Friday Reads 9.20.24

Hello, friends! I’m back in the saddle and thrilled to be here. It was a wonderful break, and I return to you rested and reinvigorated. Bouchercon was a thrill, Scotland was wonderful, and fall fever is now underway. It was the moment I sat down to write this week’s blog when I realized time has lost all meaning. It’s been a month since we spoke last! This is a normal schedule for my main newsletter (subscribe here), but for this column, the weekly cadence is perfect. It gives me a chance to review my goings on, share snippets of what I’m reading and watching, and otherwise find myself at the online water cooler on Friday mornings, chatting with my buddies. It’s a glorious space, a virtual diary, and I’ve missed it. But it’s been a MONTH. And so much has happened in that time.

I’ve talked before about how you’re a different person at the end of every day. Your world shifts and alters. Be it a news story, a personal earthquake, an eye-opening experience, a tragedy, or something joyous, we are constantly growing, changing, and shifting. It’s why I love to travel—to experience new things. That, and those fun liminal space between time zones, when, in essence, you’re gaining or losing time and no one else is. Fascinates me.

We can no more go back in time and unsee, unheard, or unwrite something than we can step into a telephone box and catapult ourselves through space. But we can step onto a plane or open our manuscript and create that kind of divine shift.

This is reason 7645 why I love writing. The words you lay down change you as a writer because they change the story. Even following the strictest outline, you’re going to write something unexpected. Those microshifts alter your path, day after day after day. Add in the reader who receives these changes, and we’re creating alchemical magic together, moment by moment.

Food for thought today.

Here are some pretty pictures from my travels.

Port Appin, Scotland. Photo by J.T. Ellison © 2024 Port Appin, Scotland. Photo by J.T. Ellison, © 2024 Culloden Moor. Photo by J.T. Ellison, © 2024 Isle of Skye. Photo by J.T. Ellison © 2024 Eilean Donan Castle. Photo by J.T. Ellison © 2024

I’ve done a good bit of reading since we spoke last.

THE BLACKBIRD ORACLE by Deborah Harkness was surprising and cliffhanger-y. Clearly, there are more books to come, and this is not a bad thing.

I’m deep into Signe Pike’s THE FORGOTTEN KINGDOM, book two in her Arthurian legend reimagining. This is in prep to read book three, THE SHADOWED LAND, for an event in December. Great stuff, especially fun to read whilst tromping through Scotland.

I’ve also cheated on Signe and started THE GOD OF THE WOOD by Liz Moore because it came in at the library, and wow. WOW. WOWOWOWOW!

Have any of you read Sharon Kay Penman’s HERE BE DRAGONS? Also the first of a trilogy, it’s one of my all-time favorite books, and it was on the shelf in the little cottage we stayed in on the River Ness. The stunningly beautiful opening line—Theirs was a land of awesome grandeur, a land of mountains and moorlands and cherished myths—felt perfect for our travels, even though it’s more about Wales.

I was so sad to see we lost Nelson DeMille this week. THE CHARM SCHOOL is really one of the best spy thrillers ever written. If you’ve not read it, give it a shot, and when you’re done, read my essay about it in the anthology THRILLERS: 100 MUST READS, in which I wax poetic about how the book inspired me to join the foreign service, a career path interrupted by the lack of one French credit and a handsome boy from Tennessee.

I also grabbed up the new Brad Thor—SHADOW OF DOUBT. It's an excellent thriller series that is going strong!

Finally, I came across this great piece in the Guardian by Katie Ward about her relationship with her mentor, Hilary Mantel. There are some true pearls of wisdom to be gleaned.

So, what’s happening in your world? I’d love to hear what you’re reading this weekend! Any recommendations?