T.J. Newman at Houston's Murder by the Book

by

Scott D. Parker

Fresh off the publication of her third thriller, Worst Case Scenario, author T.J. Newman landed at Houston’s Murder by the Book on Thursday evening for her first visit to the independent bookstore. Local journalists, Natalie J. Harms, interviewed the former flight attendant and what emerged was a lively discussion of the book, her processes, and the winding road she took to becoming a published author.

The Key is the Research

It’s the question every author fields: where did you get the idea for [Current Book]. Newman told the story of how she researched her first thriller, Falling. She asked pilots about their biggest fears. One commented that it was a commercial airliner crashing into a nuclear power plant. When Newman took the position nearly any one of us would take—there are contingencies built on contingencies to prevent that—the pilot merely said, “That’s what they want you to think.”

Newman commented that she front-loads her process with research, but her books are thrillers. As a result, one of her challenges is how to convey the necessary information to regular folks who read her books. I’ll let you in on how: she has various characters populate her story who themselves don’t know the information. Thus, the experts in her book gets to have an info dump. But the dump is not large. It’s just enough for the character (and reader) to understand the situation and move forward. 

A funny anecdote she told involved a reader whose husband actually worked in a nuclear power plant. After he read the book, his comment on her research was simple: “Spot on.” Great for Newman. Kinda bad for the rest of us (because of how easy this kind of thing can happen).

The Small Town Setting Was Critical, and It Opened Up the Story

When asked why set the book in a small Minnesota town, Newman said that a big city would have all the resources necessary to contain the situation. Small towns don’t, especially a small town that’s been forgotten. But what makes this novel special is the reminder that what happens to a small town can ripple out to everyone, especially when it involves a potential global disaster. It’s a reminder that we’re all in this world together. 

The Writing Process and How It Changed

Newman said that action scenes are more challenging for her to write. There are many emotional scenes in this book, and while they were tough to write, action scenes involve a different type of discipline. The prose, she said, should be sparse, giving what’s happening on the page room to breathe.

And she trusts the audience. “You know what an explosion looks like,” she said. “All I have to do is provide the trigger.” 

She namedropped Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm as a book with this sparse style of action. Also she was hired to adapt her first novel, Falling, into a screenplay. As she said, how do you condense a 300-page book into a 100-page script that’s all action with little-to-no internal thoughts of the characters? It changed how she wrote Worst Case Scenario, her third book. She said there was a relentless editor perched on her shoulder during the writing process, driving home the point that she trusts the audience to fill in the blanks. 

Many writing books and classes say that a good story begins with characters. For Newman, it is plot first. The roles are defined and the characters step up and populate the story. As someone who has written both ways, I don’t have a preference, but I know when we writers are deep into our stories—the kind of depth where we cannot stop thinking about the story or the people in it—our characters come to life in ways we could never have imagined without the plot.

A Respect for Where She Is and How She Got There

Barely three years ago, Newman was a flight attendant on the red eye from Los Angeles to New York. A musical theater student who tried to make it on Broadway and ended up back in her growing-up house, Newman took a job at a local Phoenix bookstore and it was then where her dream of becoming a published author became a goal. 

She wrote Falling on those red-eye flights, on napkins and notepads and an iPad. She endured over forty rejections before someone said yes. And the whirlwind of her life took off. But she knows how much of a privilege it is to have “writer” as her job description. You can hear it in the way she speaks, the way she carries herself, and how she interacts with her fans. 

The last question of the evening came from John, one of the good folks at the bookstore (and my “professor” in Cozy College). He asked Newman what surprised her now that she’s a published author that she didn’t know when she worked as a bookseller. Her answer was special. 

A writer has an idea and goes through the long process of getting the book ideated, written, and edited. Then there’s the publishing side of things with cover concepts and promotions. The bookseller is the final baton pass from author to reader. The bookseller is the person who knows you, who might literally put a book in your hands and say, “You’ll like this” or “You have to read this.” 

That is magical. And that’s why I love independent bookstores because you get to know the people who work there and they know you. 

T.J. Newman is a gifted writer, and based on her first three novels, she has landed on a rarified personal list: I will read everything she writes. She is also a wonderful interviewee and if you get a chance to see her at a book event, grab that opportunity. You’ll be glad you did.

My reviews:

Falling

Drowning

Worst Case Scenario

Links:

T.J. Newman’s website

Natalie’s website

The Worst Thing You Could Do is Not Read T.J. Newman’s Worst Case Scenario

By 

Scott D. Parker

I should have known that I’d cry.

When I listened to T.J. Newman’s first book, FALLING, last year, the story evoked an emotional response. The same thing happened when I devoured her second, DROWNING, but this second time, it was doubled. Now, with WORST CASE SCENARIO, she has tripled the emotional impact that a story can bring. 

And I’m so happy for it.

Pitch-Perfect Elevator Pitches

A former flight attendant, Newman’s first two thrillers take place on planes. The elevator pitches are short enough that you could speak them even if you’re going up a single floor. FALLING: A pilot is given a choice: crash the plane or we kill your kidnapped family. DROWNING: How do you rescue survivors trapped in a plane that is slowly sinking in the Pacific Ocean? For WORST CASE SCENARIO (WCS): What do you do if a plane crashes into a nuclear power plant?

It’s the kind of situation you hope never, ever happens in real life, but Newman tells this story using characters that you really start caring for from the moment they step into the story.

A Visceral Opening Sequence

As I wrote in my earlier reviews, Newman wastes zero time getting into the action. For WCS, she puts you on the plane when the pilot suffers a fatal heart attack. His body causes the plane to nose dive and nothing can be done. But expert author that she is, Newman puts you on the plane, with the flight attendants and the co-pilot, as they try to right the plane. She makes you care for the almost instantly and you find yourself praying they’ll survive. 

Same thing for the folks on the ground who see and hear the plane crash. The detailed descriptions of what happens to the folks on the ground unfortunate enough to be caught by the falling debris is sobering. What physically happens to a human body when a plane’s wing rams into a van filled with a family? The descriptions are not gory, but they are clinical. You, as the reader, get to fill in the rest. 

Newman excels at writing this type of action scene. You feel it. Your heart beats faster. You might break out in a sweat. But what you’ll be breaking out next is a box of tissues.

Real Characters in a Surreal Situation

So, really, what would happen if a plane crashes into a nuclear power plant? Newman focuses on a few locales and situations to bring home the human element. The crash itself is near Waketa, Minnesota, a small town in proximity to Minneapolis. At her author event here in Houston at Murder by the Book, Newman said she wanted to set the story far away from a big city that would have all the resources and equipment necessary to solve the issues. That decision actually opened up the story and examined what it is like to live in a small town and deepened the character development.

There’s the firefighter who is a single dad/widower with an estranged son.. There’s the team at the power plant who must address the impending catastrophe in less time than they have. There’s the President who must confront the potential worst nuclear incident in the history of the world. And there are the local firefighters who must try and rescue a child on a bridge.

By switching the multiple viewpoints, you get a broad sense of scope of the challenges they all face. But Newman never lets us forget that these are ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances and choices. Narrator Joe Morton does a wonderful job at giving these various characters a voice of their own, and the production even went so far as to make things like radio broadcasts sound like they’re coming from a walkie talkie. It’s a little thing, but it goes a long way.

As a human, I became terrified at how easily something like this might happen. As a reader, however, I was enthralled and emotionally engaged throughout the entire book. 

And I will read everything T.J. Newman writes.

You should too.