab a copy, would you? Pre-orders are a huge boon.

In service of keeping the cat in treats and the fact that in the age of AI, it seems a record of our work is one of the easiest ways to show our readers the work is, in fact, our own, I’m thinking about live-writing another novel. This one will be less about the craft and more about the nitty-gritty of the story as it comes together. I’ve been planning this book for a while, and I’m super excited to start writing. I won’t be able to get going on it until November, but then, start your engines. Because it will be discussing copyrightable material, these posts will be paywalled, so in addition to dropping the monthly fee to better reflect what you’d spend if you bought said book, I’m also throwing in a 20% off deal this week. So if you’re interested in seeing how the sausage is made—again—here you go.

That’s more than enough from me. How did your week go? Read anything great?

JTx

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