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| Robert Ellis |
It's only a guess, but I think a safe one, that all
artists work differently. That the methods an artist uses to make something out
of nothing are as varied and unique as one person is from the next.
My novels come together in many different ways. It
could be an idea for a character and his or her plight. An opening or closing
that seems particularly exciting and vivid. A story in the news that had an
impact on me.
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| August 2, 2016 |
In the case of THE LOVE KILLINGS it was all about
the protagonist, the hero in the story, LAPD Detective Matt Jones. As you may
have heard by now, THE LOVE KILLINGS isn't exactly a second novel in the
Detective Matt Jones series. Instead, THE LOVE KILLINGS is an actual
continuation of the first novel, CITY OF ECHOES. These two novels make a single
story and were conceived all at once and at the same time. This, of course, is
a rare occurrence in publishing these days, and I can't thank my editors and
publisher enough for letting me break stride and present a story that takes two
books to tell.
But, then, this is the nature of Detective Matt
Jones and his journey.
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| Hurricane Irene, the Day After |
Conceived the way a child might be in his parent's
mind, the idea of Matt Jones was born on August 28, 2011 when Hurricane Irene
washed on shore in Connecticut. I had moved from Los Angeles and was living directly
on Long Island Sound, my front door fifty feet from where these photographs were taken. My neighborhood had been evacuated, and those who decided
to stay were asked by the police to sign a release stating that if an emergency
or disaster occurred, no help would come. Many of us stayed, though signing the
release amped up the terror and gave the decision a new degree of gravity. I
can remember the calm before the storm -- dusk and early night -- and then the
breeze picking up. Toward midnight, the breeze morphed into 120 mph winds, with
torrential rain and flooding. Within two hours, we lost power and were stuck. But
we were also lucky. It hadn't been a direct hit. Hurricane Irene had veered off
course just a few sweet miles south, before reaching shore.
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| Hurricane Irene, the Day After |
Every night has a morning, I guess, until we reach
the end of our days. At some point during the night the National Guard sealed
off the neighborhood and everyone who stayed was stuck. If anyone left, there
would be no way to pass the checkpoints and get back home. And so we stayed, on
dry ground but surrounded by water and completely isolated for about a week.
Because we'd lost power, our refrigerators had shut down and everything in our freezers
was beginning to thaw. The solution to not letting the food go to waste seemed
simple. We decided to throw freezer parties every night. We joined tables
together on the lawn, we circled our grills, and we sat around into the wee
hours of the night eating potluck dinners, drinking wine and telling tales.
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| Hurricane Irene, the Day After |
And that's when it happened. That's when a neighbor
told me a story about how his father had abandoned him as a child. But even
more, how he'd spent most of his adult life brooding about it and dreaming of revenge.
My past with my own father had been rough in my
teens and early twenties. No doubt about it, I was built to go my own way in
life and I did. The pressure of the times seemed to magnify this calling, times
that seem to be repeating the same beats today. A bogus war that no one could
explain and had no end, "Catcher in the Rye" by my bed, revolution in
the air. I had already been working on something along these lines, a hazy,
vague idea about a detective in search of his family, something that still had
no real shape and remained beyond my grasp. But the conversations I had with my
neighbor during the hurricane and its aftermath gave the whole thing new
definition, a new form. And so I let the ideas percolate the way I let all my
stories percolate. Notes on 3x5 cards beginning to stack up all over my desk. A
project finished, a new one in the womb.
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| The Love Killings, Born of a Hurricane and Ready to Read |
Anyone who's read CITY OF ECHOES knows all about
those wonderful loose ends permeating the last chapter. And most of my fans
know all too well that my novels are about something more than the murder. Everyone
of them has a theme, a reason to be written and read, a reason to live and
breathe. As you might be guessing, all of this points directly to THE LOVE
KILLINGS, a story idea that has taken two books to tell. Two epic novels joined
at the hip about a homicide detective named Matt Jones and his torturous
journey. His search for his family, his history, his identity, and his soul. And hey, what about that serial killer who's still on the loose?
CITY OF ECHOES and THE LOVE KILLINGS. As a writer, these two novels back to back deliver
something more than I could have ever imagined. I hope you love reading them
together as much as I loved writing them, together.
Sleep loose,
Robert
www.robertellis.net
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