Ellie Marney's Blog, page 2
May 13, 2025
Nailbiters #37
What is it with the whole ‘snakes are evil’ thing? Have you ever wondered?
Okay, setting aside the terrifying experience I had last year when a snake got into my writing office, I’ve ne…
April 22, 2025
Nailbiters #36
There’s a 1955 British black comedy called The Ladykillers (dir. Alex Mackendrick, starring Alec Guiness) about a group of robbers that want to tunnel through the basement of an old lady’s house to stage a security van heist at the train station nearby – the humour is in the way the sweet old lady, Mrs Wilberforce, somehow manages to best the villains.
But honestly, I still like a good old-fashioned heist story? There’s something rogue-ish about it that I really enjoy. And this recent one about a bunch of burglars who tunnelled through a wall to steal $10M-worth of jewelry from an LA store gave me a laugh – especially the part about how the suspects “drove off in a late model Chevy truck” and also how the crime scene later showed “holes cut in a large safe, overturned jewel cases and an empty bottle of scotch whisky.” [my italics]
Please remember to take your own bottle of scotch whisky to your next burglary, if you need some Dutch courage.
RoundupAll Shall Mourn is still going strong on both GoodReads and with online sales, for which I’m very grateful!…I’m taking bookings for school/festival events, including Book Week, so if you’d like to have me visit, hit me up!…I’m on the program for this year’s Melbourne OzComicCon – tix are here at the link…that’s it so far!
Sekret Projekt is SekretThis month’s edition of Nailbiters is open to all subscribers, so although you folks – my darling regular subscribers 😊 – know a bit about it already, I won’t spill the beans more right now. But I will say that me and my new editors are currently talking about a book title.
Once we have that nailed down, I guess we’ll start the process of making an announcement. Announcements for new books are usually done closer to the book’s actual release than you think, because the prevailing publishing wisdom is that if readers hear about a new title in (for instance) February, they won’t remember anything about it by the time the book releases in December. Publishers like to announce as close to release as they can get away with, to be honest, but I’m pushing to run the announcement a little earlier – I’m fairly confident that with additional things like cover reveals etc, I can keep your attention! Either way, keep your eyes peeled because as soon as I have news, I’ll share it.
And my edit letter has come back! That means my lovely two-week holiday over Easter break is at an end, and it’s time for me to start kicking back into gear.
New publisher!Over my 11 years in publishing, I’ve worked with Allen & Unwin (Aus), Tundra Books (Can), HarperCollins (Aus), and Little Brown for Younger Readers (US) for my English-language books. Now I’m working with Thomas & Mercer.
Each publisher has its own “in-house management style” – and that phrase covers a lot of things, including how editors work and interact with me, how responsive they are, whether timelines are tight, whether I’ve been adequately consulted on things like covers and marketing, and whether I’ve felt like I have a friendly relationship with my editors and contact people. Some publishers squeeze schedules so you’re working like a maniac over the holiday period; some make you feel like an afterthought; some send you flowers on release day (haven’t had that yet!) or make little gestures to show that you’re appreciated; some really make you feel like you’re collaborating together on making the book the best it can be.
As far as management style goes, Allen & Unwin has probably been my favourite publisher to this point, but Thomas & Mercer seem to be giving them a run for their money.
For instance: My edit letter arrived over the weekend, and it’s given me new energy. Edit letters are funny things. Quite often they make you mad, sometimes they make you sad, and even more rarely, they make you happy. I found myself in one of those rare situations where the edit letter made me happy – and genuinely delighted to start polishing and improving the book.
I’ve written before about how to deal with your edit letter – I packed every single piece of wisdom I could gather together into that article, and I hope it’s made life a smidge easier for people who took my advice. But nowhere in that article does it say anything about being sympatico with your editors from Day One…So this edit is a new experience for me, and I have to say it’s kind of amazing!
I’ll keep you updated on how things progress with the book as we go along 😊
Make more degenerate artI’ve been thinking a lot lately about art labelled “degenerate”.
How did I get started thinking about it? Well first, people were talking about it online, and then I read a page on Wikipedia which explained that the term “degenerate art” applies to a very specific type of art, namely modern stuff that Nazis hated during WWII.
They hated it so much, they toured an exhibition of it around Germany and Austria in 1937 to show people how garbage it was (lolololol) and claimed that it was “the work of those so corrupted and enfeebled by modern life that they have lost the self-control needed to produce coherent works”. Basically, the Nazis wanted everyone to make traditional “classical” art that aligned with Aryan values, whatever the hell that meant. Anything too weird or sexy or avant-garde or atonal or distorted (or even shit that was “too realistic”) was seen as degenerate.
While the label “degenerate art” kind of dropped off the radar after WWII, I think over the last hundred years there’s been a lean toward labelling stuff “low art/culture” instead. But there’s been a dangerous resurgence of fascist-type rhetoric around what makes art “good” or acceptable, and it’s time to talk about it again. Some art has always been tarred with the “low art” brush, indicating culture that’s too niche or erotic or weird - we need to reject that, in my opinion, especially when people say art like that shouldn’t be created.
But degenerate art isn’t just about sexy or dangerously weird stuff – it can also just be art that doesn’t seem to have a real reason to exist. By which I mean, someone just did it for lols, or did it because they were bored, or whatever. Art that really has no commercial purpose (which, imo, is some of the best art!), and art that doesn’t “say” anything, and art that is simply human self-expression in its purest form.
We actually started doing more of this during covid, if you remember:
And on that theme, I recently went to the screening of Jurassic Park: Castlemaine Redux in my town. It’s a shot-for-shot remake of Jurassic Park, made on zero budget, with local townspeople playing all the roles, and shonky special effects and models. The director, John Roebuck, is a guy who used to teach at the same local high school as me (he took over some of my classes after I went on leave, actually), and he started the project as a way to stave off boredom during lockdown.
As you can see, the project took on a life of its own.
Why did John and everyone involved do this? WHO KNOWS. My partner – who is not an arty or creative person – asked what the whole point of it was. I honestly had no answer. Sometimes you just wanna make stuff! You do it for fun (although everyone on the film set can attest that there were plenty of not-fun parts…and yet they persisted!). You do it to keep yourself busy. You do it as a distraction from Real Life. You do it because…why the hell not?
I’m reminded of the slogan of the traveling theater troupe in Emily St. John Mandel’s exquisite 2014 novel Station Eleven – “Because survival is insufficient”.
I remember lots of people saying to me, when I first started writing, words along the lines of “Well, it’s not exactly Shakespeare, is it?” Lol, thanks for the encouragement – I was very aware that my little stories weren’t Shakespeare. But just because something isn’t Shakespeare or Rembrandt or Mozart or something doesn’t mean it has no value.
No art is wasted. The shitty little thing you create today, that you toss in the trash? It has served some purpose, in the scheme of things – even if it’s just to help make you a better artist.
Art can be meaningful, extraordinary, broadly popular, commercial, timely, successful, significant, eternal.
But at least some of our art should be degenerate. It should be useless. It should be pointless. It should be meaningless, unpopular, obscure, opaque, chaotic. It should be sexy and embarrassing and cringe. It should be janky and silly and weird and ugly and NSFW and throwaway.
Now, more than ever – as voices are silenced and people are being thought-policed and actually policed into dust, as funding is withdrawn and belts are tightened, as folks are put under political and personal pressure – we need artists, and we need art. Something that reminds us who we are, that shows us what it is to be alive, that delights us for no reason at all.
Art doesn’t have to have a reason. Self-expression is supremely human, and sometimes that is all the reason you need.
Witchcraft for Wayward GirlsGrady Hendrix has written a banger with this one – I’ve read all of Hendrix’s books and this is the first one that made me cry. I loved it with my whole heart.
But I also had some thoughts related to how this book is positioned in the world, and here they are:
First of all, a roundup of the story: The book is set in 1970, and is about a 15yo girl sent to a home for unwed mothers in Florida. She bands together with a number of the other girls over their mistreatment – and when a bookmobile librarian gives her a book called How To Be A Groovy Witch, things get intense.
The horror of the novel wasn't in the witchcraft so much, but the body horror of pregnancy/birth, and in the abuses suffered by the girls.
Strong CW for pregnancy/birth scenes, this book does not shy away. Also if you have any triggers around adoption, you might also want to tread carefully. Just be kind to yourself, friends 🖤
Finally a book that isn't Disneyfied witchcraft! In WFWG, witchcraft is pagan as fuck and exacts a price. There's a strong folk horror/cosmic horror feel to the magic here that digs into the nature of power, and where women's power resides.
There's a couple of Black characters portrayed here that will stir some issues around whether he's written a Magical Negro trope. I would say Hendrix is maybe trying to write era-appropriate representation? But the path is narrow - I don’t think a Black author would have written these characters, or not in the same way. Hendrix is heavily influenced by Malcolm McDowell, who often has a Black character providing guidance to a white protag (he did it at least twice, in The Elementals and again in Blackwater), and like McDowell, Hendrix was raised in the South. I think Hendrix is skating here, but I can also see how writing a Black character in a book set in 1970 Florida would pose certain constraints. If you’re a Black reader, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
This book is being described as 'mature storytelling' and I think reviewers mean that Hendrix is relying less on horror tropes and camp humour (his stock in trade), and leaning into his strengths, which are about embodying female experience within a perfectly-rendered historical time period.
It's a deeply moving book: The backstories of the girls, their connections, their mistreatment, their prospects, but also the nature of childbearing when you're giving up a baby for adoption.
Hendrix has always explored women's experiences in his fiction - I don't think he's ever written a male protagonist? - and he absolutely nails it once again. There were so many times, when I was reading, that I found myself shocked this was written by a guy.
And with this last point, I get to the heart of my concern, which was:
If this book had been written and released by a female author, I honestly believe it would've been labeled paranormal historical women's fiction and relegated to some dustbin.
Why - always why - is a book like this about women's experiences being written by a man???? Or maybe I’m whinging here about why a book of this nature, written by a man, received such heavy promotion and support, when I don’t think a similar book by a woman would have received the same consideration. Is that it? Is that what I’m whinging about? Not the author, or the book itself, but the system that surrounds it, or the era in which it was released? Hmm.
I don’t think Hendrix chose the wrong topic, and I don’t think he “shouldn’t be allowed” to write in women’s spaces. I kind of hate all that crap, I find it pretty reductive. It’s particularly painful now, with so much awful shit in the news about trans voices, and how much they’re silenced (terfs can fuck right off, please and thank you). I don’t want to cut the fictional landscape into smaller and smaller siloed pieces where nobody else is allowed to trespass, as that just seems to serve to limit all of us. I myself have written male POVs! It’s fine! Write as a carrot if you want to! Write as a genderless cyborg in outer space! (or maybe don’t do that, because Martha Wells seems to have a lock on it)
And I love Hendrix’s work deeply. My opinion on this is not a reflection on Hendrix or his writing – this is a genuinely astonishing book, like all his books. He embodies women's experience here in a way I haven't seen done since his previous novel, The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, which focused on middle-aged women. Hendrix absolutely gets it. He gets women's struggles, their thoughts, their lives. He gets it in a way that I find almost uncanny. He grew up surrounded by strong Southern women – his mother, sisters, aunts – and as mentioned, everything he writes is focused on women and their lives. It's not an impersonation: There's something deep in Hendrix that resonates with women's experiences in a way I haven't seen before in another male author.
And because he's a guy, probably the most popular guy author in horror right now except for Stephen King, it will mean that this book gets read by people who wouldn't normally read a book about teenage girls experiencing pregnancy and birth and abuse. He's going to get so many people reading something they would - in any other circumstance - never have picked up.
HE'S STILL A FUCKING A GUY.
Like I said, I don’t think Hendrix did anything wrong – this is no Memoirs of a Geisha – and I love WFWG very much. But there are some systemic issues at play here that jangle like a sour note over a book I’d have preferred to have just enjoyed wholeheartedly.
I want a world where women authors get to portray this stuff, and not have it marketed as 'women's fiction'.
I want a world where female horror authors aren't put off writing about women's experiences like this, for fear of being pigeonholed.
In this anti-Roe era, when women's lives are being undercut in every possible way, I would like to see horror publishing be more supportive of women authors. Online, I have coincidentally seen people celebrating “Women in Horror Month” – make of that what you will.
So yeah. Lots of a big feelings.
I still rec the hell out of Witchcraft for Wayward Girls and encourage you to read it.
I also encourage you to read the following female and non-binary horror authors (in no particular order): Catriona Ward, Angela Slatter, CJ Leede, Zoje Stage, Gemma Files, T. Kingfisher, Ania Ahlborn, Elle Nash, Tananarive Due, Angela Carter, Rachel Harrison, Madeleine Roux, Mariana Enriquez, Daphne du Maurier, Augustina Bazterrica, Gretchen Felker-Martin, Ellen Datlow, Octavia Butler, Anne Rice, V. Castro, Kiersten White, Michelle Paver, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, VC Andrews, Kendare Blake, Jac Jemc, Simone St James, Cass Khaw, Jenny Kiefer, Allison Rumfitt, Isabel Canas, Elizabeth Engstrom, Jennifer Thorne, Alma Katsu, Helen Oyeyemi, Sarah Langan, Cynthia Pelayo, Susan Hill, Kathe Koja, Tanith Lee, Mona Awad, Gwendolyn Kiste, Mira Grant (Seanan McGuire), Cathrynne Valente, Katya de Becerra, and of course, our forever-queens, Shirley Jackson and Mary Shelley.
If you haven’t heard of any of them beyond the last two, maybe think about why.
MURDERBOTI am having an emotion.
Look, I’m not sold on Skarsgard as Murderbot, and I’m not sure this will be the screen version I want to see (my screen version would be way way way way drier and darker, because in my mind, Murderbot is like “what if Marvin the Paranoid Android and Robocop had a depressed child”). But I love Wells, and I love that the show has been made, and I’m prepared to find a lens to watch the show through that will make it enjoyable for me.
A friend suggested I think of it as in-universe fanfiction – Murderbot as a kind of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. My friend said that Murderbot itself would hate that a human had been cast to play them, and would find the entire thing almost soul-destroyingly cringe…but that ART would have watched every episode already more times than you can count.
I can probably live with that.
(Also excuse me, but John Cho in Sanctuary Moon clips?? That part I loved. PERFECTION).
*
Thank you so much for reading this month! (I know it’s late, and I apologise – every single day I thank Hecate that you folks are so patient) We also have some extra friends this month, as I opened this edition for both paying and non-paying readers, in the hope that some of my Black Hand readers might find this edition interesting enough to take the plunge and subscribe. If you do subscribe, I thank you!
Anyway, now I’m off to read the replies to my edit letter and hopefully get started planning out the edits I need to make. Wish me luck!
I hope you all have an excellent April – eat more Chocolate Bunnies! Make more degenerate art! Read more books!
Take care now, and catch you again really soon 😊
xxEllie
The Black Hand, vol.47
It seems a bit weird to be talking about crime news when political leaders (ahem 👀) have been committing crimes all over the place? So this month I’m diverting a little to share an article which is crime-adjacent, but mainly a kind of nightmare for me personally, and probably for anyone who’s ever watched a horror movie or read a creepy novel and then been afraid to let their feet hang out over the side of the bed…
A babysitter in Great Bend, Kansas, was reassuring the child they were caring for that there were no monsters under the bed…and when she kneeled down to look she found a man hiding beneath the bed.
Sorry – when I first read this headline, I actually squealed aloud, and now I’m inflicting it on all of you.
Anyway, when the babysitter discovered the man under the bed, there was an ‘altercation’ – which I’m going to take to mean that the babysitter SCREAMED REALLY LOUD, which is what I sure as hell would’ve done - and when the man jumped up, one of the kids was knocked over. The man ran away, and nobody was seriously hurt. He turned out to have been a former resident of the house who was under a protection order not to return. The man was arrested after a foot chase by police deputies.
BUT SERIOUSLY THOUGH, I would die. Like, I would actually die.
Or maybe just never sleep again.
Could this situation be worse? I mean, maybe it could be worse…
It seems like a good time to mention this case in Tibet, of a man who took a room at a nice hotel and found the smell from the air conditioner so awful, he asked to move rooms. It wasn’t until later that management realised the smell was…from a corpse under the bed.
I think what we should all take away from this is that it’s never worth looking under the bed.
Welcome back from school holidays!My youngest son (currently in Year Eleven) and my partner (a high school teacher) have returned to the world of school/work and I’d like to send my sympathies their way. Also, my sympathies to everyone who has to resume study or employment after Chocolate Bunny Long Weekend – elbow bumps and heavy sighs to you.
Is this the sleaziest looking chocolate bunny ever, or is it my imagination?I myself have to get into an edit so I’m resuming work as well (I’ve had two whole weeks off, in which I don’t think I wrote anything at all! Amazing!). But I must point out that working from home as I do, I also sigh – with relief – when people go back to their respective occupations and the household returns to the state of calm quiet that I’m accustomed to.
What else has been happening? Well, All Shall Mourn is still going gangbusters – it’s reached over 800 ratings on GoodReads and it’s powering along in categories, which is awesome.
elliemarney
A post shared by @elliemarneyAlso I neglected social media for over a month and nothing caught on fire and now I’m (mostly) back. Also I neglected to write this newsletter for a few weeks while I was still beat from completing my manuscript, but as you may have noticed, I’m back now! Also also I’m taking bookings for school/festival events, and started talking to teachers about Book Week…
Nature is healing, as the kids say.
I finished the book on deadline and then I was exhaustedPeople have been asking me what I’ve been doing lately and that’s pretty much it?
I think I remember I told you that I was firing on all thrusters trying to get a new book finished by March 31 – well, the good news is that I hit my deadline! The bad news is that I my thrusters burned brightly while getting there…then puttered out into black ash in the aftermath.
So yeah, I got a little fried. Actually, if I’m speaking honestly, the last five or six months have been a bit of a slog: I finished writing All Shall Mourn, sold a new book on pitch, prepped for the All Shall Mourn publication and release, went away with my partner to India (where I continued writing the New Thing), came home, released All Shall Mourn (whoooo!), then suddenly it was February and I needed to finish a 300 page book by the end of March.
And the new book was research-heavy – man, I really had to crunch that sucker to get it in on time. I worked some crazy hours, and my partner carried the household load while I was doing that. Then when I was finished, I kind of collapsed in a heap.
If you don’t mind me getting personal for a second, can I send out a giant thank you to my partner – to all the partners and families and teams who support writers. Because we would not be able to do this without our teams 🖤
As I mentioned above, “nature is healing”, so this week I cleaned my house (*gasp*) and tidied up my life in other ways, and it was really nice 😊 And now my edit letter has arrived, but I’ve had a break and feel recovered, so I’m okay with the fact that it’s time to get back to work!
Post-deadline cocktailWhat do you do to celebrate finishing a book, you ask?
I drink a:
🍸Lemon Drop Cocktail🍸
~in a shaker with ice, add 2 shots vodka, 1 shot simple syrup, 1 shot fresh lemon juice (way better fresh!), 1/2 shot triple sec;
~shake, pour into a martini glass or some other fancy glass so you feel fancy;
~you do not have to coat the rim of the glass with caster sugar, it depends on how tired you are or how eager to drink your cocktail, and won’t detract from the taste;
~drink a toast!
People who read the New Book will understand this recipe when the book comes out next year 👀
Where you can find meI’ll be at Melbourne OzComicCon on the weekend of 7-8 June, and I’m really quite excited about it!
You can find tickets to the con once more here at the link , I’m going to have signed copies of All Shall Mourn for sale (and maybe matching AU paperbacks? If I can get organised in time? We will see) and I might even wear my FBI agent cosplay outfit…
I would absolutely love to catch you there 😊
Nailbiters is going out to everyone this monthI thought it might be nice to encourage folks to sign up for my paywalled newsletter Nailbiters, so I’m sending out this month’s edition to everyone. If you’ve ever wanted to sample Nailbiters and see if it’s good value, now’s the time! While there won’t be bonus fiction content this edition, there should be some other cool stuff and I hope you like it!
Stuff to read and watchI mean The Bondsman looks really silly, but also fun, and also…Kevin Bacon. He’s a gnarly old dude now, but he’s still got a cute butt and he seems like he loves his wife and is a good human:
In other media news, we’ve watched up to episode 8 of Severance, and you are all FORBIDDEN from spoiling anything after this point. Yes, I’m enjoying it.
As far as reading goes, I did some completely whim-driven book selection and read KOKO by Peter Straub. If you’re not familiar with Straub’s work: He’s a contemporary of Stephen King who had a number of popular successes, including Julia and Ghost Story, and collaborated with King on the book The Talisman. He won all the awards – the Bram Stoker award, the World Fantasy award, the August Derleth award, and the International Horror Guild award – and I didn’t mind this book at all.
It's the story of a group of friends who all met in the same army unit in Vietnam: Haunted by an atrocity committed there, the men have to band together to find one of their number who has been committing a series of ritualistic murders throughout South-East Asia. KOKO is set in 1982, and there are many twists in the tale as it takes you from NYC, to Singapore, to Bangkok’s notorious Patpong Road, and ultimately to an isolated village in Vietnam called Ia Thuc, where each man in the story somehow finds his meaning.
The book’s cover seems to have stared back at me from the shelves of every second-hand bookstore I’ve ever walked into…and I finally dived in. I won’t say I’ve ever been a huge fan of Straub – I know people absolutely froth about him, but I bounced off Ghost Story when I first tried to read it about 20 years ago. This book is pretty damn good, though: The language and writing are evocative, and you’re easily sucked into the mystery of who’s committing these murders. I felt like the plot employed a couple deus ex machina devices toward the end, but I feel strongly that every writer who reaches 576 pages can have a little deus ex machina as a treat (??? Like I’m having trouble selling a book just 25 pages over 400, I’ve got no idea how everyone was so cool with 500+ page books back in the eighties…)
Anyway, it won’t be my favourite read of the year but it was good, and I’m glad I finally read it. If you’re at the beach and you find a copy of KOKO in the AirBnB where you’re staying, pick it up and give it a whirl.
An Austen-inspired murder mystery!I drove to Melbourne last week to sign books at Dymocks CBD, and discovered piles of the new novel MISS CAROLINE BINGLEY, PRIVATE DETECTIVE – along with the authors themselves, Kelly Gardiner and Sharmini Kumar 😊 Kel and Sharmini are amazing humans and it was so great to catch up!
I’ve known Kelly for years – she hired me to teach creative writing at Latrobe Bendigo sometime around 2018, I think it was. Then when Twitter was still Twitter, we used to get silly with #DarcyWars, which involved watching all the different versions of Pride and Prejudice (along with Jodi McAlister and Jenna Guillame a bunch of other friends) and live-tweeting about it.
The genesis of Kel and Sharmini’s new book began way back in 2021; I remember it really clearly, because we were deep in covid lockdown, and I was going for long walks every day. During my walks, I’d phone a friend to say hi, and when I called Kel, she told me that she and Sharmini had dreamed up this cool new idea involving Caroline Bingley from Pride and Prejudice as a sleuth…I knew straight away I wanted to read it, and I’m so glad the book is finally out in the world at last!
If reading Austen-flavoured detective fiction is in your wheelhouse, you can grab a copy of the book online or in stores – and it’s out in the UK and other territories as well, so please to enjoy 😊
And that’s it from me for this month! (at least until I come to terrorize you in Nailbiters in a few hours, lol – if you like the long-form Ellie stuff, please subscribe!)
I’ll tell you how I go with the edit, and I’m really hoping I’ll be able to announce that deal soon (we’re narrowing down a title!) so you can join me in celebrating – with a Lemon Drop or not.
Until next time, have a great month, happy reading, and catch you real soon!
xxEllie
March 13, 2025
The Black Hand, vol.46
I’m going to describe a certain type of guy to you, okay? Tell me if you recognize him.
He’s an unassuming person, “slight and boyish, but…grown rather doughy by his late 30s”, largely “unglamorous”, someone who leads “a sedentary life in the half-light of the margins”. He’s a “lover of cinema”, whose experience of it was as “an assistant on the sets of a few minor pornographic movies”. But he also has some unusual interests, and when he discusses them, he “grows quite animated”; in fact, he has “an encyclopaedic knowledge of his preferred subjects”. At dinner parties, he will “hold forth on the matter of serial killing” – he is a “charming young man…with an extreme attraction to the macabre”.
I could be describing a serial murderer. Or I could be describing a fan – someone like Stéphane Bourgoin.
Bourgoin, from humble beginnings, developed a reputation as France’s primary expert on serial killers. He claimed to have interviewed nearly 80 of them in his day, and consulted with John Douglas and the FBI: He was even made an honorary FBI investigator. He told everyone that his fascination with serial offenders was inspired by the murder of his first wife.
But a group of true crime fans began picking holes in Bourgoin’s claims and his reputation. They even wrote to the killers who Bourgoin claimed to have interviewed. Everything they found only revealed more lies, ‘borrowings’ from other investigators’ work, and plagiarism.
When the group couldn’t find a reputable outlet that would agree to share their findings – because of the risk of insulting or slandering Bourgoin – they began posting their information on Youtube under the banner “Serial Mytho’. The videos took off, and true crime fans were horrified. Finally, Bourgoin was exposed.
The links and articles for this were all sent to my by a friend, and this whole story is such a trip – it reminds me a lot of the story about Richard Walter (the fake ‘profiler’ who started the Vidocq Society), but also, it’s like these guys could potentially swing either way?? Like, maybe we’re lucky they just became fraudulent ‘serial killer experts’ because otherwise, they might become serial killers themselves…
All Shall Mourn is doing pretty damn greatA month ago, I released a new book. I published it myself! While I knew some people out there were excited to read it, I really didn’t anticipate this amazing groundswell of support from everyone (it seems like) who’s ever read None Shall Sleep and got invested.
I continue to be heartwarmed – and somewhat gobsmacked – by how enthusiastically All Shall Mourn has been received.
As of today, it’s still in the Top 20 of ebooks in its categories, and Top 50 for paperbacks.
It only lost the “No.1 New Release” orange banner thingie like, yesterday.
It has 74 Amazon ratings, and (last count) about 530 ratings on GoodReads – and its star rating has averaged around 4.15 out of 5, far out. (Oh, and if you’d like to add a review of the book on either GR or Amazon, I’d be grateful!)
Overall, this book has been successful beyond anything I could’ve imagined. That rocks.
And yes, I wrote the thing, but it’s not like I bought all those books myself – you folks did that. Thank you again, it’s been a truly amazing ride 🖤
Signed copies, hopefully soonI’m getting a ton of requests for signed copies of All Shall Mourn!
If you’ve been asking “signed copies, what’s up with that?”, here’s what I know:
💀 My website manager is organising it;
💀 I am not a computer gal, I am a words gal, I prefer to play to my strengths and let a computer person do their thing, so yeah, I’m not doing the organising;
💀 Signed copies will be available on the Merch page of my website;
💀 My website manager has been a bit under the gun, so it’s taking us a minute to get it set up;
💀 Once it’s set up, I’ll make a big announcement on socials;
💀 Everyone who says, “what’s happening with signed copies?” will then be referred to that announcement!;
💀 If you’ve emailed me about it – I will also send you an alert to say signed copies are go.
So if you’ve been holding your breath a while, you won’t have to hold on much longer!
After signed copies go live on my website, and I’ve got a handle on that, we’ll turn our attention to a couple other things (audiobook, maybe? Or potentially an Australian version of the paperback?) and see what we come up with.
Sorry I’m late with postageOn that note, things have been HECTIC AF here lately, and some things I meant to post out (bookplates! Giveaway books!) have been languishing, unposted. I’m very sorry! The post office is a 20 minute drive away! (also: see “deadline” below) I’ll get them sent this week, with my apologies, and try to do better 😬
I’m on deadline! (again)Mainly the hectic is because I’ve been on deadline (yes! Still and again!).
My deadline period finishes 31 March, and by my count I have just under 100 pages left to write – yiiiikes. So I’ve been fully crunching on this book, and I’m hoping to hit my deadline target if I can stay on track.
This book is kind of a secret, as-yet-unannounced project [1] (this [1] is a footnote, I have footnotes now, see bottom of this email) with a new publisher that will release next year, god willing. Publishers don’t usually like to announce a book in the trades (Publishers Weekly etc) until closer to the release date, to build anticipation [2] (look, another footnote!), but as soon as I have confirmation of an announcement, I’ll ping you all.
(Also we can’t announce the book until we have a title, and sometimes titles take a long time to work out, I don’t know why. Yes, this book has a working title. But nobody wants to announce a book by saying “Ellie Marney’s upcoming new book, Working Title, through Such-and-Such Publisher…”
You see the conundrum.
But yeah, once we have a title and stuff, I’ll tell you folks first 😊)
Author eventsRight now, thank god, I have none! Because honestly, when I’m on deadline, I have enough trouble remembering to put on pants in the morning. Being on deadline plus remembering to put on pants, appearing in public, and speaking in a way that sounds vaguely intelligent…All these things are right on the edge of my capacity at the moment.
I was going to go to a thing in Western Australia, but sadly I’m not going to make it. Soz, west coast friends – I’ll do my best to get over your way as soon as I can.
I answered a bunch of questions about self-publishing for Ask Alice over at the #LoveOzYA website, if you want to have a look!
I also gave an interview with Claire Fraise at her Youtube channel, which was a real blast! We talked thrillers and writing craft and all things bookish, so if you’d like to have a look or a listen, go here.
At the moment, I’m trying to sort out an appearance at Oz ComicCon in June – I’ll let you know when I’m sure that it’s happening!
I usually wear pants – would you like me to visit your school? LOLI mean, when I’m not on deadline, I’m usually a completely normal person! And I’d be really happy if you wanted to invite me to your school event, literature festival, library night, or whatever else you have in mind. I will most definitely wear pants.
You can contact me here (elliemarney@gmailcom) if you’d like me to join in your event, and I’m happy to discuss my rates and the kinds of talks and workshops I provide.
NB: This year, I’m planning to offer special rates for government secondary schools who would like me to visit them during Book Week.
I’m still sorting out the details of this, but I’d like to visit more public high schools! I love public high schools – attended one, taught in a bunch of them, sent my kids to one – and I feel like crappy government budgets shouldn’t mean you miss out on seeing authors. Please stay tuned while I figure out the logistics, but I’ll keep updating.
What I’m doing - no, the other stuffI may be on deadline, but occasionally I have to rest my brain in the evenings. I’d heard of this cool pair of indie US film makers called Moorhead & Benson, so I watched their first feature, Spring. And damn, it was really good!
The Bram Stoker awards are being voted on right now and you should check out the nominees because there’s a bunch of great books on this list.
MapQuest has created a “” resource and I think I’m going to put in a new weird word every day.
That’s it from me for March. Hope you’re doing okay 🖤 I hope you’ve got some great books to read! Please remember to put on pants.
Wish me deadline luck, stay cool until next month, see you on the other side!
xxEllie
[1] If you’re interested, I’ve been putting a lot more hints and behind-the-scenes thoughts about this secret book in my paywalled newsletter, Nailbiters. The closer this book comes to release, the more I’ll talk about it! (This is my not-so-subtle way of suggesting that if you want more info, you should sign up.)
[2] Which is crazy because I want everyone to start anticipating it now, but I guess you can get anticipation fatigue, so.
Nailbiters #35
Hello, friends! Apologies for this edition being a little late – I’m kind of under the gun right now, which I’m going to talk about in more detail further down the newsletter. I’m on deadline and the…
February 3, 2025
The Black Hand, vol.45
We usually have a macabre crime fact piece in this spot, but I’ve put it near the end so I can crow harder – All Shall Mourn is out tomorrow!! My book is out tomorrow!
It’s finally here – the book I never thought I’d get to finish, that my publisher didn’t want, that readers encouraged me to write. I mean, if you read the acknowledgements at the end of the book (You…you always read book acknowledgements, right? I can’t be the only one…👀) you’ll see that I put the blame for this book (lol) entirely on being ruthlessly enabled by people from this newsletter and Nailbiters and a few other places, who said shockingly motivating things like “I HAVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS, PLEEEEEEASE” and “OMG YOU NEED TO WRITE THE LAST BOOK SO I CAN FIND OUT WHAT’S GOING ON WITH SIMON AND KRISTIN” and “IF TRAVIS AND EMMA DON’T GET A HEA I WILL RIOT”.
Seriously, as an author, this is the best thing ever.
I’m releasing this newsletter on a Tuesday, in anticipation of tomorrow’s publication day. So if you’ve been reading the early chapters of All Shall Mourn as they’ve been released in Nailbiters, you get one last chapter today, and then you can grab the book first thing tomorrow and pick up exactly where you left off.
If you haven’t been reading the early chapters and you’d like to get in on that action – the first 2 chapters are free here, to give you a teaser.
Chapter 7 of ALL SHALL MOURN
At the morning briefing, in the cramped ‘home base’ office, Kirby explains that the interview with the WaPo reporter will be conducted upstairs, in the library of Jefferson.
Travis can tell, from a subtle curtness in Kirby’s speech, how much he wanted to conduct the interview off-base to make it look as though Emma was staying somewhere temptingly accessible. As though Emma is a piece of cheese, and all it will take for the FBI to catch their target is to position her in the middle of a trap that Kirby can snap shut.
I mean, the book comes out tomorrow, so maybe you don’t need to sign up for Nailbiters anymore to read good bits?
But if you’d still like to have access to a rad behind-the-scenes newsletter with writing craft talk, and peeks of WIPs, and extra perks (all my founding members got a free digital copy of All Shall Mourn last week, for instance), plus a chance to support my work, all for the approximate price of one coffee per month (or significantly less than that, like a Snickers 2-pack per month, if you join for a year), then feel free to click and subscribe 😊
ALL SHALL MOURN – all linksBEHOLLLD
You can add/review the book here on GoodReads
Purchase links are here, check it:
I still don’t have a link for Bookshop, so if you see one before me, hit me up in the comments.
And yes, if you use an alternative library app like BorrowBox or Tolino or Odilo, you should be able to find the book on your app.
If you’d like to ask your library or bookstore to order All Shall Mourn, they should be able to do that (bookstores can order through IngramSpark/Lightning Source; libraries should be able to go through their library supplier).
And as soon as my own ordered books arrive, I’ll be offering signed copies on my website, so stay tuned – I’ll do an announcement on Instagram and Threads/Bluesky.
Anyway, I am verklempt – this is the most support I’ve ever had for an indie release, and I AM SO VERY GRATEFUL 🖤 Getting a chance to finish Emma and Travis and Simon and Kristin’s story – and seeing how excited everyone is to read it! – has been one of the coolest things I’ve experienced as an author 😊
What I’m readingI’ve been looking literally everywhere for a horror novel to give me the creeps/give me a jolt, and THIS WRETCHED VALLEY by Jenny Kiefer actually aced the assignment. If you’ve read The Ruins by Scott Smith (or seen the movie), you’ll understand the vibe. The story is about a group of college students – all experienced hikers or botanists or rock climbers – who head into the Kentucky wilderness to conquer what they believe might be a new climbing spot, but things get freaky when their GPS starts failing, accidents happen, fights break out, and terrible things begin appearing in the shadows of the trees…
What particularly surprised me with This Wretched Valley: It’s Kiefer’s debut, and she did a great job, but she also pulls off a really difficult manoeuvre. She shows you (and this is not a spoiler, it’s on the cover blurb) the weirdly-mutilated dead bodies of most of the protagonists in the opening pages, then backtracks to explain what happened. Maintaining plot tension throughout the story when the reader already knows the fates of the protags is tricky shit! That’s like playing Author in Hard Mode, and honestly, I was super impressed at both the level of difficulty and how successfully it worked, so kudos, Jenny Kiefer – I’ll absolutely be watching for your next book.
I’m giving away three complete signed sets of the NONE SHALL SLEEP seriesFirst signed sets to ever go out into the world! Hot damn! Here’s how to enter:
1)Repost this on Instagram (Feed or Reel, not just Stories! I can’t keep up with Stories before they disappear!):
2)Tag me in the repost so I know you’ve entered;
3)Last entries accepted 11.59PM AEDT on Friday 7 Feb;
4)I’ll put all the names together and pick one out of a hat;
5)Winner will be contacted via IG.
Good luck, hope you win!
Where this newsletter gets its name (but not really)Honestly, I wasn’t thinking too hard when I came up with the name for The Black Hand. I wanted something that would convey crime, wickedness, the macabre…something that would cover everything from murder mysteries to bloodthirsty thrillers to dark psychological horror.
I wanted to go with The Red Hand, but discovered it contained a multiple of unsavoury meanings (from Irish factional violence groups to antisemitic movements 👀) so uh, no, I chose not to go with that. I picked The Black Hand almost by accident, but it turns out it’s an old name for a mafia extortion racket? I guess you can’t have everything.
In Italian immigrant areas (in both the US and Australia), newspapers talked about a ‘Black Hand Society’ of mafia-connected people who extorted money out of local residents and businesses, and even carried out assassinations. These societies mainly committed crimes against successful members of their own community, starting in about the early 1900s. Typically, they’d send a threatening letter – “we will kill you/kidnap your family members/set fire to your shop” etc – and then specify how much money should be taken to which money-drop place to prevent the threats from being acted on.
The usual standover techniques, then.The letter “was decorated with threatening symbols such as a smoking gun, hangman's noose, skull, or knife dripping with blood or piercing a human heart, and was frequently signed with a hand, "held up in the universal gesture of warning", imprinted or drawn in thick black ink”.
There’s also another dubious connotation for the phrase ‘The Black Hand’ – it’s the name of a secret Serbian military society that formed around 1911…and may have been involved in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand? (you know, just the assassination that kicked off WWI…oops).
Anyway, this is all to say that I didn’t know about any of those things when I called my newsletter The Black Hand! I’m glad all the references are plainly historical, and not linked to any contemporary nastiness. But sincerely, if you’re a member of an Irish religious faction, an Italian mafia extortion racket, or a Serbian military society that started WWI…I meant no disrespect, I swear.
That’s it from me for February! Far out, I can’t believe you get to read the book soon. It’s hugely exciting, nail-gnawingly terrifying, and massively relieving all at the same time. However you like (or don’t like) All Shall Mourn, I’m never going to regret having written it – only that it took so long to finally get it into your hands. I appreciate every single one of you who told me to keep going – this book is really yours, my patient ones 🖤
A quick word to US friends: I don’t know wtf is going on in your country right now, and I hope you are all okay. Take care and stay safe. I’m thinking of you, and I hope my book gives you some escape for a while xx
And everyone who’s out there reading this – stay chill, hope you find some good books, happy All Shall Mourn release day and see you in March!
xxEllie
Nailbiters #34
(The macabre crime news spot is at the bottom of the page today, because?? There is more exciting news?? Also, for those of you reading along at home, Chapter 7 of All Shall Mourn – the final chapter…
January 7, 2025
The Black Hand, vol. 44
(The next chapter of All Shall Mourn is out now! If you’d like to join up to read previous chapters, as well as discover behind-the-scenes info and take the chance to support my work, subscribe or follow the instructions here:)
Wine WarsThe French take wine very seriously. How seriously, you may ask? Very seriously.
Last year, a militant French winegrower group called the Comité d'Action Viticole (CAV), bombed the offices of the Regional Directorate of Environment, Planning and Housing in Carcassonne (in the south of France) in protest against increased costs and constraints on winemakers in the Aude region.
Holy shit! There were no casualties, as the offices were being renovated – a bloodless revolution, one might call it. But for real, can you imagine getting your office blown up over a wine war? Wild stuff. It’s like tulip mania in the Dutch Golden Age, or internecine conflict over donuts, or some other commodity that seems too innocuous to generate violence.
Can’t they sit down over a nice glass of sauvignon blanc and work it out? Apparently not. The Aude winegrowers' union leader, Frédéric Rouanet (I’m still getting over the phrase ‘militant French winegrowers’ group’ and now you tell me there’s a winegrowers’ union?? I freakin’ love France), was quoted in the news saying, "I do not condone this type of act but unfortunately it is likely to become part of everyday life, given the current wine situation." He doesn’t sound too sorry about it, does he? Piss off the winegrowers and you get what’s coming to you, I guess!
In fact, there’s been other action in South France related to so-called ‘terrorist winemakers’ – including a roadblock in which an entire tanker of red was emptied onto the road (I would’ve been out there with a big jug, I mean have you tasted French wine? C’est magnifique!). There was also an arson attack on a bottling line, not to mention bomb threats at a winemaking workshop in nearby Spain, where cheap wines are being trucked over the border and undercutting French wine prices.
Militant French winegrowers do not screw around.So…that’s how seriously the French take their wine. Bring on the wine revolution, I say! Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité! Seriously though, French wine is amazing. When I went to France last year, the cheapest, shittiest bottle of wine on the very bottom shelf of the local supermarket (no kidding, it cost 3 euros) tasted better than the $50 bottle of wine I bought for a friend once I was back home. Drink French wine if you get the chance!
Welcome, 2025!Friends, it’s a new year, and a new season of possibility. However bumpy the road ahead, for now, we celebrate the chance to start afresh and see clear-eyed.
Heading into a brand new year, I’m here to tell you that in 2025 you can do anything you want. This time is yours to shape. There’s a quote from one of the other newsletters that I subscribe to, although I can’t really remember where it’s from (Paul’s Tremblay’s dryly funny occasional missives, perhaps? Rusty Foster’s wisdom from Today on Trail? Lincoln Michel’s erudite musings from Counter Craft? Or maybe something else) but it goes: There are no rules. No one knows anything. It’s important to get creative. It’s important to try new things and not take yourself too seriously.
Let me just put that quote out on its own so we can look at it together:
There are no rules. No one knows anything. It’s important to get creative. It’s important to try new things and not take yourself too seriously.
I have this quote stuck up in big glow-in-the-dark letters near my writing space. As far as rules go, this quote reflects my only rule: that we should remind ourselves there are no rules but the ones we make. That nobody really knows how things are done. That creativity and originality and experimentation are vital for life as well as art. Above all, take some deep breaths and don’t get too stressed about it.
I’m writing this to you from a train carriage in India. We’re winding our way from Kolkata to Mughalsarai (Upadhyaya) past dry country in the state of Jharkhand. I’m releasing a book in a month and there is much to do. I’m also writing another book under contract (hooray!) and writing this newsletter and doing a bunch of admin stuff. When my partner suggested we go to India over the New Year, my brain initially couldn’t make space for it – omg, didn’t I have too much to do? But then I realised that India has wifi like everywhere else, that I can work on the road simply by bringing my laptop. Trying new things is important. Now here I am in this amazing country, and my writing has been more focused and I’m feeling creatively energised. It was a good call – and all I had to do was let go enough to take a chance.
Chapter 6 of ALL SHALL MOURN is out now
Travis looks around at how the interior of the Cool Room has been stripped.
Every small convenience from their last case is gone: There’s no extra desk, no coffee maker, no pencil holder, no carpet tiles. All that remains is a single wooden desk with a lamp, a heavy metal filing cabinet, one folding metal chair with a cushioned seat, and the hard old couch, which was obviously too awkward to remove. Travis finds the reduced conditions oddly poignant…
Only one more chapter to go before the book releases in February!! 😊
I’ll release Chapter 7 a day or two before the book arrives, so hopefully you can finish that chapter then grab your copy of the book and pick up where you left off.
Thank you to everyone supporting my work as a subscriber – it has been really lovely to see people jumping on board the newsletter, and I appreciate that you’re taking time out of your day to read my ramblings. There’s quite a lot of free stuff here in my newsletters for The Black Hand – especially if your interest is in macabre or crimey things – and I try to give updates about what I’m engaged with as well as recs for books and media that might be as interesting to you as it is to me.
If you’re a paid subscriber, there’s also a whole back catalogue of Nailbiters posts with various tidbits about my writing process, especially behind-the-scenes info about None Shall Sleep series, and about writing craft and the industry in general, in addition to deep dives into random things that catch my eye. I hope, once you’ve finished reading All Shall Mourn chapters, you’ll find other things to read in Nailbiters that float your boat. You might like to check out the post on Simon Gutmunsson’s character development, for instance, or this one on writing the final book in a series, or this one on researching historical fiction. I’m hoping to release more new fiction in Nailbiters this year, whether it be some of the adult horror book I wrote or something else.
If you’re not a paid Nailbiters subscriber, you can upgrade here using this button (or find clear instructions about how to upgrade here)
ALL SHALL MOURN is coming next month!Honestly I can’t believe it – it feels like we’ve been holding our breath forever? And the next time I talk to you, the end of this insane story will be released.
The book officially comes out February 5. Digital copies are currently available for preorder (and this is the largest number of ebook preorders I’ve ever sold for a book, thank you all so much, that is wild). Paperback copies will be available immediately on the day of release. You’ll find them on Amazon, and – if I can make the upload interface work – through Barnes & Noble (you may have to ask your store to order them) and other places supplied by Ingram Spark.
If all goes well and there’s plenty of sales, I’ll figure out a way to get a hardcover and an audiobook edition of All Shall Mourn together. For now, I’m just thrilled that this book is actually going out into the world.
EventsObviously I’m in India right now, so no events (I dropped into Kinokuniya Singapore and signed some books there, though, so if you’re in Singapore, grab a copy!).
But I’ve got some really awesome plans for later in the year – and I’m currently lining up events for 2025, so if you have a school, library, festival, podcast, Youtube channel, or something you’d like me to attend, please get in touch! I’m at elliemarney at gmail dot com, drop me a line anytime. I’ll be a little slow replying until February, when I get back to my desk, but I’m still checking email.
Folks have been asking if I’m doing a book tour to promote All Shall Mourn, and the answer is (alas) no – I don’t usually tour for a third book, and I’m also crunching pretty hard to hit my deadline. But if you’d like signed books, keep an eye out for them on my website over the next month or two. I’m also happy to send you a free signed bookplate, if that is your pleasure, so email me for details 😊
What I’m reading/watching/listening toI’ve started and finished a number of unsatisfying books over the last few weeks, but then I picked up Blacktop Wasteland by SA Cosby, and I knew my dry spell had ended. Cosby is a masterful voice in noir mystery thrillers, and what seems like a standard story of an ex-getaway driver sucked into a classic ‘one more job before quitting’ situation is transformed into something intense and smart and real by some absolutely top-notch writing – the characters are living, breathing, and fascinating. Roxane Gay described it as “Fast and the Furious but literary” and I’d have to agree. At every turn, we’re hoping that Bug Montage makes it home safe to his family. Highly recommended!
As far as the tube goes, I’ve done a Monkey Man rewatch (obviously very timely), and I’m restraining myself from watching the first episode of the new season of Severance, because I promised my kids I’d watch it with them when I got home. That show is probably my most-anticipated TV event of 2025, so I hope they appreciate the sacrifice I’m making for them.
New theme on Instagram: Neon!Social media is mostly a necessary evil rather than an enjoyable experience for 99% of authors, and so it is for me also. Although I don’t mind dipping into text-based socials like Bluesky and Threads, I’m not a natural video person so I find Tiktok a bit torturous, and Instagram is one of those things I can take or leave. Mainly I just feel kinda old on socials, but I bumble along anyway.
But I remain a very visual thinker and writer – I’m on the very far end of “seeing a picture in your head when writing” spectrum – and every year, I get a great deal of pleasure from finding a new visual theme for my Instagram. It’s kind of like redecorating your house, but without all the horrendous expense?
Last year was the year of GIALLO, and I got a kick out of planning out the visuals for that. This year, friends, the theme is NEON, so expect some popping colours and lots of 80s-style pinks and blues and purples (which seems very appropriate for All Shall Mourn). Anyway, hope you enjoy it!
That’s it from me for this month. I hope you rang in the New Year in a way most appropriate to you. I had a relatively quiet one, albeit in the frenetic environment of Kolkata. May your year be a delight, and may all good things find you!
Friends in Australia, stay cool and safe this fire season. Friends in the States, I send you strength, and the steadfast joy you need to sustain yourselves in uncertain times. If you’re in the UK and Europe, much love to you! Folks in my ARC team, I hope you’re enjoying being the first people in the world to read All Shall Mourn (amazing that people are finally reading it!).
I’m finishing this newsletter on the balcony of a little room in Varanasi, as the sun comes up over the Ganges River. Cars and auto-rickshaws are honking their horns in the street below. Someone is singing a religious mantra through the tannoy across the street, and people are lighting little fires down by the river as part of a ceremony. India is wild and strange and beautiful, and I hope we all have a little more of that wildness and strangeness and beauty in our lives over the coming year. See you next month!
xxEllie
Nailbiters #33
(Second last chapter of All Shall Mourn before the book releases is below the fold! Hope you enjoy it!)
Happy New Year! Be kind to your penisNow you know I always start off with something weird - my p…
December 10, 2024
The Black Hand, vol.44
(All Shall Mourn is releasing 5 February 2025 - woot! - and until then I’m releasing a chapter per month in my paywalled newsletter Nailbiters. You can subscribe and catch up by following these instructions - enjoy!)
Bad SantaSo picture this: you want to rob a bank. (I’m not saying *you* want to rob a bank! Or maybe you do? idk, whatever, it’s fine). Unlike countless others before you who’ve been caught by police, or shot when fleeing the scene, you want to get away to spend your money. So what do you do?
Well if you’re this guy, you wait until the annual Santa Claus-themed pub crawl called SantaCon held in San Francisco each December. You dress up as Santa – along with literally thousands of others – wait until the parade starts, walk into a bank, pass a note to the teller that you want an (undisclosed) amount of money and that you ‘have a gun’, then once you’ve got your cash, you stroll outside and…disappear into the crowd of other Santas.
Honestly, I love this idea so much. The only thing that would improve it would be if the bank robber was giving at least some of the cash away, Robin-Hood-style – but who’s to say he didn’t?
Chapter Five of ALL SHALL MOURN out now in Nailbiters!
Virginia, 30 October 1982
Quantico FBI training base is quiet at 8:00PM, when the bureau car brings them to the entry of Jefferson residential. But of course, Quantico is never really quiet: The base is a military facility, and in other buildings here, lectures are being attended, residents are studying or eating meals, firearms are being broken down and quickly reassembled. ..
It’s delighting me that people are getting into this monthly-chapter-release thing, I may have to keep releasing something every month even after All Shall Mourn?
But this is the fifth chapter of the book, and there’s only two more chapters coming out before publication day (excite!). If you’d like to get on this wagon, you can subscribe, or find out how to upgrade your subscription, via this button:
Thank you, we have an ARC reader team!Just a little note to say thanks to everyone who’s signed up to join the All Shall Mourn ARC reader list – all the spots are now filled!
I’m still posting over JanuaryUsually I take a hiatus period over the Dec-Jan holiday season, because everyone needs a break sometimes. But I wanted to let you know that I’m still going to be posting out my newsletters through January in 2025, as I’m still releasing chapters of All Shall Mourn and it just makes sense to continue releasing newsletters.
(Maybe I’ll take a mid-year hiatus? Who’s to say. I kinda like writing newsletters though, so I’ll keep you updated)
Preorder ALL SHALL MOURNYou can preorder a digital copy of All Shall Mourn, that would be lovely and I would be extremely delighted/grateful!
I know many of you are waiting for the paperback release, but I just want to say thanks to everyone hitting the link for digital preorder - All Shall Mourn has been hanging around on bestseller lists in three categories since it was announced, and that’s AMAZING 😊
My giant list of recs for 2024I told you last month that I’d see out the old year with a giant list of recommendations, and behold! *sweeping hand gesture*
I’ve compiled all the things I read and watched and loved over the course of 2024, and maybe some of them will float your boat. Please be aware of TWs for some media (especially Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ – phew – and The Zone of Interest and Possession) but I hope you find something on this list to see you through the holidays!
Books:
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
System Collapse by Martha Wells
Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of The Exorcist by Marlena Williams
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher
Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ by Mendel Johnson
Fever House by Keith Rosson
Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig
Ninth House/Hell Bent and The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
Most looking forward to: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
Films:
The Subtance dir. by Coralie Fargeat
Monkey Man dir. by Dev Patel
Longlegs dir. by Osgood Perkins
The Zone of Interest dir. by Jonathon Glazer
Possession dir. by Andrzej Zulawski
Late Night with the Devil dir. by Cameron & Colin Cairnes
Woman of the Hour dir. by Anna Kendrick
The Birds dir. by Alfred Hitchcock
Godzilla Minus One dir. by Takashi Yamazaki
Abigail dir. by Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett
Body Double dir. by Brian de Palma
Neon Demon dir. by Nicolas Winding Refn
Starship Troopers dir. by Paul Verhoeven
Most looking forward to: Nosferatu, The Gorge
TV:
Interview with the Vampire 2
Blue Eye Samurai
Rivals
Shogun
True Detective: Night Country
Fallout
Poker Face
The Boys 4
Bridgerton 3
The Fall of the House of Usher
Kaos
Most looking forward to: continuing seasons of Severance, Yellowjackets, and Interview with the Vampire
No games, sorry – I don’t really do games? (I mean, when do I have the time to have a hobby?)
I hope you find something fun or fascinating that piques your interest from that selection! And can I suggest the this year, during the season of gift-giving, that you consider buying a book for the holidays? (maybe one of mine? Idk, you do you, there are many books in the world!)
This is the bit where I usually get all mushy or philosophical about ‘another year over’ or something, in preparation for not chatting with you for about a month or so – but as I’m not taking a break this year, to hell with that!
I hope you have an excellent month, and it’s not too crazy with family events. I hope you got yourself a little treat for the holidays. I hope you don’t have to either a) make Xmas lunch, or b) clean up – at least if you clean up, I hope you’ve had a few glasses of eggnog or champagne or whatever to make it bearable. I hope you get a few moments to yourself this season, and I hope you have something cool to read during that quiet time…
May your coming year be fruitful, may your holiday season be calm, and may your burdens be light ❤️ From my fam to yours, have a very festive season.
See you all in January!
xxEllie
